Many cat owners will tell you that their pets are divine beings. In ancient Egypt, this was taken quite literally. Cat goddess Bastet, protector of humans against illness and infertility, remains famous to this day. She was sometimes depicted as an elegant cat, sometimes as a woman with a cat’s head – but always in gold, as an expression of esteem and veneration. The most famous statue of Bastet was created around 600 BC and is only partly made of gold. It consists mainly of bronze and silver and stands just under 40 cm tall. Incidentally, golden cats also exist today – and they are very much alive.
Golden cats: in the wild and from breeding
For centuries, there have been attempts to breed cats with golden coats, such as Golden Chinchilla Persians or British Shorthairs. In the case of the latter, scientists succeeded in 2023 in genetically decoding the secret of the golden colouring, so that nothing stands in the way of the targeted breeding of golden-coloured cats. However, cats with golden coats have also existed in the wild for thousands of years. In Japan, they were long revered as lucky charms. The so-called tortoiseshell cats result from a random genetic mutation and are quite rare, as the males are usually infertile and the females do not pass the genetic abnormality on to their offspring.
How fools’ gold fits into the picture
In German, fools’ gold is called “Katzengold” – which literally translates to “cats’ gold”. The term colloquially refers to an iron-sulphur compound called pyrite, which occurs in nature and looks deceptively similar to real gold. For thousands of years, the uninformed have repeatedly been fooled by it. The German term “Katzengold” doesn’t exactly fit the image of these velvet-pawed creatures, revered by humans and often recreated in real gold. Etymologically, the explanation for this apparent discrepancy is simple. The term derives from the Old High German ‘Kazzungold’, which means ‘golden-yellow cherry resin’ and has absolutely nothing to do with cats.