cats in love, late 17th c

Thomas Flatman reality checks romance with the lords of the rooftops, 1686:

An Appeal to Cats in the business of Love,
A SONG. 

Ye Cats that at midnight spit love at each other, 

Who best feel the pangs of a passionate Lover, 

I appeal to your scratches, and your tattered furr, 

If the business of Love be no more than to Purr. 

Old Lady Grimalkin with her Gooseberry eyes, 

Knew something when a Kitten, for why she was wise; 

You find by experience the Love fit's soon o'r, 

Puss! Puss! lasts not long.but turns to Cat-whore. 

     Men ride many Miles, 

     Cats tread many Tiles, 

     Both hazard their necks in the Fray, 

     Only Cats, when they fall 

     From a House, or a Wall, 

     Keep their feet, mount their Tails, and away.

-- Thomas Flatman, Poems and Songs (London: Printed for Benjamin Tooke, 1686), p. 122.