Animal shelters across several states, and even overseas, pull black cats off their adoption lists around Halloween, bracing for a danger they have not broadly documented. The latest pause came this month, when another rescue group pulled its black cats off the list until after Halloween. What’s really driving the practice may have less to do with the cats than with who’s doing the judging.
Pausing black-cat adoptions before Halloween isn’t new, and this year it runs right up against National Black Cat Day on Oct. 27. Shelters have done it for years, citing the same worry each time. They say a cat adopted in October could be hurt or abandoned after Halloween.
Kootenai Humane Society in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, has barred black cat adoptions through Nov. 2 in past years, with executive director Phil Morgan calling the risk of holiday harm to the cats remote. Tri-County Humane Society and the Adopt A Cat Foundation in Palm Beach, Florida, similarly suspended black-cat adoptions through Nov. 1, 2010, citing concerns that the cats could be exploited and then abandoned after Halloween.
Terrassa, a city in Spain’s Catalonia region, paused adoptions and temporary placements of black cats from Oct. 1 to Nov. 10 last year. Deputy Mayor Noel Duque said the pause discourages impulsive, trend-driven adoptions tied to the holiday’s darker side.
At least four of these pauses are confirmed over the past 16 years, spanning the Midwest, the Mountain West, the Southeast and Spain, each timed to the weeks leading up to Halloween. The most recent case came on Oct. 5, when Almost Home Canine Rescue in Sioux Falls confirmed it held black and mostly black cats before this year’s Halloween season.
Each shelter framed its policy as a precaution. Some pointed to past trouble, including Kootenai’s director in 2010 and Terrassa’s deputy mayor, who cited alerts from residents and animal groups. None has publicly produced evidence.
What actually makes a cat’s coat go black
A black coat is not its own breed; it comes from a change in the agouti gene that keeps pigment cells from producing red-yellow color, so a different pigment pathway takes over and the coat turns solid black. Researchers Eduardo Eizirik and Stephen O’Brien, then at the National Cancer Institute in Frederick, Maryland, identified that mutation in 2003.
The same research team found that black jaguars and dark jaguarundis, a smaller wild cat found from Mexico to Argentina, get their coloring from their own distinct changes in a different gene, MC1R, the receptor that the agouti protein normally controls. The Cat Fanciers’ Association standard for the Bombay calls for a coat that is, in its own words, black to the roots.
Cat people showed little bias against black cats
A study from the University of Dayton tested whether people hold a bias against black cats, using both direct survey questions and a reaction-time test designed to catch bias people don’t consciously report. Psychologist Greg Elvers and his co-authors found almost no explicit bias. Asked directly, most participants rated black cats about the same as other cats.
The reaction-time results told a different story. Self-described dog people and people who like both cats and dogs showed a real, measurable bias specifically against black cats. Self-described cat people did not.
In a second study, 37 college students took the test twice, once at least six weeks before Halloween and again within three weeks of it. Their bias score was about 40% larger the second time, though the authors caution that the sample was small, many students dropped out and the effect was modest.
Not every shelter agrees the pause helps
Francis Battista, co-founder of Best Friends Animal Society, has argued that pulling black cats from adoption for weeks before Halloween doesn’t make sense. He stated black cats already struggle more than other cats to get adopted.
The evidence is mixed: a 2013 ASPCA analysis of data from 14 communities found black cats made up 31% of cat adoptions, close to the 33% they made up of intake. The ASPCA reads that as a sign black cats are adopted at about the same rate as other cats. Studies of individual shelters, including those in California and Colorado, have found black cats can take longer to adopt.
Where a black cat is not bad luck at all
In the United Kingdom, a black cat crossing someone’s path is considered good luck, the opposite of the superstition elsewhere, though Yorkshire keeps its own twist. There, owning a black cat is lucky, but meeting one is not. A related belief holds that giving a bride a black cat on her wedding day brings good fortune.
Scottish island folklore follows the same pattern. A Westray man once kept a black cat under a creel to bring good fishing weather, and a Tiree contributor recalled that just having one around was fortunate. Thailand goes further than luck alone. A traditional Thai manuscript classifies cats into 23 types, and 17 are considered lucky; 10 of those 17 lucky types are black. A similar belief surrounds sailors who kept black cats aboard ship, trusting the animal alone to guarantee a safe voyage.
An old disagreement that still hasn’t been settled
The ASPCA stopped recommending Halloween bans on black-cat adoptions more than two decades ago, finding no real evidence the cats were at risk, while another shelter at the time said it preferred to keep making that call case by case. Almost Home Canine Rescue’s hold in Sioux Falls, decades later, shows that some shelters still choose caution, though no count exists of how many.
Jennifer Allen is a retired professional chef and long-time writer. Her work appears in dozens of publications, including MSN, Yahoo, The Washington Post and The Seattle Times. These days, she’s busy in the kitchen developing recipes and traveling the world, and you can find all her best creations at Cook What You Love.