I HAVE previously suggested that Henri Boguet's popular demonological treatise, Discours des Sorciers (Lyon, 1590), is a possible source for the ‘severed hand’ episode in The Witches of Lancashire (London, 1634)1 by Thomas Heywood and Richard Brome.2 Other supernatural episodes in the play, such as the metamorphoses into greyhounds and horses, have been identified as originating as evidence given at the 1633–4 trial at Lancashire. However, neither Boguet nor the trial transcripts offer a likely source for the scene where the witches, in the form of ‘a company of hell-cats’ (V.iii.75), attack the Soldier at the mill. In this article I will consider possible sources for this episode. In his Γνατκετον, or, Nine Bookes of Various History Concerninge Women (London, 1624), Thomas Heywood includes the following passage as part of his discussion ‘Of Witches that haue eyther changed their owne shapes, or transformed others’: Concerning Lycantropia, or men that change themselues into Wolues, Doctor Bordinus (generall Procurator for the king) relates, That a Wolfe setting vpon a man, hee shot him with an arrow through the thigh: who being wounded, and not able to plucke out the shaft, fled to his house, kept his bed, being found to be a man, and the arrow after knowne by him that shot it, by the Lycantropies confession. Those that are the diligent Inquisitor after Witches, report in a booke intituled Malleum Maleficarum, That a countreyman was violently assaulted by three great Cats, who in the defence of himself wounded them all dangerously; and these were knowne to be three infamous Witches, who were after found bleeding, and by reason of their hurts, in great danger of death.3 Il me souuient que M. le Procureur general du Roy Bourdin m’en a recité vn autre, qu’on luy auoit enuoyé du bas pays, avec tout le procés signé du Iuge & des Greffiers, d’vn loup qui fut frappé d’vn traict en la cuisse, & depuis se trouue en son lict auec le traict, qui luy fut arraché esta[n]t recha[n]gé en forme d’ho[m]me, & le traict cogneu par celuy qui l’auoit tiré, le te[m]ps, & le lieu iustifié par la co[n]fessio[n] du personage. (I recall that the King's General Prosecutor, Master Bourdin, recounted another case to me, which had been sent to him from the Low Countries, with the whole trial summary signed by the judge and the court clerks. It concerned a werewolf who was wounded in the thigh by an arrow, and who later was found in his bed with the arrow which was pulled out of him, now that he was changed back into the form of a man; and the arrow was recognised by the one who had shot it, and the time and place was confirmed by the person's confession.4) A labourer was cutting wood there to burn (at home), all of a sudden a certain cat of large size strove to harass him by throwing itself against him insistently. When he cast the cat aside, another one of greater size all of a sudden appeared, accosting him more vigorously along with the first one. When he again tried to push them away, there now were three of them accosting him together, sometimes jumping at his face, sometimes snapping at his forearms…he was barely able to drive the hostile cats off, striking them with the cut wood, first one on the head, then another on legs or back, as they leaped up, one moment at his face, the next at his throat.5