Black cats unfairly shunned, stigmatized, say regional animal rescue groups

Lucian picked his owners outside a grocery store.
Provided
Lucian picked his owners outside a grocery store.
Lucian is one lucky black cat. The emerald-eyed feline has been living in the lap of luxury since being rescued from the streets of Albany nine years ago by the Pecha family of Falls Village.
Today Lucian lives in Litchfield with his owner, David Pecha, where he spends his days cat-napping, bird-watching, attention-seeking and occasionally cajoling with a neighborhood fox.
Unlike Lucian, not all black cats end up in forever homes. According to regional animal rescue groups, black pets in general, and black cats in particular, are often shunned by prospective adopters.
Enter National Black Cat Day 2024, which falls on Oct. 27 this year. The annual awareness day is designed to support and promote the beauty and well-being of black cats and to dispel myths and superstitions that have haunted them for centuries, particularly around Halloween.
The day plays a vital role in advocating for welfare and adoption of black cats.
Shunned through no fault of their own
“I’ve had someone come up to me and say they would take anything but black,” said Beverly Ditto of Collaborative Cats, a feline foster home-based rescue organization serving Southern Columbia and Northern Dutchess counties of New York. “There are black cat lovers, but that is rare.”
Ditto, who has owned several black cats, said she has found them to be among the “sweetest and most lovable” of felines, second to orange cats, and not deserving of being feared.
She attributes their lack of popularity to long-held superstitions about them being harbingers of bad luck or that they are evil doers associated with Satanic rituals. Black cats also blend in with shadows, giving them a spooky appearance.
Because superstitions about black cats are reinforced around Halloween, it is common for shelters to put adoptions on hold. According to the Smithsonian, some adoption agencies and shelters won’t even consider placing black cats in homes until after Halloween for fear they will be tortured or sacrificed.
“All the shelters generally are very nervous about adopting out before Halloween,” said Ditto. “There are people out there to be known to harm black cats. I haven’t encountered that, but it has been a big worry amongst the rescues.”
Currently, Collaborative Cats, which takes in stray, abandoned, injured and homeless felines, has several black kittens available for adoption, including Roary, Jacques and Lucifer, all described as sweet and playful.
The organization, which is not a shelter, said Ditto, is constantly seeking new foster homes for its approximately 100 felines.
Raven and Bagheera
At The Little Guild in West Cornwall, two black cats, Raven and Bagheera, arrived at the shelter in August and are awaiting adoption. Both are about a year old and have the sweetest dispositions, said the shelter’s executive director Jenny Langendoerfer.
“It is interesting that people do like to see unique colorings and markings,” she noted. “But the one thing about black cats is that they make the most wonderful pets.”
Langendoerfer described Bagheera, a sturdy, green-eyed young male, as a “mini panther, very silly and very sweet,” and 1-year-old Raven as very playful.
Lauren Mucha, one of the caregivers at The Last Post cat sanctuary and cat retirement home in Falls Village where 124 cats reside, said about 20 of its feline residents are black.
She said she is perplexed as to why people would shy away from dark-coated cats, as they don’t deserve the negative image.
One cat in particular, Jinx, has been a resident at The Last Post for the last eight years and does not have a mean bone in its body, said Mucha, who described him as a Velcro cat, a “real cuddler.”
This cat picked his family
Not everyone is on board with the negative black cat spin. For some, a visit from a black cat means good luck or prosperity. In some cultures, black cats, considered sleek and seductive with their all-knowing yellow and green eyes, are even worshipped.
Take Lucian’s owner, David Pecha, for instance.
The mini household panther was rescued by Pecha’s son, Alex, about nine years ago while attending college in Albany. Alex and a friend had emerged from a grocery store “and the cat came flying out from under a car, meowing at them and trailing them.”
It was the end of the school year, and because the cat appeared to be pretty well cared for, said Pecha, they thought it might have escaped during the confusion of the move.
After failing to find a no-kill shelter nearby, they took Lucian back home with them to Falls Village and posted “cat found” posters around campus, but no one came forth to claim the black cat, said Pecha.
Before long, Lucian befriended a doppelganger named Bagheera, owned by the Atwood family just up the street, Pecha recalled.
“He was the spitting image of Lucian, and they hung out together. You would see the two of them running around the streets in the middle of town.”
