William Baldwin's Beware the Cat, written earlier, was first published anonymously in 1561. The work is often described as an early English prose fiction and a strange experiment in talking animals, satire and fear. Its publication appears to have been suppressed, and no copies of the first edition survive.

Beware the Cat is important because it unsettles the boundaries between folklore, anti-Catholic satire and proto-horror. It shows English fiction emerging through gossip, overheard voices and oral storytelling devices rather than through the later novel alone.