"fro the bench he droof awey the cat,"
and Skelton has poured invective on the slayer of Philip Sparow, calling down vengeance
"On all the hole nacyon
Of cattes wilde and tame;
God send them sorowe and shame!"
No reader of Tudor drama needs to be reminded of Gammer Gurton's Gyb, crouching in the fireplace, where her eyes, mistaken for sparks of fire, refused to be blown out. Shakespeare's frequent references to the "harmless, necessary cat" are as accurate as they are nonchalant, but Milton does not mention her in his account of the creation, although she would certainly have been more comforting to Eve, at least, than "Behemoth, biggest born of earth," or "the parsimonious emmet." Indeed, an Arabic story of the creation claims that the dog and cat were allowed to accompany Adam and Eve, for their protection and solace, into the waste beyond the flaming sword. Herrick's "green-eyed kitling;" Walpole's Selima of
"The fair round face, the snowy beard,
The velvet of her paws,
Her coat that with the tortoise vies,
Her ears of jet and emerald eyes,"