Someone purchased a copy of "The Christmas Cat " by MaryAnn MacDonald for my children. At the end of this fictional book depicting a cat which soothes a colicky baby Jesus and helps Jesus (and his family) escape to Egypt without being detected by Herod's guards by keeping him calm, the author claims in the author's note that this story has a basis in legend. The author writes, > Leonardo da Vinci loved to draw *La Madonna del Gatto*, or the Madonna of the Cat. He made many drawings of her in 1480 and 1481. In the drawings, the chubby child Jesus is depicted holding, stroking, and playing with a cat. > > Legend tells about a cat living in the stable in Bethlehem who purred Jesus to sleep the night he was born. Included with this author's note is the following drawing by Da Vinci What is the origin of this uncited legend? What is the earliest literary or pictographic representation of Jesus with a cat in Bethlehem?

In researching [this question](https://christianity.stackexchange.com/questions/54488/origin-of-la-madonna-del-gatto) I got sucked into trying to find a connection between St. Lucy's cats and the Nativity. It got my mind wondering if they even have cats in Sweden, but then I remembered that St. Lucy was from Italy and recollecting Madeline's visit to the Eternal City, I know there are lots of cats there. However what connection this has to do with St. Lucy is beyond me. I know she had her eyes plucked out as part of her martyrdom. I guess I don't see how those rolls resemble cats, they do look like eyes, not necessarily cat eyes. And I think both St. Lucy and cats had an uncanny ability to see in the dark, but she wasn't a cat herself. No saints, I've been told, are in fact cats. Is there some story about St. Lucy and cats that all the modern day hagiographers have neglected or is this just cat by association?