Cats in Islamic Culture (Part I)

“The grammarian Ibn Babshad was sitting with his friends on the roof of a mosque in Cairo, eating some food. When a cat passed by they gave her some morsels; she took them and ran away, only to come back time and time again. The scholars followed her and saw her running to an adjacent house on whose roof a blind cat was sitting. The cat carefully placed the morsels in front of her. Bashbad was so moved by God’s caring for the blind creature that he gave up all his belongings and lived in poverty, completely trusting in God until he died in 1067 (oral tradition recorded in the late 14th century by the Egyptian theologian and zoologist Damiri (d. 1405)” (Lorraine Chittock, Cats of Cairo, p. 40).