THE SCENE: “What are those cats down there doing? What does their meowing mean? Who is their leader? Wait, what if they see me? What will they do to me? I must solve these mysteries, and only ancient books have the answers.”
THE TEXT: For one Cat which was a mighty big one, gray haired, bristle-bearded, and having broad eyes which shone and sparkled like two stars, sat in the midst, and on either side of her sat another, and before her stood three more, whereof one mewed continually, save when the great cat groaned, & ever when the great cat had finished groaned, this mewing cat began again, first stretching out her neck & as it were making courtesies to them which sat. And often times in the middle of this cat’s mewing: all the rest would suddenly, each one in his tune brayed forth, and then incontinently hushed again, as if they were laughing at something which they heard the other cat declare. I watched them from ten until it was twelve o’clock, at which time, whether it were a pot in the kitchen below, or some board in the printing house, I cannot tell, but something fell with such a noise that all the cats got up onto the house. I, fearing lest any arose to see what was fallen, they would charge me with the hurling down of it if they found me there, I whipt into my chamber quickly and finding my lamp burning: I set me down upon my bed, and reflected upon the doing of the cats, casting all manner of ways, what might be conjectured thereof to know what they had been doing. And by and by I deemed that the gray cat which sat in the middle was the chief, & sat as a judge among the rest, and that the cat which continually mewed, declared some matter or made account to her somewhat.
By means whereof I was straight caught with such a desire to know what she had said : yet I could not sleep of all that night, but lay devising by what means I might learn to understand them. And calling to mind what I had read in Altus Magnus works, a way to understand bird’s voices: I made no more to do but sought in my library for the little book entitled De Virtutibus Animalium, and greedily read it over and when I came to Si Vis Voces Auium Intelligere, Lord how glad I was. And when I had thoroughly marked the description of the medicine, and considered with myself the nature and power of everything therein, and how and upon what it wrought, I devised thereby to make a potion to serve for my purpose. And as soon as the sun shone through my glass windows, I rose and got working to seek for such things and might serve for my earnest business.
– Beware the Cat, William Baldwin, 16th Century AD
