<Li> The phrase also appears in print in William Makepeace Thackeray's The Newcomes (1855) ("That woman grins like a Cheshire cat ."). </Li> <P> A survey published in 2015 showed how highly fanciful were so many purported explanations seen on the internet . The expression was finally explained as an amalgam of the widely - used phrase' grinning like a cat that got the (spilt) cream' which could apply to any part of the country (although Cheshire was the pre-eminent milk, cheese and cream producing county for several centuries) with Cheshire's unique political situation . On their own, either of these would have been something to grin about . Importantly, the county was described as a' palatinate' from the 1290s and was promoted to be Principality in 1397 following the support its men gave King Richard II . No other English county has been honoured in this way or was accorded such unusually wide privileges, including its own' borderland' laws and taxes, and a considerable measure of independence from national government into the sixteenth century . These privileges attracted many who (in the recent words of an eminent professor of medieval history)' arrived as fugitives from justice and this seems to have become the principle motivation (for escaping to Cheshire from the Kings laws) as the Middle Ages wore on .' Once safely across the border into the palatine's jurisdiction, these transgressors could grin cheekily at any pursuing King's Sheriffs - and' disappear' into the countryside . Certainly, dictionaries show the word' caitiff' derived from Old French or Anglo - Norman in terms such as' cowardly or base villain' or' mean despicable fellow', and with its diminutive' cat' meaning' a' sharp' fellow' - as utilize in today's jazz idioms . </P> <P> The Cheshire Cat is now largely identified with the character of the same name in Lewis Carroll's novel Alice's Adventures in Wonderland . Alice first encounters the Cheshire Cat at the Duchess's house in her kitchen, and later on the branches of a tree, where it appears and disappears at will, and engages Alice in amusing but sometimes perplexing conversation . The cat sometimes raises philosophical points that annoy or baffle Alice; but appears to cheer her when it appears suddenly at the Queen of Hearts' croquet field; and when sentenced to death, baffles everyone by having made its head appear without its body, sparking a debate between the executioner and the King and Queen of Hearts about whether a disembodied head can indeed be beheaded . At one point, the cat disappears gradually until nothing is left but its grin, prompting Alice to remark that "she has often seen a cat without a grin but never a grin without a cat". </P> <P> According to recent analysis by scholar David Day, Lewis Carroll's cat was Edward Bouverie Pusey, Oxford professor of Hebrew, and Carroll's mentor . </P>

When does the cheshire cat appear in alice in wonderland