Chapter Cat and Fiddle to Catacomb of C by Brewer's Phrase & Fable

proper. The whole is a pun on the word Catti, the Teutonic settlers of Caithness, i.e. Catti-ness, and mean, “Touch not the clan Cattan or Mountain Cat without a glaive.” The same words are the adopted motto of Grant of Ballindalloch, and are explained by the second motto, ensë et animo.
   In French: On ne prend pas tel chat sans moufles.
   What can you have of a cat but her skin? The thing is useless for any purpose but one. In former times the cat's fur was used for trimming cloaks and coats, but the flesh is utterly useless.
   Who ate the cat? A gentleman who had his larder frequently assailed by bargees, had a cat cooked and placed there as a decoy. It was taken like the other foods, and became a standing jest against these larder pilferers.
   A Cheshire cat. He grins like a Cheshire cat. Cheese was formerly sold in Cheshire moulded like a cat. The allusion is to the grinning cheese-cat, but is applied to persons who show their teeth and gums when they laugh. (See Alice in Wonderland.)
   A Kilkenny cat. The story is that, during the rebellion of Ireland, Kilkenny was garrisoned by a troop of Hessian soldiers, who amused themselves in barracks by tying two cats together by their tails and throwing them across a clothes-line to fight. The officers, hearing of this, resolved to put a stop to the practice. The look-out man, enjoying the sport, did not observe the officer on duty approaching the barracks; but one of the troopers, more quick-sighted, seizing a sword, cut the two tails, and the cats made their escape. When the officer inquired the meaning of the two bleeding tails, he was coolly told that two cats had been fighting and had devoured each other all but the tails.
    Whatever the true story, it is certain that the municipalities of Kilkenny and Irishtown contended so stoutly about their respective boundaries and rights to the end of the seventeenth century, that they mutually impoverished each other, leaving little else than “two tails” behind.
   Whittington's cat. A cat is a ship formed on the Norwegian model, having a narrow stern, projecting quarters, and deep waist. It is strongly built, and used in the coal trade. Harrison speaks of it as a “cat” or “catch.” According to tradition, Sir Richard Whittington made his money by trading in coals, which he conveyed in his “cat” from Newcastle to London. The black faces of his coal-heavers gave rise to the tale about the Moors. In confirmation of this suggestion, it may be added that Whittington was Lord Mayor in 1397, and coal was first made an article of trade from Newcastle to London in 1381.

Cat's Cradle A child's play, with a piece of twine. Corrupt for cratchcradle or manger cradle, in which the infant Saviour was laid. Cratch is the French crèche (a rack or manger), and to the present hour the racks which stand in fields for cattle to eat from are called cratches.

Cat's Foot To live under the cat's foot. To be under petticoat government; to be henpecked. A mouse under the paw of a cat lives but by sufferance and at the cat's pleasure.

Cat's Melody (The). Squalling.

“The children were playing the cat's melody to
keep their mother in countenance.” - W. B. Yeats:
Fairy Tales of the Irish Peasantry, p. 238.

Cat's Paw To be made a cat's paw of, i.e. the tool of another, the medium of doing another's dirty work. The allusion is to the fable of the monkey who wanted to get from the fire some roasted chestnuts, and took the paw of the cat to get them from the hot ashes.

“I had no intention of becoming a cat's paw to draw European chestnuts out of the fire.” - Com.
Rodgers.

   At sea, light air during a calm causing a ripple on the water, and indicating a storm, is called by sailors a cat's paw, and seamen affirm that the frolics of a cat indicate a gale. These are relics of a superstition that cats are witches or demons in disguise.

Cat's Sleep A sham sleep, like that of a cat watching a mouse.

Cats    Mistress Tofts, the singer, left legacies at death to twenty cats.

“Not Niobê mourned more for fourteen brats,
Nor Mistress Tofts, to leave her twenty cats.”
Peter Pindar: Old Simon.

Catacomb A subterranean place for the burial of the dead. The Persians have a city they call