The Black Cat Is One of the Good Guys

The real animals behind BC and Carnelian.

Every Halloween, people cast the black cat as the villain. It arches its back on paper decorations, crosses some unlucky soul’s path, and keeps company with witches. I have never believed a word of it. In my Ravens Cove books, the black cat is one of the good guys.

Readers know that cat as BC, short for Black Cat, the one who sees what the humans cannot. However, few readers know that BC is really two cats I loved, both long gone now.

The first was Pelee. Pelee was protective of me in a way I have never seen in another cat, and he made no secret of it. He hissed at my husband for the first ten years of our marriage. Not the first ten days or the first ten months, but the first ten years. I have chosen to take that as a compliment to me.

Pelee was also a thief. He once stole $20 from a friend’s purse. He had no use for the money. Pelee simply lived to play fetch with balls of paper, and as far as he was concerned, a twenty-dollar bill was paper.

The second was Merlin, a sweet, mischievous black cat who, true to his name, could make things disappear. Any small piece of paper within his reach was liable to be batted straight into the heating vent. Presto, gone. And where Pelee hissed at my husband, Merlin climbed him. He would jump onto my husband’s shoulders and then walk from one arm’s end to the other, like a tightrope walker who had found the perfect wire. Merlin was exactly the kind of cat Halloween warns you about and exactly the kind you would want in your house.

Put Pelee’s fierce loyalty together with Merlin’s sweetness, add a streak of mischief that, for both of them, seemed to begin and end with paper, and you get BC: a little trouble, a great deal of heart, and an unshakable conviction that the people in the house are under its protection.

Carnelian, the Sheltie, came about the same way, from three dogs who are also no longer with us.

Hannah wasn’t friendly with anyone outside the family. Strangers got a polite distance, at best. But with me she was devoted and so protective that I never once doubted whose side she was on. Angel was her opposite. Angel believed with her whole heart that everyone should love her, and she saw no reason to wait for them to agree.

And then there was Cade, born a week after Angel, on Christmas Day. Cade was sweet, stubborn, and quiet, and she was my girl. She was shy, but she warmed up to people quickly, and she was always happy, with the heart of a puppy no matter how old she got.

Carnelian is all three of them at once. Ken doesn’t care for her, and that has never slowed her down. She decided he was hers, adopted him anyway, and protects him and everyone else she has claimed. That is Hannah’s loyalty, Angel’s generous certainty that love wins if you just keep showing up, and Cade’s sweet stubbornness, all in one Sheltie.

Loyalty is a small, steady kind of light, and it often arrives on four feet.

This time of year, the stores fill with black cats and things that go bump in the night, and fear gets dressed up as fun. I enjoy a good shiver as much as anyone; I tell ghost stories every week. But when I think about what the darkness has never been able to stand against, I think of Pelee’s ten-year vigil, Hannah’s devotion, Angel’s certainty that anyone could be won over, and Cade’s happy heart. Loyalty and love that will not quit. To me, that kind of love is a small reflection of a much bigger one.

This Saturday is Halloween, and it is also Paden and Mikala’s third birthday. Two more Shelties, born on the spookiest night of the year, keeping watch over the house. Paden is the protector. Mikala is still campaigning for head of household. I like to think Pelee, Merlin, Hannah, Angel, and Cade would approve.

So if a black cat crosses your path this week, count it as good luck. In my house, it always was.

Mary Ann Poll is known as America’s Lady of Supernatural Thrillers. She is the author of the six-book Ravens Cove Iconoclast series and host of the weekly podcast Real Ghost Chatter. After more than forty years in Alaska, she now lives in Texas with her husband, two Shelties, and two tabby cats.