The black cross on a silver field is the arms formerly borne by the village's feudal overlord, the Electorate of Cologne, to which, of the formerly 98 municipalities in the district, only Katzwinkel and Hörschhausen belonged. The cross has what is described in the German blazon as "green, three-spiked crowns" ("…grünen dreizackigen Kronen"), although they more closely resemble a charge known as a cronel, set in each of its angles. The cronels are a clever kind of canting. In German heraldry, the term for the arrangement of four like charges around a cross in this fashion is "bewinkelt", thus suggesting part of the name Katzwinkel (the name ending actually means "corner", "angle" or, as in this case, "place framed by hills and mountains").