The American-English phrase (as) poor as Job’s cat is a humorous variant of (as) poor as Job, meaning: extremely poor.
—Cf. also the American-English phrase (as) poor as Job’s turkey.
In those phrases, Job is the name of a patriarch of the land of Uz, the eponymous protagonist of a book of the Old Testament, taken as the type of extreme poverty, destitution, etc.
—Cf. also the phrase Job’s comforter, which refers to the Book of Job, 16:2, and the phrase by the skin of one’s teeth, which refers to the Book of Job, 19:20.
The phrase (as) poor as Job’s cat occurred, for example, in the transcript of a talk given in a Methodist church at Sudbury, Massachusetts, by Richard Cushing (1895-1970), Archbishop of Boston—transcript by George M. Collins, published in The Boston Globe (Boston, Massachusetts, USA) of Sunday 26th January 1964 [Vol. 185, No. 26, page A7, column 4]:
Pope John bequeathed to me one of his two pectoral crosses—and I gave it away because I didn’t know what would happen to it if anything happened to me. I gave it to a poor community of nuns in Mexico who cannot even wear the religious habit. They are as poor as Job’s cat.
I said, here, take this. And pray to John XXIII because if he’s not in heaven, then God help the rest of us.
The earliest occurrences of the phrase (as) poor as Job’s cat that I have found are as follows, in chronological order:
1-: From a letter, dated Alexandria, Virginia, Wednesday 29th August 1810, that the U.S. teacher Elijah Fletcher (1789-1858) wrote to his brother—as published in The Letters of Elijah Fletcher (Charlottesville: The University Press of Virginia, 1965), edited by Martha von Briesen [page 11]:
I was cheered with the hopes of future prospects and laughed to think how I tried to appear like a gentleman, when I was as poor as Job’s Cats.
2-: From Federal Conduct, published in the Aurora General Advertiser (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA) of Wednesday 2nd September 1812 [No. 6,692, page 2, column 3]—reprinted from the Boston Patriot:
It has been the constant aim and object of “leading federalists” to undervalue the resources of the country […]. They have derided all the means of filling the treasury; every mode of procuring revenue they have opposed and made the means of endeavoring to excite the popular distrust and disaffection, and have represented the treasury as poor as Job’s cat and as impossible to be fattened.
3-: From A Dream, published in the Carolina Sentinel (New Bern, North Carolina, USA) of Saturday 26th June 1819 [Vol. 2, No. 66, page 4, column 2]:
As to wives, I confess, I had no desire to have my silver and gold corroded, my abundance corrupted, my pleasure imbittered by the officious smiles, and peevish whims of a wife, who would have been continually teasing me for money, vexing me with her tea-parties, which I loved, as my eyes loved smoke: indeed, had I followed the thoughtless multitude, and taken a wife, my bags of money would have taken wings, and I, instead of dying a prodigious rich man, should have been as poor as Job’s cat.
4-: From Fanny Williams. A Secret Worth Knowing, published in the Carlisle Herald and Expositor (Carlisle, Pennsylvania, USA) of Tuesday 8th January 1839 [Vol. 41, No. 13, page 1, column 5]—reprinted from the Claremont Eagle:
At home she does the house work, from boiling an apple dumpling down to sweeping the floor, and other such idle and unfashionable things, which soil the hands, and are ungenteel. Besides all this, she’s as poor as Job’s cat, and never appeared to care about money any more than shining in the world.
5-: From The Money Diggers. A Down-East Story, by the U.S. author Seba Smith (1792-1868), published in Burton’s Gentleman’s Magazine and American Monthly Review (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA) of August 1840 [Vol. 7, No. 2, page 85]:
“It does say the old evil one is set there to watch the money. And do you think I’d have my husband go and dig for money right in the face and eyes of old nick himself? I should rather be as poor as Job’s cat all the days of my life.”
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