A catfight is between two women. Note that a dogfight isn’t between two men, though it may be between military planes. Cat is a long-standing nickname for a prostitute and, via sexist association, sometimes for a female, hence a catfight.
A cat nap is fairly brief and usually taken sitting up. It’s a refresher.
A catlick is British slang for a casual wash, the opposite of what a real cat would do.
Cat ice is the dangerous thin ice beneath which the water has receded.
Cat’s cradle is a classic children’s game that uses a length of string held between each hand’s fingers to create assorted patterns.
Of course many words beginning with the prefix cat- have nil to do with felines, including catsup, catalepsy, catamite, cataclysm, catacomb and catalog(ue).
Cathouse
Since at least 1401, Englishmen were warned of the risks—including often fatal venereal diseases—of chasing “cat’s tail,” vulgar slang for female genitalia (remember, vulgar originally meant common). Prostitutes were nicknamed cats because urban she-cats attracted and copulated with so many tomcats. Hence the term cathouse, where female prostitutes live and/or do business.
Ironic that venereal, the adjective for Venus, goddess of love and beauty—the Roman version of the Greeks’ Aphrodite—is today (unlike in Shakespeare’s time) used almost exclusively in that one negative context.
Cat People
Cats don’t get fat unless people make them so. They’re often finicky eaters, to the extent that cat food manufacturers use humans to test cat food because cats refuse to. Fat cats are rich or overpaid people in positions of influence, such as heads of corporations, often including non-profits. They’re often resented and sometimes corrupt.
A cat burglar usually robs houses and gets in by shimmying up a drain pipe and entering through an upper-storey window (this probably happens mostly in movies).
Copycat, used particularly by children and competitors, is apparently alliterative in origin, another example of a cat being viewed more negatively than a dog.
Somebody with the morals of an alley cat is typically someone who will sleep with anyone else (think Blanche on The Golden Girls).
Someone who is catty is spiteful, often while feigning interest or sincerity. Almost always used about a woman, as in “She told her hostess, ‘My dear, I love that dress. I never tire of seeing it.’”
A hellcat is defined as a spiteful, violent woman. Likewise, grimalkin is an archaic word for a cat but also signifies a spiteful old woman. (Malkin was a familiar form of the name Matilda.)
The British expression to “Lead a cat and dog life” refers to a married couple who argue often and loudly, the implication being they don’t get along, like the stereotypical cat and dog, who in reality are nowise enemies.
A cat’s paw is somebody who is used by another or others. Similar to a stalking horse but worse, in that the equine equivalent often involves politics (see the chapter Horses), but a cat’s paw may be fooled or forced into undertaking an unpleasant or dangerous task.
Jazz musicians have long labeled someone they approve of as a cool cat. Pre-hippie beatniks bestowed the word hep on whatever was, well, hip. It’s no longer hip to call someone a hepcat, but Audrey Hepburn’s 1956 movie-musical debut Funny Face proclaimed, “Hepburn Goes Hep!!”
Curiosity and the Cat
Why did curiosity kill the cat and not, say, the dog? Aren’t dogs much more interested in what humans do than cats? Alliteration played a part. According to psychologist Betty Berzon, “Curiosity is stereotypically affiliated with women, so this is a cautionary proverb warning women to mind their own business. If curiosity began with a different letter, it’s possible a cat might not be the victim.”
The full expression was: Curiosity killed the cat but satisfaction brought it back. The second half is rarely invoked, for it mitigates the warning in the first half. What does the second half mean? Two interpretations prevail: the dead cat was satisfied with what it found out, and her death was worth it, since she still had eight lives to go. Or, the satisfaction of keeping out of trouble—and minding one’s “own business”—prevented kitty from going too far and brought her back from the brink of death.
Ever been curious why cats’ and dogs’ eyes, more than humans’, sometimes appear red in photographs? It’s because the light from a camera’s flash penetrates directly to the lens of the eye, then is reflected off the retina—the eyeball’s back surface—then bounces back to the camera. The red one sees in the photo is blood. Cats and dogs have bigger, more open pupils than people, which lets the flash enter their retinas more easily.
