If any one dreams that he hath encountered a Cat, or killed one, he will commit a thief to prison and prosecute him to the death, for the Cat signifies a common thief. If he dreams that he eats Cat’s flesh, he will have the goods of the thief that robbed him; if he dreams that he hath the skin, then he will have all the thief’s goods. If any one dreams he fought with a Cat that scratched him sorely, that denotes some sickness or affliction. If any shall dream that a woman became the mother of a Cat instead of a well shaped baby, it is a bad hieroglyphic, and betokens no good to the dreamer.

Stevens states, that in some counties of England, it used to be thought a good bit of fun to close up a Cat in a cask with a quantity of soot, and suspend the cask on a line; then he who could knock out the bottom of the cask as he ran under it, and was nimble enough to escape its falling contents, was thought to be very clever. After the first part had been performed, the Cat was hunted to death, which finished this diverting pastime. They were full of their fun, once upon a time, in merrie England.

In an old-fashioned treatise upon Rat-catching, I find mentioned a means of alluring “of very material efficacy, which is, the use of oil of Rhodium, which, like the marumlyriacum, in the case of Cats, has a very extraordinary fascinating power on these animals.”

Among the sympathetic secrets in occult philosophy, published in the Conjurors’ Magazine, in 1791, I find a recipe “to draw Cats together, and fascinate them,” which is as follows:—

“In the new moon, gather the herb Nepe, and dry it in the heat of the sun, when it is temperately hot: gather vervain in the hour ☿, and only expose it to the air while ☉ is under the earth. Hang these together in a net, in a convenient place, and when one of them has scented it, her cry will soon call those about her that are within hearing; and they will rant and run about, leaping and capering to get at the net, which must be hung or placed so that they cannot easily accomplish it, for they will certainly tear it to pieces. Near Bristol there is a field that goes by the appellation of the ‘Field of Cats,’ from a large number of these animals being drawn together there by this contrivance.”

One of the frauds of witchcraft was the witch pretending to transform herself into a Cat, and this led to the Cat being tormented by the ignorant vulgar.

In 1618, Margaret and Philip Flower were executed at Lincoln; their mother was also accused, dying in goal before (probably of fright, added to old age and infirmity). It was asserted that they had procured the death of the Lord Henry Mosse, eldest son of the Earl of Rutland, by procuring his right-hand glove, which, after being rubbed on the back of their imp, named “Rutterkin,” and which lived with them in the form of a Cat, was plunged into boiling water, pricked with a knife, and buried in a dung-hill, so that, as that rotted, the liver of the young man might rot also, which was affirmed to have come to pass.

Those were dreadful times for the ill-looking old ladies, and the more so if they were unfortunate enough to have an affection for the feline race.

“A wrinkled hag, of wicked fame,
Beside a little smoky flame,
Sat hovering, pinched with age and frost,
Her shrivelled hands with veins embossed.
Upon her knees her weight sustains,
While palsy shook her crazy brains;
She mumbles forth her backward prayer—
An untamed scold of fourscore year.
About her swarmed a numerous brood
Of Cats, who, lank with hunger, mewed;
Teased with their cries, her choler grew,
And thus she sputtered—‘Hence, ye crew!
Fool that I was to entertain
Such imps, such fiends—a hellish train;
Had ye been never housed and nursed,
I for a witch had n’er been cursed;
To you I owe that crowd of boys
Worry me with eternal noise;—
Straws laid across, my pace retard;
The horse-shoes nailed (each threshold’s guard);
The stunted broom the wenches hide,
For fear that I should up and ride.’”