Cantering Through Cant (9)
I am not a cat lover, but they are one of our established domestic pets and have lent their name to a number of terms, none of them particularly complimentary, according to Francis Grose’s A Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue (1785).
To live under the cat’s foot is “to be under the dominion of a wife; hen-pecked”, while to be made a cat’s paw of is “to be made a tool or instrument to accomplish the purpose of another”. It is an allusion, Grose relates, “to the story of a monkey, who made use of a cat’s paw to scratch a roasted chestnut out of the fire”.
To cat or shoot the cat is “to vomit out of drunkenness” and cat-sticks are “thin legs”.
Being a stranger in a town or a hick from the sticks seemed to be fraught with danger. Cat whipping or whipping the cat was a “trick often practiced on ignorant country fellows, vain of their strength, by laying a wager with them that they may be pulled through a pond by a cat. The bet being made, a rope is fixed round the waist of the party to be catted, and the end thrown across the pond, to which the cat is also fastened by a packthread, and three or four sturdy fellows are appointed to lead and whip the cat: these on a signal given, seize the end of the cord, and pretending to whip the cat, haul the astonished booby through the water”. What fun!.
Alternatively, the term was used by tailors to describe “working jobs at private houses, as practised in the country”.
Time for a cat’s sleep, methinks, “a counterfeit sleep”.