To Grin Like a Cheshire Cat
The most famous example of the expression “to grin like a Cheshire cat” occurs in Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865), made vivid by John Tenniel’s wonderful artwork. However, The Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue (1788) already included the expression, defining it as someone “who shows his teeth and gums in laughing.” Did Carroll posit a widely grinning cat or, more specifically, one with a sarcastic streak who taunted Alice?
Betty MacDonald, who wrote adult and children’s fiction, including the Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle books, felt, “Carroll served up the anomaly of a smiling cat, since animals can’t smile—well, perhaps some primates—and emphasized it with a leer of a smile. By the time the cat disappears from the story, all that remains of it is its smile . . . the one thing it never had. That’s Carroll’s perverse sense of humor.”
MacDonald believed the expression derived from cheeses made in Cheshire, England, molded to resemble a grinning cat. As slices were cut away, it was possible to end up with the head, then just the smile.
Others believe the grin was inspired by a cat carved on St. Wilfrid’s Church tower in Grappenhall, a village near the Cheshire town where Carroll, né Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, was born. Others claim the descent is via a cat or lion “with a strange smile” (sometimes described as a feline Mona Lisa) emblazoned on the coat of arms of the Grosvenors, an influential Cheshire family.
Yet others say the progenitor of the phrase was one of Richard III’s forest rangers, an enthusiastic swordsman from Cheshire who also terrified poachers with his wide, sadistic smile. His last name was Caterling, ergo a “grin like a Cheshire Caterling.”
In any case, the expression conjures up the one about the cat who swallowed the canary, another feline whose self-satisfied smirk implies but doesn’t reveal.
Catgut
Most people know it’s not made of any part of a cat—and never was. In Much Ado About Nothing (1600) Shakespeare wrote, “Is it not strange that sheep’s guts should hale souls out of men’s bodies?” (Hale then meant haul.) Musical instruments’ strings and surgical sutures are made of dried, twisted sheep, horse, or ass intestines. How cats entered the musical fray is unknown. An educated guess is that people compared the sound of a badly played violin to . . . caterwauling.
Speaking of musical instruments, a fortunately only theoretical one was a cat organ or cat piano (Katzenklavier in German). Nonetheless, various Europeans—especially Frenchmen and Germans—wrote about it in the 1700s and before. The concept was several cats arranged in a row according to their voices’ natural tone, their tails stretched out beneath a keyboard so each would cry out in mutually harmonizing pain when a key was struck. Sick minds.
The Cat’s Pajamas, Whiskers, and Meow
Flappers were the female “young moderns” of the 1920s, also known as jazz babies or cats (the latter often implied sexual laxity). Pajamas or pyjamas (British spelling) were a fairly new women’s fashion item. In 1922 the New York Times described an unknown woman (a publicity hog?) who landed in the newspaper by strolling Fifth Avenue dressed in yellow silk pajamas, in tandem with four pet cats similarly dressed!
The flapper or cat and her pj’s combined to form what progressives of both genders (American women got the vote in 1922) considered the latest “in” thing. During that deliberately darin
g decade—sandwiched between the horrors and disappointment of the Great War (WWI) and the economic and psychological trauma of the Great Depression—youth and the media made popular catchphrases of the “cat’s pajamas,” “the cat’s whiskers,” “the cat’s meow,” and “the bee’s knees” (young women’s knees were sometimes on display and they didn’t get arrested for it).
In the United States, these phrases meant tip-top, A-1, the best to be had. Cat’s pajamas could also refer—as in “She thinks she’s the cat’s pajamas”—to someone’s conceit. Besides being an excellent person or thing, cat’s whiskers were the fine adjustable wires in a crystal radio receiver. As television later swept the country during the 1950s, radio swept the USA in the Roaring ’20s.
(Cat hairs are more electrostatic than dog hairs, hence kitty cling. But another reason cat hairs stick to clothes more than those of other pets is their microscopically small but very rough barbs.)
