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Hello, I am Joshua P. Warren, and this is Joshua P. Warren Daily. Well, I did not do a new podcast yesterday because I was scheduled to be on the X Zone radio show. Turns out, however, that um I was contacted by the producer uh very close to showtime, and um she was apologetic, saying that they needed to postpone the interview um because of a personal issue with the host. And um, you know, I'm very um careful about maintaining people's privacy, so um I won't go go into it, but uh, you know, enough nothing too serious, but um so we rescheduled that, and we're supposed to do that tonight instead. So hopefully it'll work out tonight. But that said, I figured, you know, I'm gonna go ahead and record one of my own podcasts here just in case, no need to keep you waiting. And something occurred to me that I thought was interesting enough to bring up. Um, you know, I don't talk about political stuff too much on this podcast, uh, because it just, you know, everybody else does that and it's kind of boring. But I uh the other day I was on the internet and I was uh you know reading up on oh, this politician said this, and that politician said that, and I came across this video slideshow kind of thing that was saying how to tell when a politician is lying. And uh, of course, my immediate thought was, oh, I know how to do that. You can tell they're lying because their lips are moving, right? Ha ha, that's that's the old joke, waka waka. Uh you can tell a politician is lying because the lips are moving. Uh but no, this was a serious piece. And uh so it was about body language. And as I was reading through this, it said that often uh when someone tells a lie, that their pupils get bigger. Which yeah, I guess you've got to be pretty close on the face to notice that, but the the explanation is supposedly that um when your brain is working really hard, your poop your pupils get bigger, and that um so your brain's working harder when you're lying. But the reason I'm bringing this up is they were they pointed out that um humans cannot control their pupils. That's a vi it's a completely involuntary thing, which is why they were making the case that it's a good thing to look at. So anyway, just so happens, not too long after that, I um I picked up a book that I have had for a long time, probably since I was a kid. It's pretty worn out. And uh I actually brought this thing down here with me from North Carolina when I came to Puerto Rico years ago, because uh I like books of little factoys and stuff like that, and then that's it's one of these books. It's called Why? And it says, Why do you sink in quicksand? Why does a glow worm glow? Why can't you blow square bubbles? Why does a cat land on its feet when it falls? So it's just one of these books of just kind of like trivial stuff that maybe has crossed your mind or maybe never has. And so I'm you know just flipping through this thing and reading little articles here and there. And there is a section on um pupils and irises. And they point out that sure enough, you you can't control your pupil. It says it says your iris, your iris cannot be controlled at will. It's its movement is involuntary. When you go quickly from light to dark or dark to light, your iris cannot open or close quickly enough to help you adjust. So it is several seconds or maybe even a minute before you're comfortable. So anyway, I'm reading this and I'm like, huh, that's kind of interesting that I just so happened to have stumbled into this factoid in two different places within you know a couple days or whatever. But then this little article, this uh chapter in this book, it ends with this fact that they've just sort of tossed in there a little bonus nugget there. It says another interesting fact about irises is that although we cannot voluntarily control the opening and closing of our irises, cats can. Perhaps you may see how a cat opens its irises if you move a small object near it when its extra eyelids are nearly closed. So somehow they know that that's not automatic. And you know what's uh odd is I did a podcast not too long ago where I was talking about kind of strange things associated with cats, because I mentioned that I was watching a documentary and they said that a cat's purring can actually heal fractures in bones. And I was like, that is amazing. So here's another amazing thing about cats. So I, throughout my life, have had cats and dogs. Uh frankly, they both have their pros and cons. And so I start thinking more about cats, though, and how weird cats are, and then you always hear about, you know, cat people and all that. And then this reminded me that, of course, in 2006 I wrote a book about animal ghosts. It was called Pet Ghosts, Animal Encounters from Beyond the Grave. That was not my first choice. I think I would have called it something like Is Your Pet Really Dead, or Phantomals, or something like that. Um, but anyway, the publisher decided to call it Pet Ghost Animal Encounters from Beyond the Grave. So that was published in 2006, and I think that is a really good book. And I I say that as modestly as possible, because I gotta tell you, as a professional writer, sometimes you go back and