Ailurophobia is the fear of cats. "Gato negro" by Chosovi. Distributed under license CC BY-SA 2.5 via Wikimedia Commons.

As Halloween approaches, people are busy decorating their houses with scary looking spiders, skeletons, and witches. Images of black cats are also a common decoration for Halloween; I see black cats with haunting eyes everywhere! In the United States, black cats are considered bad luck. But in other countries, like Japan, black cats are thought to bring good luck. For the last several months, a black cat has been roaming around in our yard. We see him almost every day. I like to think that this means that we will have good fortune!

Ailurophobia is the abnormal fear of cats. Ailurophobia comes from the Greek roots ailur- meaning cat and –phobia meaning abnormal fear of. I know many more ailurophiles than ailurophobes – which one are you?