Catnip
Catnip is an American term for catmint, a member of the mint family formerly used to make a popular tea, plus juice, infusions, tincture, and poultices. People also smoked and drank it. The US word evolved in the 18th century—nip from nep from Nepeta cataria, Latin for catmint. The herb’s leaves have short soft hairs, its white flowers are spotted with purple, and the pungent scent attracts most but not all cats. How catnip internally affects felines is unknown, but it affects females and males in the same way, as well as some big cats like tigers and lions. Lynx and bobcats crave catnip. Alas, it’s sold commercially to lure and trap them.
The stages of an affected cat’s response to catnip are: sniffing, tasting with head shaking, chin and cheek rubbing, head-over rolling, and bodily rubbing. The experience lasts less than 15 minutes but may include vocalizing—possibly a reaction to hallucinations. (Catnip is not a feline aphrodisiac.)
Most experts agree that younger cats react more strongly to catnip than older ones and that the first experience is the strongest.
Cat Plants
Cattail or cat’s tail is a reed mace—a tall water plant with a velvety dark brown cylindrical flower head that feels like a cat tail—or other plant with thin long parts resembling cats’ tails.
Cat’s foot is a small creeping plant with white flowers and soft white hairs on the leaves and stem. Though it sounds like a fuzzy sweater, it’s a member of the daisy family.
Pussy willow is a willow with soft, fluffy catkins—hanging, wind-pollinated flowering spikes, so named from Old Dutch katteken, meaning kitten.
Cats, like dogs, are carnivores and, unlike humans, can’t thrive on a vegetarian diet. If you’ve wondered why cats often eat sitting up while dogs eat standing up, it has to do with dogs being pack animals—a pet dog’s human family is its adopted pack. In the wild, members often must compete for food scraps, easier to do standing up. Cats, being more solitary hunters—excepting lions—have the mental luxury of eating more slowly and in a more comfortable crouch.
Puss, Pussy
The word puss evolved in the 16th century from German or Dutch, a name for a cat, its diminutive being pussy (formerly also spelled pussie). Puss is also American, Scottish, and Irish slang for someone’s face, as in “What a cute puss you have,” from Irish pus, meaning lips or mouth. Plus it’s a coquettish young female, though a glamour-puss isn’t typically limited by age.
A puss moth is a big, furry, gray-white moth with darker markings.
Why pussy became vulgar slang for female genitals incurs a myriad of theories, some very fanciful, like the old-time aristocratic female habit of sitting with a cat or pussy in one’s lap. Most likely it’s a textural comparison.
To pussyfoot is a negatively connotating verb for behaving overcautiously or non-committally or to move stealthily or sneakily. More positively, it’s aiming soft physical or verbal blows not intended to hurt an opponent—referencing a cat’s soft paws.
Pussy-whipped, a recent derivation, is sexist slang for a female-dominated man (no term for a male-dominated female).
A pussycat bow is a big, soft, floppy bow at the neck of a woman’s blouse.
Ding-dong-dell, pussy’s in the well . . . notice how the majority of kiddie-lit feline references are negative—for example, the cat in the original Pinocchio represents hypocrisy—or take pleasure in a cat’s dilemma. A notable exception is the tomcat hero Puss in Boots.
Cat Animals
Why are male cats toms? “The Life and Adventures of a Cat” was an anonymous English story published in 1760 that became extremely popular. Its male protagonist was called Tom, and soon so was every other male cat.
Catkin is a kitten or small cat. The –kin suffix, now practically obsolete, was a common English diminutive, as in the old-fashioned Daddykins—or lambkin.
Catamount is from cat of the mountain (when rarely used it’s sometimes confused with the non-feline catamite). A catamount is a puma or any medium- or large-sized wild cat. A puma is a mountain lion, also known in North America as a cougar.
More recently, a cougar is a woman who—like Cher, say—pairs with younger men. Psychologist Dr. Betty Berzon offers, “It’s better than ‘dirty old woman,’ which would parallel a ‘dirty old man’ who prefers younger women. It’s too bad ‘cougar’ has a slightly predatory feel to it. On the other hand, there is a somewhat admiring connotation to this new meaning.”