you read things that you wrote years ago and you're like, eh, I'm not very happy with this. But uh this book is is uh really something because it covers this gigantic spectrum of life. It's not just pets, it is also insects and like like literally like insect ghosts and dinosaur ghosts and maybe interdimensional things, cryptids are tossed in there. So, anyway, that said, um another thing about being a writer is that sometimes when you sell your book, the publisher goes in and they can not only, of course, edit it and change the title, but then years later, uh they can just sell it to somebody else, to another publisher, and then that publisher can go in and change the title, and that's what happened. So when this book was originally published in 2006, it was in paperback. But ten years later, in 2016, one day out of the blue, you know, I get I think it was just a package in the mail, and I opened it up, and there's a hardback book in here written by me. And this book is called And the Cat Came Back True Tales of Animal Spirit Hauntings. So how weird is that to one day get a package and here's a book, a hardback book, and you're like, uh, who's the asshole who wrote this one? Oh, it's me! But it's a good looking book, and it's always really an honor to have one of your books and hardback. I've got uh over the years I've had a few of my books in hardback, and uh that's really that's a cool experience because it's not cheap to produce a nice hardback book, and this is this is a nice one published by Rosen Publishing in New York. So anyway, um I figure, well, here's this cat thing coming up because I uh I looked over and I saw this book and the cat came back. Uh that again, that was what they did so who knows, some editor decided to call it that, and the cat came back. Uh I saw this book over here uh in a pile near the end of my couch. And because that I'm in the middle of writing a book right now, uh it's it's nice sometimes to take a break and to look back at something else that you've written. Um because sometimes you might be inspired regarding a technique or something like that that you've forgotten about. I mean, I don't know. Just bullshitting my way through this. Uh so anyway, I I open up the book and I start reading about cats. And, you know, I knew a lot of interesting things about cats. Um I wrote in this book about how they have superior hearing compared to humans. They have superior eyesight, they have more rods than we do, so they can see more low light. There has even been, I think, a report or two about the fact that cats can some cats can see into the invisible infrared realm. Pretty amazing creatures. But here's what I want to share with you. Um I want to read to you a couple pages that I wrote about cats from my my book. I don't know what this book is called anymore. From the book that was called Pet Ghost Animal Encounters from Beyond the Grave that is now called And the Cat Came Back. True Tales of Animal Spirit Hauntings. So I'm just going to read this and I think you might enjoy it. As in the ancient Egyptian civilizations, actually that should be civilization, cats played a prominent role in shades of this era. Uh says here the idea of cats being associated with spiritual evil was greatly enhanced by the publication of the Malleus Malithacarum, which means the hammer of witches in the year eight uh fourteen eighty seven. Now that's a long time ago, folks, fourteen eighty seven. Authors Heinrich Kramer and James Springer were Dominican Catholic friars who helped spearhead the witch hunting craze of the fifteenth through the seventeenth centuries. During its time, sales of the book were only exceeded by the Bible, which says, by the way, quote, thou shalt not suffer a witch to live, end quote. That's from Exodus twenty two, eighteen. And up to millions of people may have been tortured and killed due to its influence as a handbook during the Inquisition. So let me just pause to reiterate, folks, this book called the Malius Malificarum was the handbook that they were using to go out there and prosecute these so called witches, which we know just you probably would have been considered a witch at that time just because you're listening to this podcast right now. I damn sure would have. But in any way, it says cats were directly described as possible tools of the devil. So now I'm going to read to you an actual excerpt from this book called The Hammer of Witches that was written in fourteen eighty seven. Here we go. A workman was one day chopping some wood to burn in his house. A large cat suddenly appeared and began to attack him, and when he was driving it off, another even larger one came and attacked him with the first more fiercely. And when he again tried to drive them away, behold three of them together attacked him, jumping up at his face and biting and scratching his legs. In great fright, and as he said, more panic stricken than he had ever been, he crossed himself and leaving his work fell upon the cats, which were swarming over the wood and again leaping at his face and throat, and with difficulty he drove them away by beating one on the head, another on the legs, and another on the back. Okay, so that's the end of that excerpt. So