“At Hythe the first prize was carried off by a genuine Cockney. Upon being asked how he had acquired his extraordinary skill and precision—
“‘Oh,’ said he, as reported in the columns of the Court Journal, ‘I live in London, and have had considerable practice in shooting at the Cats of my Brompton neighbours.’
“It was not, perhaps, of much consequence in the depth of winter (continued Sir R. Peel), but no man could tell what a scene London would present in the height of the season. Everybody would be shooting at his neighbour’s Cat. There would be the stoker of the Railway Rifles potting at the funnels of the North Western, and we should have the Finsbury Filibusters fluking over Cripplegate. He trusted, however, that before that time a stop would be put to the Volunteer movement,” etc., etc.
Cats do certainly seem to enjoy themselves on moonlight nights, anyhow they make noise enough. The Cat was believed by the ancients to stand in some relation to the moon, for Plutarch says that the Cat was the symbol of the moon on account of her different colours, her busy ways at night, and her giving birth to twenty-eight young ones during the course of her life, which is exactly the number of the phases of the moon.
The ancients identified Bubastis with the Greek Artemis (or Diana), and each was regarded as the Goddess of the moon. Bubastis was generally represented as a woman with a Cat’s head.
It might occur to some, that “Puss” is derived from the Egyptian name, Pasht; but perhaps it is better to acquiesce in the derivation from the Latin, Pusus (a little boy), or Pusa (a little girl). By others this term is thought to be a corruption of Pers. The French of Cat is Chat; the German, Katze; the Italian, Gatto; the Spanish, Gato; the Dutch and Danish, Kat; the Welsh, Cath; the Latin, Catus: the French of Puss is Minette. You have heard the story, I suppose, of the person who being told to decline the noun Cat, when he came to the vocative, said “O Cat!” on which he was reminded that if he spoke to a Cat he would say “Puss.”
Mr. Buchton says, that “the only language in which the name of the Cat is significant, is the Zend, where the word Gatu, almost identical with the Spanish Gato, means a place—a word peculiarly significant in reference to this animal, whose attachment is peculiar to place, and not to the person, so strikingly indicated by the dog.”
In some parts of Lancashire, a Tom is still called a “Gib” or “Gibbe” Cat, the g being pronounced hard, not jibbe, as found in most dictionaries. According to Nares, Gib, the contraction of Gilbert, was the name formerly applied to a Cat, as Tom is now, and that Tibert, as given in Reynard the Fox, was the old French for Gilbert. Chaucer in his Romance of the Rose translates Thibert le Cas by “Gibbe our Cat.” Shakespeare applies the word Gibbe to an old worn-out animal. The term Gib-face means the lower lip of a horse. In mechanics, the pieces of iron employed to clasp together the pieces of wood or metal of a frame which is to be keyed previous to inserting the keys, are called Gibs. Anyone curious upon the subject of Gib Cats, may find the subject treated at length in the Etymologicon.
