"Officially, there is no such cat, and those of us who have known one, and we are surprisingly numerous, constitute an exclusive underground cat club, nameless by necessity. We refer to them as those cats, as in, "Oh, you have one of those cats! I had one once." ...The magic blacks are all changelings in the cradles of commoners. They come from the shelters, they come in off the streets, ripping furiously at the back door and shouting for admission... They stare into your eyes with peculiar intensity, as if recognizing you in some more penetrating way than you have ever been recognized before... no wonder the Church chose the black cat as a supernatural emissary. Whether or not they're interested in buying your soul, they're certainly looking straight into it."
- Barbara Holland, Secrets of the Cat