When Pecha relocated to Litchfield a few years ago, so did Lucian, who has since settled into his new quarters, according to his owner. He considers his cat to be more like a loyal dog, with a unique personality.
Unlike other cats, Lucian doesn’t use a water bowl. Instead, he laps up his drink from a tall glass, filled with cool water straight from the fridge.
And as for snow, the pampered feline will have nothing of it. “He doesn’t do winter,” said Pecha. “He’ll put one paw in the snow, and it’s ‘Oh, hell no.”
Below are several black cats up for adoption at The Little Guild in West Cornwall, and Collaborative Cats in Ancramdale, NY. Additional details are available by contacting the rescue groups either by phone or via their website. Photos provided.
SHARON — Sharon Dennis Rosen, 83, died on Aug. 8, 2025, in New York City.
Born and raised in Sharon, Connecticut, she grew up on her parents’ farm and attended Sharon Center School and Housatonic Valley Regional High School. She went on to study at Skidmore College before moving to New York City, where she married Dr. Harvey Rosen and together they raised two children.
Sharon’s lifelong love of learning and the arts shaped both her work and her passions. For decades, she served as a tour guide at the American Museum of Natural History and the Asia Society, sharing her knowledge and enthusiasm with countless visitors. She also delighted in traveling widely, immersing herself in other cultures, and especially treasured time spent visiting her daughter and grandsons in Europe and Africa.
She was also deeply connected to her hometown, where in retirement she spent half her time and had many friends. She served as President of the Sharon East Side Cemetery until the time of her death, where generations of her family are buried and where she will also be laid to rest.
She is survived by her husband, Harvey; her children, Jennifer and Marc; and four beloved grandchildren.
Claire and Garland Jeffreys in the film “The King of In Between.”
There is a scene in “The King of In Between,” a documentary about musician Garland Jeffreys, that shows his name as the answer to a question on the TV show “Jeopardy!”
“This moment was the film in a nutshell,” said Claire Jeffreys, the film’s producer and director, and Garland’s wife of 40 years. “Nobody knows the answer,” she continued. “So, you’re cool enough to be a Jeopardy question, but you’re still obscure enough that not one of the contestants even had a glimmer of the answer.”
Garland Jeffreys never quite became a household name, but he carved out a singular place in American music by refusing to fit neatly into any category. A biracial New Yorker blending rock, reggae, soul and R&B, he used genre fusion as a kind of rebellion — against industry pigeonholes, racial boundaries and the musical status quo. Albums like “Ghost Writer” (1977) captured the tension of a post–civil rights America, while songs like “Wild in the Streets” made him an underground prophet of urban unrest. He moved alongside artists like Lou Reed and Bruce Springsteen but always in his own lane — part poet, part agitator, part bridge between cultures.
“I think what I tried to do with the film, wittingly or unwittingly, was just to show that we all have these lives and they don’t often meet our dreams of what we think we’re entitled to, we’re talented enough to get or whatever,” said Claire. “We all have these goals, but we’re sort of stymied. Often, it’s partly circumstance and luck, but it’s also very often something that we’re doing or not doing that’s impeding us.”
This is not the typical rock-and-roll redemption story. There are no smashed guitars, no heroic overdoses, no dramatic comeback tour. What we get instead is something quieter and more intimate: hours of archival footage that Claire spent years sorting through. The sheer effort behind the film is palpable — so much so that, as she admitted with a laugh, it cured her of any future ambitions in filmmaking.
“What I learned with this project was A, I’m never doing it again. It was just so hard. And B, you know, you can do anything if you collaborate with people that know what they’re doing.”
Claire worked with the editing team of Evan M. Johnson and Ben Sozanski and a slew of talented producers, and ended up with a truthful portrayal — a beautiful living document for Garland’s legions of fans and, perhaps most importantly, for the couple’s daughter, Savannah.
“She’s been in the audience with me maybe three or four times,” said Claire. “The last time, I could tell that she was beginning to feel very proud of the effort that went into it and also of being a part of it.”
Savannah pursued a career in music for a while herself but has changed tracks and become a video producer.
“I think she couldn’t quite see music happening for herself,” said Claire. “She was like, ‘I don’t know if I want to struggle the way I saw my dad struggling and I’m going to get a job with a salary.’”
