The Book of Cats. 107 



The French of Cat is Chat ; the German, Katze ; 

 the Italian, Gatto ; the Spanish, Gato ; the Dutch 

 and Danish, Kat ; the Welsh, Cath ; the Latin, 

 Catus :■ the French of Puss is Minette, You have 

 heard the story, I suppose, of the person who being 

 told to decline the noun Cat, when he came to the 

 vocative, said " O Cat !" on which he was reminded 

 that if he spoke to a Cat he would say " Puss." 



Mr. Buchton says, that " the only language in 

 which the name of the Cat is significant, is the Zend, 

 where the word Gatu, almost identical with the 

 Spanish Gato, means a place — a word peculiarly 

 significant in reference to this animal, whose at- 

 tachment is peculiar to place, and not to the person, 

 so strikingly indicated by the dog." 



In some parts of Lancashire, a Tom is still called 

 a " Gib " or " Gibbe" Cat, the g being pronounced 

 hard^ not jibbe, as found in most dictionaries. Accord- 

 ing to Nares, Gib, the contraction of Gilbert, was 

 the name formerly applied to a Cat, as Tom is now, 

 and that Tibert, as given in Reynard the Fox, was 

 the old French for Gilbert. Chaucer in his Romance 

 of the Rose translates Thibert le Cas by " Gibbe our 

 Cat." Shakespeare applies the word Gibbe to an 

 old worn-out animal. The term Gib-face means the 

 lower lip of a horse. In mechanics, the pieces of 



