Cat

(Epistle of Jeremiah 21) - the word occurs only once in the Bible, in the cited verse, and denotes the familiar domestic animal kept in houses and shops for catching rats and mice. Cats were once sacred animals in Egypt and were embalmed when they died. Jeremiah's words vividly expose the worthlessness of idols: 'Upon their bodies and heads sit bats, swallows, and birds, and the cats also.'