I am as vigilant as a cat to steal cream.
While Lady Macbeth points to the uncertain, timid, cautious habits of the cat, amounting almost to cowardice:
Letting I dare not wait upon I would,
Like the poor cat i' the adage.
and in the same play the strange superstitious fear attached to the voice and presence of the cat at certain times and seasons:
Thrice the brinded cat hath mewed.
The line almost carries a kind of awe with it, a sort of feeling of "what next will happen?" He noted, also, as he did most things, its marvellous powers of observation, for in Coriolanus, Act IV., Scene 2, occurs the following:
Cats, that can judge as fitly.
and of the forlorn loneliness of the age-stricken male cat in King Henry the Fourth, Falstaff, murmuring, says:
I am as melancholy as a gib cat.
He marks, too, the difference of action in the lion and cat, in a state of nature: