The term Kilkenny Cat refers to anyone who is a tenacious fighter. The origin of the term is now lost so there are many stories purporting to give the true meaning. WGS-84 (GPS) Coordinates: 52. ... Binomial name Felis catus Linnaeus, 1758 Synonyms Felis lybica invalid junior synonym The cat (or domestic cat, house cat) is a small carnivorous mammal. ...

To "fight like a Kilkenny cat" refers to an old story about two cats who fought to the death and ate each other up such that only their tails were left. There is also a limerick about the two cats. A limerick is a five-line poem with a strict meter, popularized by Edward Lear. ...

There once were two cats of Kilkenny'

Each thought there was one cat too many

So they fought and they fit

And they scratched and they bit

'Til instead of two cats there weren't any!

The story has many roots. One involves soldiers based in Kilkenny City. However, who exactly these soldiers were and when they were stationed in Kilkenny is subject to some conjecture. Some people think they were English and some think they were Germans under the pay of the King George III of England. George III (George William Frederick) (4 June 1738–29 January 1820) was King of Great Britain, and King of Ireland from 25 October 1760 until 1 January 1801, and thereafter King of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland until his death. ...

One version was told in detail in Notes & Queries in 1864. It was said that a group of German soldiers (Hessians) were stationed in Kilkenny, during the period of the 1798 rebellion. To relieve the boredom in barracks, sadistic soldiers would tie two cats together by their tails, hang them over a washing line to fight and place bets on the "winning" cat. Gambling was contrary to miltary regulations, the story goes that the soldiers, alarmed by the impending arrival of an officer, released the cats by cutting their tails with a sword. When the officer arrived and enquired about the scene facing him, he was told that two cats had fought each other so fiercely that all that remained were the two stubs of their tails on the ground. This article is about the newspaper column Notes & Queries. ... The term Hessian refers to the inhabitants of the German state of Hesse. ... Depiction of the battle of Vinegar Hill The Irish Rebellion of 1798 (Éirí Amach 1798 in Irish), or 1798 rebellion as it is known locally, was an uprising in 1798, lasting several months, against the British dominated Kingdom of Ireland. ...

A different soldier-based story tells that in the mid 17th century Oliver Cromwell's soldiers tied the tails of all the cats in Kilkenny in pairs of two and hung them over a wire. The cats then fought until they had killed each other. The final cat was then beheaded. Oliver Cromwell (April 25, 1599–September 3, 1658) was an English military and political leader best known for making England a republic and leading the Commonwealth of England. ...

Another story has a thousand Kilkenny cats fighting a thousand cats from the rest of Ireland in a field outside Kilkenny City. All the cats died in battle. This may be a parable based on dissents of the period between the people of the Kilkenny area and other parts of Ireland.

After the Statutes of Kilkenny the city was divided into two townships called Irishtown and Englishtown, a situation that wasn’t uncommon in a country occupied for so long by the English. For religious, cultural and political reasons there were deep divisions between the two groups. This may lend itself to the story of two cats fighting. Because the rights and duties of the two townships hadn’t been made clear by statute this led to three centuries of dispute between the rival municipal bodies that ended in beggaring both of them. The Statutes of Kilkenny were a notorious series of thirty-five acts passed at Kilkenny in 1367, aimed at curbing the alarming decline of the Hiberno-Norman Lordship of Ireland. ...

The inhabitants of County Kilkenny are often referred to as Kilkenny Cats. County Kilkenny (Contae Chill Chainnigh in Irish) is located in the south east of Ireland in the province of Leinster. ...