copperbadge:

I was curious recently about whether or not William Shakespeare had a cat. There’s no way to really know because we don’t know all that much about him, but I was sure someone had at least, you know, looked at the odds. And I was not wrong! Apparently Shakespeare mentions cats 44 times in his known works, usually referring to them negatively, at least according to the internet. 

Basically he constantly talked about how terrible cats are, which has led me to conclude that Shakespeare DEFINITELY had a cat, probably like five of them.