Black cats seem to be an evolutionary oddity.  Being as black as night doesn’t seem to be the best camouflage for a predator, especially in daylight.  The fact that there are black cats seems to contradict this idea, but natural selection plays no favorites: those will qualities that will promote the production of the next generation will be those qualities that are passed on, and although natural selection is not really that simple, it does raise the question, why black cats? What is it about black cats that makes them successful?  Does the success of the black cat lie outside of the cat itself?  In other words, have people influenced their success in a positive way because people like black cats? Are black cats aesthetically pleasing to have around?  Of course, some superstitious people have created the myth that black cats are bad luck, especially if they cross your path, that black cats are associated with witchcraft, that black cats are incarnated evil spirits, especially evil female spirits. I do not believe in good or bad luck. These are external values that we create in our minds to explain the things that happen in our lives, but good and bad things happen, and many accidental things–weather, geophysics, third parties–are completely out of our control, but good luck or bad luck are inventions of our minds that have nothing to do with the empirical world.  Bad luck is nothing but a specific non-objective interpretation of events. That we would associate a certain color animal with bad luck is irrational and frivolous. A black cat in Texas, for example, just needs to stay out of the sun, but the completely black cat is a study in feline design, a predator with sharp teeth and nasty claws ready to kill at a moment’s notice, just like any other cat, Tabby or Persian, white or party-color. In other words, black cats are not much different than Bengal Tiger, except they can purr, tigers roar. I imagine that black cats, like most other less flamingly decorated cats, only want to be fed, left alone, played with–you know, cat life, and that black cats probably don’t even realize that they are black cats or that they have special evil bad luck powers.  People project their own weird obsessions and repressions on small, strangely colored predators for no reason at all.  Do white cats have special powers as well?