It's probably apocryphal but I've heard people say that cats were thought of as demonic and killed in large numbers before the plague killed half of the western world.
It isn’t apocryphal, it is true.
Of course, having owned and watched cats, I can see where superstition can combine with ignorance and you end up with a woman on one side of a scale, a duck on the other side, and a carrot on her nose.
Or a cat on a pike.