Cats Licking Milk Off of Babies Face Causing Suffocation
Claim: Cats suck the breath from babies, sometimes killing them.
Example: [Collected on the Internet, 1996]
The story, passed on by a meaning woman is about cats that get jealous of newborn infants. As information technology was described to me, the cats, no longer afforded the attention they once got prior to the infant's nativity, will actually attempt to suffocate the infant. Specifically, she described a cat, "sucking the wind out of the infant," past placing its nose in the infants mouth while the infant is asleep. This immediately seemed unreasonably far-fetched, nevertheless she maintains it'due south true since she has it "on the authorization" of a number of other women.
Origins: The idea that a cat could suck the breath of an infant is simply a misguided notion — cats merely don't do that. It is
said the smell of milk on the child's breath draws the feline in for the kill, but anyone who has been around housecats knows the average moggie doesn't much intendance for the liquid. (Given gratis pick between plain h2o and a basin of milk, cats more often than not caput for the water unless milk has been the only liquid offered to them from weaning onwards. Put more only, unless the cat has been taught to like milk, it generally won't seek out that substance on its own.)
Another theory avant-garde as to why a cat would want to harm a baby relates to the jealousy the pet will supposedly feel when the fiddling package from heaven is brought into the household. No longer the center of attention, the neglected pet is allegedly capable of setting about to become rid of what it sees as the usurper. This theory is of far more recent coinage than the bit of lore it purports to explain, though, coming into fashion no earlier than the
In 1791 a jury at a coroner'south inquest in England rendered a verdict to the effect that a Plymouth kid had met his death by a cat sucking out its breath. The superstition itself is older, with print sightings of information technology recorded from 1607 and 1708, and so that 1791 verdict should be viewed with the realization that the jury was probably influenced by a snippet of "everybody knows" lore when information technology came time to explain a decease for which there was no credible crusade.
It is possible a cat might lie across the face of a sleeping child and thus upon extremely rare instances accidentally cause a death, but that is not the old wives' tale at mitt wherein the cat does and so with malice aforethought. A news story emerging in December 2000 appeared at first blush to be an example of this sort of accident when a woman said she found her six-week-erstwhile son expressionless in his crib with the family unit cat laying on the baby's face. Further examination by pathologists laid this theory to rest — they attributed the
What is on tape, nevertheless, are any number of adventitious deaths of sleeping children acquired by their parents' rolling over onto them, or from their turning around to face into a pillow. Children accept besides suffocated
from being left sleeping on their tummies on waterbeds. And and then there is "sudden infant death syndrome" (SIDS), the inexplicable passing of an otherwise healthy child in its sleep.
Tragedy is difficult enough to comport without its also being inexplicable. Better to arraign the cat than to admit the cause of a child'southward decease is unknown
Folk beliefs piece of work to give folks a sense of control over their destinies and thus some small measure out of security in a capricious globe. If a parent tin can believe that preventing crib death is just a matter of keeping the cat out of the babe's room, that parent will sleep a lot easier than one who realizes such a tragedy could occur any night, cat or no true cat.
Cats accept long been viewed as evil, and for centuries a number of superstitions featuring their bringing bad luck have abounded. Like to the "sucking life from a child past swallowing its breath" superstition was one well-nigh not raising a kitten and a baby together, lest the true cat thrive and the child waste matter away. In that superstition, the cat was supposed to be stealing the child'due south vitality by magic.
As to how widely believed the "jiff sucking" tale is, a 1929 article in the Nebraska State Journal quoted a doctor as having said he had seen "the family pet in the very deed of sucking a child's jiff, lying on the baby's breast, a mitt on either side of the babe'southward mouth, the true cat'south lips pressing those of the child and the infant's face pale as that of a corpse, its lips with the blueness of death." The doctor's emphatic statements to the opposite, the fable is notwithstanding a fatuous piece of lore. Information technology turns up so often, however, that it'due south no wonder the legend is and then widely believed.
Barbara "casket for cat-at-fault" Mikkelson
Last updated: 29 June 2007
Sources:
mckinneysymee1942.blogspot.com
Source: https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/murderous-moggies/
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