West Seventh Freelance

Do the avatars we choose suggest something about us?  What if someone interprets an avatar as a negative symbol; in this case a cat’s eye? I just changed my avatar in solidarity with someone who was asked to change theirs…

(You will recognize the model from a post I did on Feline Rescue. With the exception of a bad rap during the middle ages, cats are generally revered.)

Some interesting info from: http://karlshuker.blogspot.com/2009/03/at-sign-of-cat-feline-symbolism.html :

Indeed, according to Egyptian mythology, the cat owes its eyes’ shimmering phosphorescence to the sun-god Ra, who entrusted to it the sun’s brilliant luster, to be guarded and diligently transported by it throughout the night – so that our planet would never be entirely without light, and as a promise that the sun would itself return every morning.

As an emblem of the moon, which is traditionally portrayed in many mythologies worldwide as feminine in comparison with the masculine sun, it was inevitable that the cat too would become a symbol of femininity and associated with a number of important female deities. Most familiar of these is Bast, Egypt’s golden-eyed cat-headed goddess of the moon (again) and fertility, via whom the cat has also become linked symbolically to childbirth.

Indeed, ‘Ru’, which is the Egyptian hieroglyph representing birth, was based upon the shape of a cat’s eye, and when placed upon the Tau cross, representing time, yielded the famous ankh – symbol of life and immortality. This later became synonymous with Venus, the Roman goddess of love, thereby reinforcing the cat’s link with femininity and fertility.

Similarly, Venus’s Norse counterpart, the goddess Freya, not only symbolizing love and passion but also ruling the dark, mysterious kingdom of the night, rode through the sky in a chariot drawn by a team of cats (originally lynxes). And in Hindu mythology, Shasti, goddess of childbirth, is borne aloft not upon a horse or elephant, but upon a cat instead.

Happy Saturday!  Christine