I am glad to report that he does indeed enjoy getting his belly tickled while being cradled like a baby, because he is a fearsome apex predator panther
Every so often there are still stories that get enough traction to make the news of elusive big cats being spotted here (though I'm in Scotland rather than Ireland). We have also had a few real instances of non-native big cats (as in, cats substantially bigger than a house cat, not necessarily genus Panthera) being released intentionally or unintentionally that no doubt help fuel the stories, including a couple of lynxes earlier this year that are thought to have been someone's personal attempt to reintroduce them to Britain
The "caught shee" pronunciation is for the singular cat sìth or cat sí rather than the plural form given in the image
I can't necessarily offer an answer here, but I can give you a bound at least. I was able to find this 1703 geography of the Kingdom of Naples that explicitly calls Italy a boot, so "some time before 1703" can be said for sure
Forma una Penisola, à guisa di uno Stivale, fi come l'Italia tutta fù meditata da Strabone, e da altri Geografi di rigo
Machine translated:
It forms a peninsula, like a boot, just as all of Italy was studied by Strabo and other renowned geographers.
I'm fairly sure the Strabo bit means "we've known it was this shape since Strabo" rather than "Strabo said it was boot-shaped"
To speculate a little more, I think the style of boot that Italy looks like started off as riding shoes developed in 10th century Iran (heels are good for staying in stirrups, apparently). If that is correct then it can't be earlier than the 10th century since there weren't boots that Italy looked like
Are you able to tell the two black ones farther from the camera apart consistently? The other three all have distinguishing features but those two look like carbon copies of each other, even down to the expressions om their faces
I grew up next to a Norwegian neighbour who called our cat "Kattepus", and I have apparently picked up and kept the habit of referring to my own cat that way. He's also called Baggy, because being a black cat everyone wanted me to name him Bagheera
I think the story you're referring to is that NYT itself owns a house in what used to be a Palestinian neighbourhood in West Jerusalem. It's possible that there's something about one of the owners, but I do not know about that
The house in question is in Qatamon, which was on the Israeli-controlled side of the 1949 Green Line. It was majority-Palestinian, but most of the residents fled during the war. Israel allowed Jews who had fled from the other side of the Green Line to settle it. In 1984, the NYT bought the house for the use of its Jerusalem bureau chief. It got some attention a while back when the NYT journalist living there read the writings of a Palestinian woman who had grown up there, realised she was talking about the same house (or more specifically, the house that his house was built as an upper floor extension of), and invited her to visit
A collarbone that isn't attached to any other bones and a very flexible spine. However, while this makes them extremely good at it, the actual motions involved are, as demonstrated, manageable for a human. We're just a lot worse at it
This is a common issue, but it can be resolved by the sound of a treat bag shaking