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A blend of the word purr and of the adjective perfect, the colloquial, humorous adjective purrfect means: perfect, especially in cat-related contexts.
The word purr (used as a noun and as a verb) refers to the low, continuous, vibratory sound made by a cat, taken to be expressive of satisfaction or pleasure.
The adjective purrfect is based on the phonetic similarity between the word purr and the first syllable of the adjective perfect.
These are, in chronological order, the earliest occurrences of the adjective purrfect that I have found:
—Note: It is likely that purrfect has, in the course of time, been coined on separate occasions by various persons, independently from one another:
1-: From the column Chat by the Way, published in The New York Herald (New York City, New York, USA) of Sunday 8th October 1876 [page 7, column 2]:
—Context: On Sunday 24th September 1876, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, under the command of General John Newton, used explosives to remove obstructive rocks from Hell Gate, a narrow tidal strait in New York City’s East River. George William Blunt (1802-1878) was the Secretary of the Board of Pilot Commissioners for New York Harbor from 1845 to 1877. Benjamin Disraeli (1804-1881) was the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1874 to 1880 (but I have not found out what the “quarrel between the Blunt critic and the Prime minister” refers to):
George W. Blunt, when speaking of the explosion of Hell Gate on Sunday, gave the pleasing information that “he does not belong to the school who believe in scolding a cat for killing a rat on the Sabbath,” whereupon the New York Observer asks, with charming naïveté, “Is there any such school?” However this quarrel between the Blunt critic and the Prime minister may end, we have this satisfaction, at least, that if Hell Gate was the rat in the story and General Newton the cat the arrangements of the latter were purr-fect.
2-: From The Dial of the Old South Clock (Boston, Massachusetts, USA) of Saturday 8th December 1877 [page 1, column 1]:
—Context: The Dial of the Old South Clock was issued during—and in support of—the Old South Fair, held from Wednesday 5th to Thursday 20th December 1877 in Boston, Massachusetts:
There is a delicious Cushion of Cats, reeking with cats of every description, on raffle near the Post Office. Cats and cushions are interchangeable ideas, both soft, both suited for sofas. And this is very nearly a purrfect one, as nobody need go fur to see, only paws to see it when you get there; it will make an important claws in your tail about the Fair. Whoever draws this in the raffle will feel amply remewnerated; but we think it will be conceded that it would be a sad catastrophe if anybody should get it but the One who wants it most.
3-: From one of the unconnected paragraphs making up column 1, page 2, of The Breckenridge News (Cloverport, Kentucky, USA) of Wednesday 9th August 1882:
In pictures of cats the purrspective is always purrfect.
4-: From the title of a poem published in The Northern Standard, and Monaghan, Cavan and Tyrone Advertiser (Monaghan, County Monaghan, Ireland) of Saturday 13th July 1889 [page 4, column 7]:
THE THREE KITTENS.
A PURRFECT CATASTROPHE.
(AFTER—A LONG WAY AFTER—C. KINGSLEY.)Three kittens went wailing out into the wet,
Out into the wet, as the moon went down;
Eeach [sic] thought of the cream jug he’d just upset,
And the slavey stood glaring with terrible frown,
For cats must eat and kittens must drink,
[&c.]
5-: From an advertisement for Jack the Giant Killer, a Christmas pantomime produced at the Alexandra Theatre, Melbourne, published in The Lorgnette: A Journal for Amusements (Melbourne, Victoria, Australia) of Friday 4th December 1891 [page 7, column 2]:
Cast of Characters—
Jack the Giant Killer (a Mashah up to Datah) . . Miss Aggie Kelton
[…]
The Giant’s Cat (a purr-fect Specimen) . . Mr. H. Walhalla
6-: From a review of the Boston Art Club’s spring exhibition, by Mabel Warren Sanford, published in the Fall River Daily Herald (Fall River, Massachusetts, USA) of Saturday 2nd May 1896 [page 1, column 2]:
Some one, whose name I will not mention, has painted a pert puss sitting upon a scarlet cushion. So far so good! But this someone has dared to allude to it in the catalogue as “Purr-fect Repose.” Why such an arrant and bare-faced pun was allowed is more than I can tell. If it were only a good one—but then, is a pun ever good?
7-: From the caption to the following drawing, published in the 1898-99 Christmas and New Year’s number of The Black Cat: Original Stories by the Best Authors (London, England) [page 66, column 2]:
“I would I were a little star,”
I heard a pussy say,
“To spend a life of purrfect bliss,
Up in the Milky Way!”
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