Cat and Wheel.—Most likely to be a corruption of Catherine Wheel; there was a sign of this name in the Borough, Southwark.
In France some signs are still more peculiar, as a "Cat Playing at Raquet" (Chatte qui pelote), "Fishing Cat" (La Chatte qui pêche), "The Dancing Cat," and the well-known "Puss in Boots."
"Whittington and his Cat" is by no means uncommon, and was not unknown in the early part of the seventeenth century. Somewhere I remember having seen "Whittington's Cat" without the master, which, I suppose, arose from the painter not knowing how to portray "Sir Richard."
"Cat and Kittens.—A public-house sign, alluding to the pewter pots so called. Stealing these pots is termed 'Cat and kitten sneaking.' We still call a large kettle a kitchen, and speak of a soldier's kit (Saxon, cytel, a pot, pan, or vessel generally)."—Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable.
May not this sign be intended to mean merely what is shown, "The Cat and Kittens," indicative of comfort and rest? Or may it have been "Cat and Chitterlings," in allusion to the source from which fiddlestrings were said to be derived?
Cat and Tortoise.—This seems to have no meaning other than at a tavern extremes meet, the fast and the slow, the lively and the stolid; or it is possibly a corruption of something widely different.
THE LAW ON CAT KILLING.
An "Articled Clerk," writing to The Standard with regard to the illegality of killing cats, states: "It is clearly laid down in 'Addison on Torts,' that a person is not justified in killing his neighbour's cat, or dog, which he finds on his land, unless the animal is in the act of doing some injurious act which can only be prevented by its slaughter.
"And it has been decided by the case of 'Townsend v. Watken' 9 last 277, that if a person sets on his lands a trap for foxes, and baits it with such strong-smelling meat as to attract his neighbour's dog or cat on to his land, to the trap, and such animal is thereby killed or injured, he is liable for the act, though he had no intention of doing it, and though the animal ought not to have been on his land."