“Cat among the pigeons,” incidentally also the title of an Agatha Christie novel, means stirring something up by introducing a controversial topic, as in mentioning the ex-husband of your hostess at her dinner party. The original phrase was to throw a cat among the pigeons, thereby creating shock, fear or anger.
A civet is a slender nocturnal cat from Asia and Africa with a barred and spotted coat whose scent glands contain a powerful musky perfume much in demand in the fragrance industry (see Musk in Chapter 4). A smaller version of the civet, the linsang, is native to Southeast Asia.
Angora refers to a cat, rabbit or goat or to the fabric made from the latter two’s hair; it’s the old name for Ankara, now the capital of Turkey.
Cat Clowder
A gaggle is a group of geese (also a bunch of disorderly people). Why “gaggle”? One dictionary says it’s imitative of the sound a goose makes. Uh-huh. We say a bevy of quail—no one can claim “bevy” is imitative of quail—but a bevy is also any sizeable number of things or people, beauties or not. Herd, often heard with cows, isn’t specific to them; it means a large number of animals, particularly hoofed mammals that live or are kept together (it’s derogatory when referring to a big group or class of people).
There’s an entire vocabulary of names for groups of specific animals, most going back centuries and many having no particular logical derivation. A few animals have various terms, such as kennel, litter or pack for dogs and stable, team or harras for horses. The majority of such terms are little-known. Some examples:
- a clowder or a glaring of cats
- a gang of elks
- a bale of turtles
- a labor of moles
- a sleuth of bears
- a crash of rhinos
- and a leap of leopards (not lizards)
- a kine of cows
- a float of crocodiles
- a dray of squirrels
- an army of frogs
- a shrewdness of apes
- a drift of hogs
Non-Cats
A North American term for skunk is polecat, though it’s a member of the weasel family. Again, less common animals were often named or nicknamed after a primary animal they more and often less resembled. The pole-part of the term is from an old French word for chicken, a favorite meal for skunks (modern French for chicken is poulet, related to English pullet, a young hen).
The cute, sometimes standing-up meerkat has become much more familiar thanks to TV programs like Meerkat Manor. It’s a small southern African mongoose whose name is Afrikaans—the language of South Africa’s Dutch colonists—for seacat. The mongoose, famous for killing snakes
in India and elsewhere, wasn’t named after a goose. Its name in India’s Marathi language is mangus.
A bearcat is a Southeast Asian bearlike climbing mammal, including the red panda (pandas aren’t bears), apparently so named because they climb trees agilely.
A catbird is a North American songbird with catlike mewing calls.
The prominent “whiskers” of the unattractive bottom-feeding catfish act as sensory organs, helping it to navigate and find food (it’s dark down there). The reputation of catfish as scavengers prevented many people from consuming them, but today farm-raised catfish are also available.
Copycat is an alliterative misnomer, as any cat owner knows. A dog is much more inclined to copy or try and reproduce a human’s action or gesture. Small schoolchildren like to yell “Copycat, copycat!” at fellow offenders. The ongoing allure of alliteration is proven by its frequency in headlines, captions, and sometimes titles.
To Let the Cat Out of the Bag
Nowadays, letting the cat out of the bag means inadvertently revealing something, usually a secret. In medieval times, it meant a shopper (“To market, to market, to buy a fat pig”) had been had. Those who could afford one would barter or haggle for a piglet on display. After a deal was struck, while the buyer was distracted, a cat might be substituted for the little pig in the bag—no paper or plastic, of course. Once home, the hornswoggled shopper would let the cat out of the bag. Which probably later led to a fight back at ye olde marketplace.
This leads to the phrase “buying a pig in a poke.” Meaning sight unseen. “Poke” is a chiefly Scottish term for a bag or small sack (related to the French “poche,” pocket). Caveat emptor, for inside the unexamined poke could be any smallish animal—though you’d think any cat in a bag would make its presence audible long before the shopper returned home.
Holy Cow! Page 4