March 28 is Respect Your Cat Day

Today is Respect Your Cat Day. We would argue that every day is Respect Your Cat Day. Why is today singled out for this observance?

Respect Your Cat Day

R-E-S-P-E-C-T

Legend has it that on March 28, 1384, King Richard II outlawed the consumption of cats. We use the word “legend” because there doesn’t appear to be a lick of truth to it. We wanted to believe it because it’s a great story. Apparently, many sites agree: the Richard II edict dominates the first several pages of Google search results.

Some say that in times of famine, nothing would have been off the table, so to speak. A couple of people stated that cookbooks of the era didn’t feature cat-centric recipes. Another noted that her grandmother had called cats Scotch hares so it was possible they might have been part of recipes that didn’t explicitly use the word “cat.”

In our research, we were unable to find any confirmation of the tale, only repetition. We hate to be party poopers, but this smells like b.s. to us. If you have any information about it, we would be grateful to hear it.  In the meantime, we have submitted the statement to Snopes.com, a trusted arbiter of online fact versus fiction.

No matter what the truth is, have a happy Respect Your Cat Day today and every day!

Copyright © 2017 Worldwide Weird Holidays

 

5 replies
  1. Austin Meredith
    Austin Meredith says:

    I am unable to discover any trace of such a legend. This would seem to be Fake News, masquerading as legend. Can someone provide me with the year in which this particular meme first surfaced? As near as I can tell right now, that year was this year.

    Reply
    • Kathleen Zea
      Kathleen Zea says:

      Hi, we’re not sure who created Respect Your Cat Day. A routine Google search shows that it has been around since 2014. While we aren’t sure who created the holiday, it was almost certainly a pet food/toy manufacturer or a greeting card company. This could hardly be called “fake news,” since we don’t report it as news at all. Context is everything. (A president spouting lies has a lot more impact, for instance, than a site with “weird holidays” in the name reporting weird holidays.) And since legend is often apocryphal, it isn’t “masquerading” either. As to the Richard II legend, we can’t be sure that happened so we aren’t reporting it as fact. So, all in all, it’s a silly unofficial holiday. It is intended to bring amusement and a smile to people’s faces, not a Congressional inquiry. We’re sorry if you got the impression from the post that it is something more.

      Reply

Leave a Reply

Want to join the discussion?
Feel free to contribute!

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *