Muezza

Muezza — Mu'izza in Arabic — is the name given in popular tradition to a cat said to have belonged to the Prophet Muhammad. It is important to be clear at the outset about what kind of story this is. No cat of this name appears in any verified hadith, the authenticated records of the Prophet's sayings and actions, and many Muslims accordingly regard the tale as unreliable rather than historical. It circulates as folklore and devotional storytelling, and it should be described that way.

The best-known version runs like this: the Prophet found the cat asleep on the sleeve of his robe as he prepared for prayer, and rather than disturb her he cut the sleeve away and left her sleeping. Other tellings add that the cat bowed to him on his return, or that he stroked her back three times. Tradition holds these as illustrations of gentleness toward animals rather than as reportage, and they are found in later popular and devotional literature rather than in the early canonical collections.

What is far better attested is the broader regard for cats in Islam, which does not depend on Muezza at all. Cats are treated in Islamic law as ritually clean, and are permitted in homes, public spaces and mosques. Food that a cat has sampled is not thereby rendered impure, and water a cat has drunk from may still be used for ablution — a legal position with no equivalent for most other animals. Authentic hadith also record stern warnings against cruelty, including the account of a woman punished for confining a cat until it died.

That status left real traces in history. One of the Prophet's companions is known by the nickname Abu Hurayra, "father of the kitten", said to derive from his fondness for a cat he carried with him — and he is among the most prolific transmitters of hadith in the tradition. Travellers and Orientalist writers later described endowed cat gardens in Cairo and hospitals in Syria where cats roamed and were fed at charitable expense. In cultures built on paper manuscripts, cats also earned their keep by killing the mice that destroyed books, and they appear often in paintings alongside scholars and librarians.

So Muezza occupies an unusual position: a cat who may never have existed, attached to a genuine and well-documented tradition of kindness to cats that needs no legend to support it. The story endures because it expresses something the sources do record — and it is best repeated with that distinction intact.