"True calendars as Pusse's eare,
Wash't o're to tell what change is neare,"
sang Herrick in his Devonshire vicarage; and John Swan, writing his "Speculum Mundi" in 1643, tells us very seriously that the cat "useth therefore to wash her face with her tongue; and it is observed by some that if she put her feet beyond the crown of her head in this kind of washing, it is a signe of raine."
In fact there was scarcely a movement of the cat which had not its meaning for the villager, who did his domestic Sphinx the honour of close scrutiny, and who attached so much significance to her simplest actions that the poor creature, like other oracles, was too often held responsible for the evils she presaged. Thus the yokel, being told that Pussy's ablutions foretold rain, passed, by an easy mental process, to the conviction that they brought rain; and so—eager for the harvesting—killed his cat, as the simplest method of escaping showers. The sailor's wife, in her uncertainty as to whether the fast rising wind was the cause or the effect of Tabby's nervous clawing at bed curtain and table leg, deemed it but common prudence to drown the animal which might otherwise drown her good man at sea. It is not wise nor well to herald calamity. The part of Cassandra is ever an ungrateful one to play.
