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In Don Quixote Chaper VIII there is a scene where Quixote and a Biscayan squire are about to get into an altercation. The Biscayan warns:

"..if though droppest lance and drawest sword, soon shalt though see though art carrying water to the cat.."

what does "carrying water to the cat" mean in this context/era?

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    Bet you anything this is a literal translation of a 17th-century Spanish idiom. Pretty sure those "though"s are supposed to be "thou"; look them up if unclear.
    – Andy Bonner
    Commented 2 days ago
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    Surely a question for English Literature: interpretation of a nonce literary usage rather than standard English.
    – Edwin Ashworth
    Commented 2 days ago

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A footnote in the 1887 translation by George Ormsby on p 223 shows that the Biscayan is mangling an existing proverb:

Quien ha de llevar el gato al agua? (Prov. 102.) "Who will carry the cat to the water?" is a proverbial way of indicating an apparently insuperable difficulty. Between rage and ignorance the Biscayan, it will be seen, inverts the phrase.

The "Prov. 102" part refers to a running tally of "proverbs" that Ormsby keeps throughout the text:

Proverbs form a part of the national literature of Spain, and the proverbs of "Don Quixote" have always been regarded as a characteristic feature of the book. They are, moreover, independently of their wit, humor, and sagacity, choice specimens of pure old Castilian. The reader will probably, therefore, be glad to have them in their original form, arranged alphabetically according to what is of course the only rational arrangement for proverbs, that of key-words and numbered for convenience of reference in the notes.

—pp 17-18

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