Today cats have made a spectacular comeback as America's pet of choice. But whatever the status of cats, their mysterious aloofness, their prowess as hunters, their elegant grace and supple agility and their kittenish curiosity are all recorded in our everyday speech and writing. Whatever their ups and downs, cats have usually landed on their feet and have left their paw prints on our mother tongue. I present the first of three columns in which, quick as a cat , I make a feline for cat words in our English language. In some African languages, a man is referred to as a cat, which in American slang gives us the likes of cool cat , hepcat and fat cat .
Cats have kittens, and so does our English language.
In the card game of faro the tiger was the bank or house, possibly because the tiger was once used on signs marking the entrance to Chinese gambling houses. Over the years gamblers transformed the tiger into a kitty , and it became the name for the pot in poker and other card games. In one of Aesop's fables, the mice held a general council to consider what measures they could take to outwit their common enemy, the Cat. By this means we should always know when the Cat is in the neighborhood. The mice looked around at one another, and nobody spoke.