It is also recorded in Table Louis that Princess Qionghua in the later Tang Dynasty kept two cats, saying that one of them was a silver gun with a white tail and was called "Kunlun da ji", and the other one with a pattern on its white mouth was called "Cicada slave".
In the Song Dynasty, Huang Tingjian wrote a poem "Begging for a Cat from the Master Book": "I heard that slaves can count children, buy fish and wear willows to hire cicadas." Later, the appellations of cicada slave, cicada and Kunlun da ji gradually evolved into nicknames of cats.
In fact, if you are serious, you have to be a white cat with black spots on its mouth, which can be called cicada.
There are some interesting nicknames for cats. According to the kinship between cats and tigers, the ancients called cats "Uncle Tiger", one generation older than tigers.
Cats have dozens of nicknames, which are recorded in detail in Han Huang's Cat Garden in Qing Dynasty. Because the book Cat Garden is not common, it is even less known now.
The ancients gave cats elegant names. And they will name the cat according to its specific appearance. For example, if a cat's claws are white, but the rest of its body is not white, then its claws are very distinctive. The ancients named this cat Xun Mei, which is an interesting image.
Because I had a cat myself, I also looked up a lot of information to find out the name of my owner in ancient times.
The picture below is another name for the ancient cat, and you can see the characteristics of the cat at a glance.
Xun Mei: Wearing four white socks.
Butterfly: black body+white mouth
Butterfly: black body+white mouth
Beaver slave: civet cat
Chi Yu/Xiao Feilian: All white.
Jin Hu: It's an orange cat. It's easy to get fat.
My family used to have a Jin Hu. Is this name particularly imposing?
Shen Jiangyue: There is a pinch of white in the abdomen.
Embroidered tiger/gold thread in the snow: A white cat has yellow patches.
Gold quilt and silver bed: white belly and yellow hair