{"collection":"lcr","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/browse/lcr/fsca/fsca50.htm","path":"lcr/fsca/fsca50.htm","source_url":"https://sacred-texts.com/lcr/fsca/fsca50.htm","text":"Fictitious and Symbolic Creatures in Art, by John Vinycomb, [1909]\nThe Clan Chattan, who gave their name to the county of Caithness, bore as their cognisance the wild mountain cat, and called their chieftain, the Earl of Sutherland, \"Mohr an chat\" (The Great Wild Cat). The Mackintoshes still bear as their crests and supporters these ferocious cats, with the appropriate warning as a motto, \"Touch not the cat but a glove.\"\nThe whole is a pun upon the word \"Catti,\" the Teutonic settlers of Caithness, i.e., Catti-ness, and means \"Touch not the Clan Cattan (or mountain cat) without a glove.\" Here \"but\" is used in the\noriginal meaning, beout, i.e., without. For another example of \"but\" meaning without, see Amos iii. 7. The same words are also used as the motto of several Scottish families.\nNone will forget how the cat-a-mountain showed her claws to the Clan Kay, in the Wynds of Perth in Sir Walter Scott's \"Fair Maid of Perth.\"\nThe Heraldic Musion.\u2014Bossewell, in his work on\nChildebert, King of France, in token of his having\ntaken captive Gondomar of Bourgogne, assumed the device of a tiger-cat or ounce behind a grating or troillis, gules clou\u00e9 argent. This recalls the famous scene between Sanglier Rouge and Toison d\u2019Or in \"Quentin Durward,\" when Charles the Bold's jester professes to help the unhappy envoy of De la Marck by describing it as a cat looking out of a dairy window.\nThe cat, though domesticated, is considered as possessed of ingratitude; in its friendship so uncertain and so vicious in its nature, \"that,\" say old writers, \"it is only calculated for destroying the obnoxious race of rats and other small game.\"\nFrom the medi\u00e6val superstition that Satan's favourite form was a black cat, it was superstitiously called \"a familiar.\" Hence witches were said to have a cat as their familiar.\nThe Cat: A symbol of liberty.\u2014The Roman goddess of Liberty was represented as holding a cup in one hand, a broken sceptre in the other, and a cat lying at her feet. No animal is so great an enemy to all constraint as a cat.\nThe cat was held in veneration by the Egyptians as sacred to the goddess Bubastis. This deity is represented with a human body and a cat's head. Diodorus tells us that whoever killed a cat, even by accident, was by the Egyptians punished with death. According to Egyptian tradition, Diana assumed the form of a cat, and thus excited the fury of the giants. The London Review says: \"The Egyptians worshipped\nthe cat as a symbol of the moon, not only because it is more active after sunset, but from the dilation and contraction of its orb, symbolical of the waxing and waning of the night goddess.\"\nIn heraldry it should always be represented full-faced like the leopard.\nErminois three cats-a-mountain passant gardant, in pale azure, each charged on the body with an ermine spot or. Crest: a demi cat-a-mountain gardant, azure, gorged with a collar gemel, and charged with ermine spots, two and one.\u2014Tibbets.\nThe supporters of the Earl of Clanricarde are wild cats, and also those of the Earl of Belmore. It is the crest of De Burgh.","title":"Fictitious and Symbolic Creatures in Art: Other Chimerical Creatures and Heraldic Beasts: Cat-a-Mountain\u2014Tiger Cat or Wild Cat","type":"page"}