A crouching lion and a ramping cat.
Of the night-time food-seeking cat, in The Merchant of Venice, old Shylock talks of the
...Slow in profit, and he sleeps by day
More than the wild cat.
In the same play Shylock discourses of those that have a natural horror of certain animals, which holds good till this day:
Some men there are love not a gaping pig,
Some, that are mad if they behold a cat.
and further on:
As there is no firm reason to be rendered
Why he cannot abide a gaping pig,
Why he, a harmless necessary cat.
Note the distinction he makes between the wild and the domestic cat; the one, evidently, he knew the value and use of, and the other, its peculiar stealthy ways and of nature dread. In All's Well that Ends Well, he gives vent to his dislike; Bertram rages forth:
I could endure anything before but a cat,
And now he's cat to me.
The feud with the wild cat intensifies in Midsummer Night's Dream; 'tis Lysander speaks: