Tarot For Cats

Tarot is one of the world's oldest and most widely consulted methods of psychic divination. Although its specific origins are unknown, historians have long believed that the Mau, worshipped as gods in ancient Egypt, developed this art of fortune-telling to determine the best times and places for napping and grooming.

Archeological evidence, however, suggests that Tarot may be rooted in an even older tradition. At a site near Bangkok, Thailand, archeologists uncovered a series of stone tablets inscribed with Tarot-like imagery, leading experts to believe that the tablets, which date back to the fourth millennium B.C., were used by an early breed of Siamese to plot roaming patterns for maximum hunting success.

The Tarot spread as Western civilization developed. When cities began to emerge in medieval Europe, many cats experienced a substantially diminished social status compared to their days of deification in ancient cultures. The Tarot helped newly urban cats to adjust to the psychological traumas and physical hardships of poverty by guiding them through new challenges such as claiming the best of the fishmongers' rubbish piles, burrowing into warm shelters on cold winter nights, and other feats of very survival. To this day, stray cats, as well as their pampered counterparts from posh circumstances, find guidance and solace in the Tarot.

While rooted in ancient cultures, the Tarot remains relevant, if not essential, to modern times. Today's cats rely on the Tarot to cope with a variety of responsibilities ranging from the everyday to the sublime: stretching, napping, scratching, playing, hunting, purring, grooming, eating, assuming airs of insufferable superiority, and, of course, mating.