From New Pictures in Old Frames by Gertrude M. Bradley, 1894.

"The Enchanted Cat": an illustration from Prince Dorus by Charles Lamb (1889).

"A mirror doubles the scene, confirming what is at first hard to make out and then hard to believe." —Peter Schjeldahl, The 7 Days Art Columns, 1988-1990

Our illustration appears in St. Nicholas magazine, 1912.

"I spotted that black devil," from Tales from the Veld by Ernest Glanville, 1897.

"A human devil; or, the Biter Bit," from The New Budget of Recitations, 1854.

It's only funny if the black cat laughs, from The Ottowan, 1914.

From Funny Books for Boys and Girls, 1856.

From Prof. Oddfellow's sketchbook.  [Inspired by and for William Keckler.]  The text reads, "It would be wrong of us to interrupt the cat seance."  This should also be of interest: How to Be Your Own Cat.

The text reads, "The secret to getting back on one's feet lies in simple inversion.  Cats famously land on their feet by using a pinhole to project an inverted image."  [For the Wild Swan.]

It's not that cats were bigger in 1882; it's the people who were tiny.

From Wehman Bros.' New Book of One Hundred and Fifty Parlor Tricks and Games, 1905.

"Where we do what cats may do," from The Virginians by William Makepeace Thackeray, 1858.

The expression about letting the cat out of the bag is commonly traced to a 1760 issue of The London Magazine, but we've followed it all the way back to Fulvia, the first non-mythological woman to appear on Roman coins.  We find her letting the cat out of the bag in The Comic History of Rome by Gilbert Abbott A'Beckett and illustrated by John Leech, 1897.

"It was the cat": an illustration from A Tramp Abroad by Samuel Langhorne Clemens (1880).

From Funny Books for Boys and Girls, 1856.

An illustration from A Bid for Fortune by Guy Newell Boothby (1895).  The caption reads: "The black cat looked through the smoke at the three men."

"Mrs. Forster uttered a hideous yell, and threw the animal at the heads of the spectators."  From Newton Forster by Frederick Marryat and illustrated by E. J. Sullivan, 1897.

The reason cats dart is revealed in this illustrarion from Phantastes: A Faerie Romance by George MacDonald (1894).