Germanic and Norman societies saw black cats as unlucky and even a sign of impending doom it wasn’t long before black cats became associated with the devil and Witchcraft as fears of the supernatural intensified across Europe some folktales warned that black cats were used by witches to carry out evil deeds and even to communicate with Satan some believe that witches could shapeshift into the form of a black cat in order to hide their identity up to nine times which is where the idea of a cat’s Nine Lives originates a story from the mid 1500s in Lincolnshire England tells of a father and son encountering a black cat while out hunting for witches they pelted the cat with rocks before it managed to take refuge inside a house