"I am as melancholy as a gib-cat or a lugged bear."[B]
Shakespeare.
Gib-cat; an old, lonely, melancholy cat.
Before the cat can lick her ear. "Nay, you were not quite out of hearing ere the cat could lick her ear."—Oviddius Exultans, 1673, p. 50. That is never.
Dun, besides being the name of one who arrested for debt in Henry VII.'s time, was also the name of the hangman before "Jack Ketch."—Grose.
"And presently a halter got,
Made of the best strong teer,
And ere a cat could lick her ear,
Had tied it up with so much art."
1664, Cotton's Virgile, Book 4.
By biting and scratching dogs and cats come together.—Heywood. Quarrelling oft makes friends.
Care clammed a cat.—Sir G. C. Lewis's "Herefordshire Glossary." Clammed means starvation; that is, care killed the cat; for want of food the entrails get "clammed."
Care killed the cat, but ye canna live without it. To all some trouble, though not all take heed. None know another's burden.