catship

plural catships · alternative Catship

1. The role, status, or classification of a cat, sometimes humorously used as a form of address.

   One night when poor Dick had been for a day or two so sick that I feared his catship might die, after we rose from our silent prayers Mr. Gamble said: "Bishop, do you know whom I have been praying for? […]"

   1906, Daniel Sylvester Tuttle, Reminiscences of a Missionary Bishop, page 181

   3 more examples

   The "cat fad," as it is often called by the uninitiated, is not new by any means, for his catship was an object of veneration among the ancient Egyptians, and one scarcely wonders at it when he sees some of the fine blooded animals that can boast of an ancestry as long and aristocratic as many an English lord.

   1900, The International, volume 8, page 376

   His catship was raptly intent on mice in what at home would be called the barn chamber, but he submitted to be caught, introduced to and stroked by the most noted personage in France, somewhat alarmed, for he fears men, […]

   1926, Alfred Emanuel Smith, Francis Walton, Outlook, volume 144, page 561

   He said it smelt as frowzily as a dovecote or a dog kennel, and contained 'four of their stern affrighting catships' that is, lions, as well as a 'tiger', a 'catamountain', a hyaena, three eagles, two outlandish owls, and a two-legged dog; […]

   2016, Caroline Grigson, Menagerie: The History of Exotic Animals in England, page 78