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lating, with equal readiness, cold meat and coals, spirits and paraffin, etc., etc.
1827. R. B. Peake, Comfortable Lodgings, Act I., Sc. iii. I wonder whether the cat ever comes in here, and knocks anything over? Sir Hippington Miff, here's your health!—Ladies, yours! (Drinks.) Bless my soul! the cup's empty! I'll turn it over, and lay the fault at pussy's door.
1871. Figaro, 2 July. 'My Landlady.' Who on my viands waxes fat?—Who keeps a most voracious cat!—Who often listens on my mat? My Landlady.
Flying cat, subs. (old).—An owl.
1690. B. E., Dictionary Canting Crew, s.v. Flutter. An owl is a Flying-Cat.
TO jerk, shoot, or whip the cat; or simply, to cat. To vomit; generally from over indulgence in drink.—See Accounts and Cast up Accounts.
1609. Armin, Maids of More-cl. (1880), 70. Ile baste their bellies and their lippes till we haue ierk't the cat with our three whippes. [m.]
1630. J. Taylor ('Water P.'), Brood Cormor, wks. III., p. 5, col. 1. You may not say hee's drunke .. For though he be as drunke as any rat He hath but catcht a fox, or whipt the cat.
1830. Marryat, Kings Own, ch. xxxii. I'm cursedly inclined to shoot the cat.
To whip the cat, otherwise to draw through the water with a cat, phr. (old).—1. To indulge in practical jokes. [For suggested origin, see quotation 1785.]
1614. B. Jonson, Barthol. Fair, I., iv. [n.]. I'll be drawn with a good gib cat through the great pond at home. [m.]
1690. B. E., Dictionary Canting Crew. Catting: drawing a Fellow through a Pond with a cat.
1785. Grose, Dict. Vulg. Tongue. Cat-whipping or whipping the cat: a trick often practised 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 pack-thread, 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.
2. (tailors', etc.).—To work at private houses. In America the term is also used by carpenters and other itinerants, especially schoolmasters who 'board round.' At one time it was more convenient to pay in kind than in currency; and, in rural New England, a school-teacher would be 'boarded round' amongst his pupils' parents as a part of his remuneration. (See Washington Irving's Legend of Sleepy Hollow.) This was called whipping the cat.
1871. De Vere, Americanisms, 648. Whipping the cat: an old English phrase, used only by tailors and carpenters, has maintained its existence in New England, Pennsylvania, and a few other States, where it denotes the annual visit of a tailor to repair the clothes of a household. It is said to have originated in a very rough practical joke, which bears the same name in Hampshire, England, and of which, it is surmised, the tailor may have been the victim (J. R. Lowell). The simple tailors of former days liked thus to go from house to house in the rural districts, providing the families with clothing. The chief romance for the happy 'Schneider' was in the abundant and wholesome cheer of the farmer who employed him, and as his annual visits fell in the pudding and sausage season, he was usually crammed with that kind of 'vegetables,' as he facetiously called them, to his heart's content. The only objection made to catwhipping, was that it afforded no opportunity to 'cabbage,' and in former days this was a serious grievance. The introduction of large manufacturing establishments, low-priced ready-made clothing, and the advent of the sewing-machine, have now nearly made an end to this itinerant occupation. The terms catwhipper and catwhipping were often facetiously, and
