Tag: superstitions

It’s Zaturday, the day we (Ziggy and Zorro) take over Mommy’s Facebook page!

Zorro here. Mommy says yesterday was Friday the 13^th. I don’t know exactly what that means, because for us, there are just two kinds of days—days in Florida and days in North Carolina. Well, three. There are also the days that we spend in the car getting to Florida or North Carolina.

But apparently Friday the 13^th is supposed to be an unlucky day. Mommy says that’s not true, because she and Daddy got married on Friday the 13^th and it didn’t bring them any bad luck. Some people believe black cats are bad luck, too. But Ziggy and I think that’s crazy.

Like how they say it’s bad luck if a black cat crosses your path. The only time that’s true in our house is when Ziggy runs in front of Mommy and trips her. Then it’s bad luck for both of them—Mommy almost falls and Ziggy gets accidentally kicked across the room. That happened not too long ago. Now Mommy is wearing a big black boot and walking funny. But I’m smarter than Ziggy. I’ve figured out how to stay out of the way of the humans’ feet.

But people say nice things about black cats, too. Like that dreaming about one is lucky. (I help Mommy dream about me by sleeping on her pillow.) And that a black cat on your porch brings prosperity. (We can’t help Mommy and Daddy there. They don’t let us outside.) And how about this one: In olde England, it was believed that a sty in the eye would be cured if rubbed with a black cat’s tail. (Ziggy wouldn’t like that. He doesn’t want people messing with his tail.)

But Ziggy and I think all those superstitions are silly, whether good or bad. Black cats are just like any other cats. We like to play, eat, get scratched under the chin, curl up in a sunny spot and spend lots of time sleeping.

So what should you do if a black cat crosses your path at night?

Pick him up and love him!

I’m not superstitious. I walk under ladders, have two black cats and got married on June 13^th. And yes, it was a Friday.

In our house, Friday the 13^th is a day to celebrate. And when that Friday the 13^th falls during the month of June, it’s doubly special. The last time that happened was 2014. It won’t happen again until 2025. Some people told us we were crazy planning a wedding for Friday the 13^th. But everything went off without a hitch. Well, almost.

At the time, my husband-to-be was in the Florida National Guard. Right before we were going to order his ring, riots broke out in the Liberty City part of Miami, and his unit was activated. By the time he was able to come back home, we were running out of time. We got the ring ordered, but it didn’t arrive until the Monday after our wedding. So we ended up borrowing one. In all of our wedding pictures, my husband is wearing my ex-boyfriend’s ring!

Sometime back, I booked a transatlantic cruise for our anniversary. The last ship we were on, the top deck was deck 13. It was where they had putt-putt golf, basketball courts, the rock climbing wall and several other activities. In checking out the floor plan of the ship we’ll be going on this time, it goes from deck 12 to deck 14. There is no deck 13.

superstition — Image by b0red from Pixabay

The fear of the number 13 is a real thing—it’s called triskaidekaphobia. A lot of skyscrapers have no 13^th floor, because even if the owner of the building doesn’t have the phobia, they choose to avoid problems with superstitious tenants. In China, in addition to floor 13, they’ll sometimes also skip floors 4 and 14, because of the similarity between the pronunciation of the words “four” and “death” in Chinese.

At least in America, the superstitious only have one number to avoid. Two if you count 666. But that would be a topic for a whole different post.

It’s Zaturday – A Black Cat’s Take on Friday the 13th!

Happy Friday the 13th!