A lot of people, especially religious people eg) the pope ,were suspicious of widowed women who own cats. they thought that they had the devil in them so they wiped out the cat population as well as their owners.
Black Dispatches was a common term used among Union military men in the American Civil War for intelligence on Confederate forces provided by African-Americans. This source of information represented a prolific and productive category of intelligence obtained and acted on by Union forces throughout the Civil War.
They where very big in land amount. hope this helps