. . . Especially if you used a lot of butter in cooking your turkey.

It’s been a while since I featured a mythological creature in my Friday posts (the last one was gnomes!). Today I’m fixing that with the buttercat, or smörkatt or smørkatt in the original Finnish and Norwegian. This Nordic cat is one you may not want in the house . . .

Stories about the butter cat go one of two ways. Options include:

  • A person receives a buttercat by selling their soul to the devil. In turn the buttercat, which may simply look like a ball of yarn, steals milk and butter from the neighbors so that the original person never wants for food. If the neighbor managed to catch the cat, then the devious cat owner would die.
  • The buttercat might be a real cat but with the magical skills and know-how to chase away goblins. It would guard the pantry or “buttery,” often living in the rafters. Finnish housebuilders might leave a gift of ashes for the buttercat, in exchange for keeping the family’s food safe.

Personally, I like Option 2. However, the idea of a buttercat thief could come in handy if you find yourself accused of raiding the fridge late at night. In the words of the Myths & Legends podcast, just blame it on the buttercat! 😉

Selected Sources

There are so many this week!

First, definitely check out the original Myths and Legends podcast episode where I first heard about the buttercat (it’s in the Creature of the Week segment in the last five minutes of the show; but in general, I do recommend listening to whole episodes of the podcast if you like light-hearted fairy tale retellings!). And if you want buttercat-themed merch, the Myths & Legends folks have you covered here.

Check out the article abstract here for a quick recap of the devilish version of the story.

And read the article here for more on the buttercat-as-guardian version.

Also, on slightly-related notes, you can find a discussion of whether real cats can eat butter here (spoiler: across the internet, the answer seems to be “no”) and you can read about the entertaining “Buttered Cat Paradox” here. Just don’t try it at home!