It has been the providence of Nature to give this cat nine lives instead of one.
— Bidpai or Pilpay (circa 326 BC), Fable 3: The Greedy and Ambitious Cat

The mouse had fallen in with evil cats.
— Dante Alighieri (1265-1321), Inferno 22.58 (Mandelbaum)

The cat would eate fish, and would not wet her feete.
— John Heywood (1497-1580), Proverbes (1546), I.10

A woman hath nine lives like a cat.
— John Heywood (1497-1580), Proverbes (1546), II.4

When I play with my cat, who knows whether
I do not make her more sport than she makes me?
— Michel de Montaigne (1533-1592), Essays,
     Book II, Ch. 12, Apology for Raimond Sebond

Those who'll play with cats must expect to be scratched.
— Miguel de Cervantes (1547-1616), Don Quixote (1615), I.3.8

There is a cunning which we in England call "the turning of the cat"
in the pan; which is, when that which a man says to another,
he says it as if another had said it to him.
— Francis Bacon (1561-1626), Essays: Of Cunning (1612)

A harmless necessary cat.
— William Shakespeare (1564-1616), Merchant of Venice (1598), IV.1.55

What though care killed a cat,
thou hast mettle enough in thee to kill care.
— William Shakespeare (1564-1616), Much Ado About Nothing (1598), V.1.135

Let Hercules himself do what he may.
The cat will mew and dog will have his day.
— William Shakespeare (1564-1616), Hamlet (1601), V.1.313

While rain depends, the pensive cat gives o'er
Her frolics, and pursues her tail no more.
— Jonathan Swift (1667-1745), Description of a City Shower (1729)

I know Sir John will go, though he was
sure it would rain cats and dogs.
— Jonathan Swift (1667-1745), Polite Conversation, Dialogue II (1729)

She watches him as a cat would watch a mouse.
— Jonathan Swift (1667-1745), Polite Conversation, Dialogue III (1729)

Hey diddle diddle
The cat and the fiddle,
The cow jumped over the moon;
— Mother Goose, "Hey Diddle Diddle" (1729)

Each sack had seven cats,
Each cat had seven kits.
Kits, cats, sacks, and wives, How many were there going to St. Ives?
— Mother Goose, "As I Was Going to St. Ives" (1729)

Mephistopheles to Faust:
And I've a little of the tom-cat?s art,
That creeps around the fire escape,
Then slinks along the wall, a silent shape,
I'm quite virtuous in my way,
A little prone to thieve, and stray.
The splendour of Walpurgis Night,
— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832), Faust (1808), Part I, XIX.3655-3660

There wasn't room to swing a cat there.
— Charles Dickens (1812-1870), David Copperfield, Ch. 35 (1850)

But do cats eat bats, I wonder? And here Alice began to get rather sleepy,
and went on saying to herself, in a dreamy sort of way, Do cats eat bats?
Do cats eat bats?' and sometimes, 'Do bats eat cats?'
— Lewis Carroll (1832-1898), Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1865), Ch. 1

she was a little startled by seeing the Cheshire Cat
sitting on a bough of a tree a few yards off.
The Cat only grinned when it saw Alice.
— Lewis Carroll (1832-1898), Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1865), Ch. 6

"All right", said the Cat; and this time it vanished quite slowly,
beginning with the end of the tail, and ending with the grin,
which remained some time after the rest of it had gone.
— Lewis Carroll (1832-1898), Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1865), Ch. 6

The gingham dog went "Bow-wow-wow!"
And the calico cat replied "Me-ow!"
— Eugene Field (1850-1895), The Duel, Stanza 2

When there was room on the ledge outside of the pots and boxes for a cat,
the cat was there— in sunny weather— stretched at full length, asleep
and blissful, with her furry belly to the sun and a paw curved over her nose.
— Mark Twain (1835-1910), Pudd'nhead Wilson, Ch. 1 (1894)

One of the most striking differences between a cat
and a lie is that a cat has only nine lives.
— Mark Twain (1835-1910), Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar, Ch. 7 (1894)

I've got a little cat
And I'm very fond of that.
— Joseph Tabrar (1857-1931),
     "Daddy Wouldn't Buy Me a Bow Wow", stanza 4 (1892)

The Cat. He walked by himself, and all places were alike to him.
— Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936), Just So Stories (1902),
     "The Cat That Walked by Himself" (1998 Russian film)

The fog comes on little cat feet.
— Carl Sandburg (1878-1967), "Fog" (1916)

The Cat on your hearthstone to this day presages,
By solemnly sneezing, the coming of rain!
— Arthur Guiterman (1891-1943), "The First Cat", Stanza 7

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