their derivation to the cat; such as "cat-handed," a Devonshire term for awkward; "a cat's walk," which in Cornwall signifies a little walk near home; "cat-lap," very weak tea or broth, fit only for Pussy's food; "cat-nap," the lightest of dozes; "cat-call,"
"Sound, sound, ye viols; be the cat-call dumb."
"caterwauling,"
"What a caterwauling do you keep here! "
and the familiar "cat's-paw," "cat's-eye," and "cat o' nine tails." Allusions to the animal's nine lives—Heaven knows she needed them!—are frequent in early English plays. "'T is a pity you had not ten lives,—a cat's and your own," says Jonson in "Every Man in His Humour;" and Middleton in "Blurt, Master Constable," makes the off-hand assertion that cats "have nine lives apiece, like a woman."
Some of the most common expressions seem meaningless enough, yet have been handed down from parent to child for endless generations, until they have become a tradition in every nursery. How often has the word "she" been checked upon our infant lips by the certainty of hearing for the fiftieth time that "she" is the "cat's mother?" Little English children, however, especially if they be bred in Norfolk, are told that "she" is the