now we get back to what I wrote. So soon after this incident the workman is suddenly arrested by town magistrates. He's thrown into a dungeon without explanation. Days later, a judge accuses him of beating three respected women of the town, each of them bewailing their blows. So the astonished man replies, I remembered that I struck some creatures at that time, but they were not women. And so now the book goes back to say, now once again I'm reading to you from the fourteen eighty seven Malius Malificarum. Says Now concerning this it may be asked whether the devils appeared thus in assumed shapes without the presence of the witches or whether the witches were actually present, converted by some glamour into the shapes of those beasts? And in answering this it should be said that although it was equally possible for the devils to act in either way, it is rather presumed that it was done in the second manner, for when the devils attacked the workmen in the shapes of cats, they could suddenly, by local motion through the air, transfer the women to their houses with the blows which they received as cats from the workmen, and no one doubts that this was because of a mutual pact formerly made between them. They used the phantasm of a cat, an animal which is in the scriptures an appropriate symbol of the perfidious, just as a dog is the symbol of preachers, for cats are always setting snares for each other, and the order of preaching friars was represented in its first founder by a dog barking against heresy. Okay, now that's the end of that excerpt. Let me clarify for you if you if you didn't get that. So a workman gets attacked by three cats. He beats them away. Later he's thrown in jail and says, What the hell will happen? And they say, We have three women here who say you beat them. And he says, Well, I have not hit any three women, but I did attack three cats. And at that point, the culture that he lived in said, Oh, well, aha, that must be what's happened here. These women are witches. These women turned into cats and attacked this poor man, and he beat the cats, and then they turned back into women. How dare these shitty women have done this to this man? Right? So, I mean, can you believe that is that was the logic of that time? You know, that people were were were executed over that kind of argument? Anyway, back to my book it says in calling cats perfidious, which means tending to betray perfidious vehicles for witches, this popular guide immortalized a connection between felines and the supernatural, for better or for worse. Conversely, dogs are seen as representing the holy viewpoint, thereby elevating the classic perception of dogs and cats as eternal foes. Clearly, the idea that witches can transform into felines made a huge impact on the European culture, evident to this day as traditional sorcerers are seldom seen without a purring sidekick and black cats, long thought to uh harbor bad luck are popular targets for Halloween tricks. It's no wonder that cats and dogs are not only our favorite pets, but also associated with ghostly activity. Okay, so you can see the point here. Cats are associated with the devil. They're associated with witches, they're associated with bad stuff. Now come on. We know that there's no real reason for that, don't we? But I guess they get the rap because they do go out at night because they can see better. And it is, you know, it is kind of creepy when you look up and you're not expecting to see the big ol' eyes of a Cheshire cat there grinning back, you know. They are the yeah, they're very quiet, they are very sneaky. Um and they can be very unpredictable. You know, I I'm telling you, growing up around cats my whole life, you'll be next to a cat one second and the cat's all friendly, and all of a sudden, boom you're getting clawed. Um so I can I can understand why if you had to pick one of the other dogs or cats that you would feel that way, but there is something mystical about cats, isn't there? You know, the the purring thing, being able to heal bones, and and the night vision, and who knows what other senses they may have. But uh I wonder what you think about that. Do you think that there is some kind of deeper mystical reason that cats are associated with witches and sorcerers and all that? I don't know. You tell me. But gotta save my voice a little bit since supposedly we're gonna record this um this pod without this show tonight. So I think that's gonna do it for this particular podcast. You can always email me if you go to joshuapewarren.com. There is no period after the pee. Click around there, you'll see all kinds of wild stuff. Go to the Curiosity Shop, click the link to my big event coming up in May in Las Vegas. And um on the homepage at the top, you'll see the red box that uh is a link to this particular podcast called Joshua P. Warren Daily. I try to knock one of these out for you at least once a day. It's always free, it's always short. You can subscribe via various means, or you can just follow me on Twitter at Joshua P. Warren, and I will usually tweet when a new one is posted. So as usual, thank you for listening, thank you for your support, thank you for staying curious, and I will talk to you again soon.