THE NEW YORK TIMES

The Wrong Day to Be a Cat in Belgium

What in the World
By PATRICK J. LYONS MAY 10, 2016

Credit Illustration by Cari Vander Yacht; Photo by Inna Astakhova / shutterstock.com

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The Internet may never tire of cats, but the people of Ypres, Belgium,
sure did — to the point that they created a whole city celebration out of
tossing cats to their death from a bell tower.

The practice apparently dates from the Middle Ages, when Ypres, a
market town in Flanders, first prospered as a center of clothmaking. The
city’s warehouses would fill with bales of imported wool waiting to be
woven, and bolts of finished cloth waiting to be sold at an annual fair.

The warehouses drew mice and rats, which would nest and breed
prolifically in an environment like that. To keep the vermin from
chewing up the goods, the story goes, merchants would bring in a few
hungry cats to hunt them. But the hunters would multiply, too, and by
the time of the fair each spring, the place would be overrun with feral
cats creating a nuisance of their own.
 In those crueler times, hurling cats from a great height on what came to
be known as “Cats Wednesday” was apparently seen in Ypres as both a
practical solution and a source of gruesome entertainment — the more
so because popular superstitions linked cats to witchcraft and the devil.

According to a history posted online by the city, in the Middle Ages

many European towns dealt with feral-cat problems in similarly
inhumane ways, but it was Ypres that retained the bloody reputation.

The Cats Parade last May in Ypres, Belgium. In the Middle Ages, live cats were thrown out of a
belfry at the end of the procession, but nowadays stuffed toys are used.

They don’t throw live cats in Ypres any more, of course; that stopped in
1817 after one lucky tabby reportedly landed unscathed (and ran away as
fast as it could). But they still ring the bells on the cats’ day each year,
and in the 1930s the city brought back the old throwing tradition in a
harmless way using stuffed toys and confetti.

Today, the Kattenstoet — the Cat Parade — is a big cultural festival held
in Ypres every three years, with cat-themed lectures, music, dance and
theater, as well as a grand procession to the bell tower to watch the plush
toys plummet. The next one is scheduled for May 13, 2018.