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Origins of the Cheshire Cat
The Cheshire Cat is a fictional cat appearing in Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland. It appears and disappears at will, engaging Alice in amusing but sometimes vexing conversation. The cat often points out philosophical points that annoy Alice.
At one point, the cat disappeared gradually until nothing was left but its grin, prompting Alice to remark that she had often seen a cat without a grin but never a grin without a cat. This has become a point of notability for the cat: most people remember it most strongly performing its vanishing act.
There are reports that Carroll found inspiration for the Cheshire Cat in a carving in a church in the village of Croft-on-Tees, in the north east of England, where his father had been rector. Another view is the cat is based on a gargoyle found on a pillar in St Nicholas Church Cranleigh, where Carroll used to travel frequently when he lived in Guildford. The cat is named after Carroll's home county, Cheshire. Others attribute it to a carving on the west face of the tower at St. Wilfrid's Church, Grappenhall Village Warrington, Cheshire.
Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable says grinning like a Cheshire cat is "an old simile, popularized by Lewis Carrol". Brewer adds, "The phrase has never been satisfactorily accounted for, but it has been said that cheese was formerly sold in Cheshire moulded like a cat that looked as though it was grinning."
A more likely origin for the story concerns the cats that lived in the port of Chester. Until the late 1970s, a monument to the Cheshire Cat stood beside the River Dee, where there had formerly been a cheese warehouse. It was said that cats sitting on the dock would wait for the rats and mice to leave the ships transporting Cheshire cheese to London and were the happiest cats in the kingdom, hence their grins. The monument was destroyed when Copfield House, a house that stood on the site of the warehouse, was demolished in 1979.
