Historical Facts #1: Cats

During Pope Gregory IX’s term, he declared that cats were associated with devil worship, resulting in their mass extermination.

Ironically, it is believed that this large-scale expunging of felines helped to spread the Bubonic Plague, which ravaged Europe in the 1300s and killed over a hundred million people. No cats meant the rat population (which carried the plague) ran wild.

Source - https://twentytwowords.com/insanely-creepy-historical-facts-they-never-taught-you-in-school/