The film doesn’t just track the arc of an underappreciated musician, however. The music, always playing, is the soundtrack of a life — of a man navigating racial, musical and personal boundaries while balancing marriage, parenthood, aging, addiction andrecovery. Garland and Claire speak plainly about getting sober in the film, a life choice that gave them both clarity and shows Claire as a co-conspirator in his survival.
“I did some work early on with a director,” said Claire. “He wanted the final cut, and I didn’t feel like I could do that — not because I wanted so much to control the story, but I didn’t want the story to be about Alzheimer’s.”
Diagnosed in 2017, Garland, now 81, is in the late stages of the disease. Claire serves as his primary caregiver. The film quietly acknowledges his diagnosis, but it doesn’t dwell — a restraint that feels intentional. Garland spent a career refusing to be reduced: not to one sound, one race or one scene. And so the documentary grants him that same dignity in aging. His memory may be slipping, but the film resists easy sentimentality. Instead, it shows what remains — his humor, his voice, his marriage, the echo of a life lived on the edges of fame and at the center of his own convictions.
The Moviehouse in Millerton will be screening “The King of In Between” on Sept. 20 at 7 p.m. Peter Aaron, arts editor of Chronogram Magazine will conduct a talkback and Q&A with Claire Jeffreys after the film. Purchase tickets at themoviehouse.net.
The Haystack Book Festival, a program of the Norfolk Hub, brings renowned writers and thinkers to Norfolk for conversation. Celebrating its fifth season this fall, the festival will gather 18 writers for discussions at the Norfolk Library on Sept. 20 and Oct. 3 through 5.
Jerome A. Cohen, author of the memoir “Eastward, Westward: A Lifein Law.”Haystack Book Festival
For example, “Never Take the Rule of Law for Granted: China and the Dissident,” will be held Saturday, Sept. 20, at 4 p.m. at the Norfolk Library. It brings together Jerome A. Cohen, author of “Eastward, Westward: A Life in Law,” and Mark Clifford, author of “The Troublemaker: How Jimmy Lai Became a Billionaire, Hong King’s Greatest Dissident, and China’s Most Feared Critic” in dialogue with journalist Richard Hornik to discuss the rule of law and China.
The Council on Foreign Relations stated, “Few Americans have done more than Jerome A. Cohen to advance the rule of law in East Asia. He established the study of Chinese law in the United States. An advocate for human rights, Cohen has been a scholar, teacher, lawyer, and activist for sixty years.”
Cohen, a professor at New York University School of Law and director of its U.S.-Asia Law Institute, revealed his long view on China: “We are now witnessing another extreme in the pendulum’s swing toward repression. Xi Jinping is likely to outlive me but ‘no life lives forever.’ There will eventually be another profound reaction to the current totalitarian era.”
Mark Clifford, author of “The Troublemaker: How Jimmy Lai Became a Billionaire, Hong Kong’s Greatest Dissident, and China’s Most Feared Critic.”Haystack Book Festival
In “The Troublemaker,” Clifford chronicles Lai’s life from child refugee to pro-democracy billionaire to his current imprisonment by the Chinese Communist Party. Clifford is president of the Committee for Freedom in Hong Kong Foundation, a Walter Bagehot Fellow at Columbia University, and holds a PhD in history from the University of Hong Kong. He was the former editor-in-chief of the South China Morning Post and The Standard (Hong Kong and Seoul).
Journalist Richard Hornik, adjunct senior fellow at the East-West Center in Honolulu.Haystack Book Festival
Richard Hornik, adjunct senior fellow at the East-West Center, will moderate the discussion. Hornik is the former executive editor of AsiaWeek, news service director of Time magazine, and former Time bureau chief in Warsaw, Boston, Beijing and Hong Kong.
Betsy Lerner, author of “Shred Sisters,” is giving the 2025 Brendan Gill lecture at the Haystack Book Festival.Haystack Book Festival
The Brendan Gill Lecture is a highlight of the festival honoring longtime Norfolk resident Brendan Gill, who died in1997. Gill wrote for The New Yorker magazine for fifty years. Betsy Lerner, New York Times-recognized author of “Shred Sisters,” will deliver this year’s lecture on Friday, Oct. 3, at 6 p.m. at the Norfolk Library.
Visit haystackbookfestival.org to register. Admission is free.