twelve years' truce
with Spain, the breaking of the dykes drove him from his farm. He was
made pensionary (stipendiary magistrate) of Middelburg; and two years
afterwards of Dort. In 1627 Cats came to England on a mission to Charles
I., who made him a knight. In 1636 he was made grand pensionary of
Holland, and in 1648 keeper of the great seal; in 1651 he resigned his
offices, but in 1657 he was sent a second time to England on what proved
to be an unsuccessful mission to Cromwell. In the seclusion of his villa
of Sorgvliet (Fly-from-Care), near the Hague, he lived from this time
till his death, occupied in the composition of his autobiography
(_Eighty-two Years of My Life_, first printed at Leiden in 1734) and of
his poems. He died on the 12th of September 1660, and was buried by
torchlight, and with great ceremony, in the Klooster-Kerk at the Hague.
He is still spoken of as "Father Cats" by his countrymen.

Cats was contemporary with Hooft and Vondel and other distinguished
Dutch writers in the golden age of Dutch literature, but his Orangist
and Calvinistic opinions separated him from the liberal school of
Amsterdam poets. He was, however, intimate with Constantin Huygens,
whose political opinions were more nearly in agreement with his own. For
an estimate of his poetry see DUTCH LITERATURE. Hardly known outside of
Holland, among his own people for nearly two centuries he enjoyed an
enormous popularity. His diffuseness and the antiquated character of his
matter and diction, have, however, come to be regarded as difficulties
in the way of study, and he is more renowned than read. A statue to him
was erected at Brouwershaven in 1829.

See Jacob Cats, _Complete Works_ (1790-1800, 19 vols.), later editions
by van Vloten (Zwolle, 1858-1866; and at Schiedam, 1869-1870); Pigott,
_Moral Emblems, with Aphorisms, &c., from Jacob Cats_ (1860); and P.C.
Witsen Gejisbek, _Het Leven en de Verdiensten van Jacob Cats_ (1829).
Southey has a very complimentary reference to Cats in his "Epistle to
Allan Cunningham."

CAT'S-EYE, a name given to several distinct minerals, their common
characteristic being that when cut with a convex surface they display a
luminous band, like that seen by reflection in the eye of a cat. (1)
Precious cat's-eye, oriental cat's-eye or chrysoberyl cat's-eye. This,
the rarest of all, is a chatoyant variety of chrysoberyl (q.v.), showing
in the finest stones a very sharply defined line of li