Tag Archives: cats

A cat in the sink is worth two in the…wait, that’s not right. That’s my cat Brady above. We have a lot of colloquial sayings that when you think about them make absolutely no sense. When you use them everyone knows what you mean, but we rarely think about the literal meanings. Doing my research for this I also discovered that cats have had a rough time of it in old, folksy sayings.

There’s more than one way to skin a cat: That is disgusting. Who did that experiment? I hope his neighbors called the SPCA on him, or her. Secondarily, just out of curiosity, how many ways are there? Shouldn’t there be a saying that goes, “There’s 17 ways to skin a cat”? Sadly there’s probably an instructional video on Youtube.

It’s raining cats and dogs: Also disgusting. What if it really did rain cats and dogs? That is horrible. Who actually imagined cats and dogs falling from the sky? It was probably the cat skinning guy when he was running short of cats for his experiment. It would also be incredibly dangerous to be outside in one of those storms. “It will be partly sunny in the morning but  there’s a 40% chance of poodles later in the afternoon.”  

Cat got your tongue?: I imagine sleeping at night and my cat sneaking up and biting my tongue, pulling it right out of my mouth and running off with it. Imagine how horrible that would be. On a related thought, do cats have a secret stash somewhere? A little cubby or corner where they hide the tongues?

He let the cat out of the bag: Must be the guy who was skinning them all. When I got my cat I asked for a bag. They didn’t appreciate the humor and considered taking the cat back before  making me use a nice little carrier.

You can’t swing a dead cat without hitting…: Again with the cats! I suppose that it’s at least a way to make use of what would otherwise be a very useless cat. And in what country is dead cat swinging a unit to measure distance? It’s got to be better than the metric system.

That’ll cost you an arm and a leg: Was there a time body parts were currency? And how much do you get for an arm or a leg? Where they using cat arms and legs? For both I’d want at least a car.

Be still my beating heart: Who really wants that to happen? What if your heart obeyed you?

Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth: Why would I? Do I look like a horse orthodontist? Was there a time in history when people were giving horses with dental problems as gifts? Or was it more of a bad breath issue? Or maybe the horses tongue was missing because the cat got it.

Get off your high horse: Was there a time it was considered especially snooty to ride exceptionally tall horses? If the horse is so tall how do you get up on it in the first place? Maybe the person that was first told this was just fearful of falling off once he got up there. Maybe the phrase was uttered by someone who was jealous because they only had a donkey or shetland pony.

Don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater: That is horrible! Did this actually happen once? How do you make that mistake? This incident resulted in the formation of Child Protective Services.

I could have kept going, but maybe there will be a part 2 to this list in the future. Just to make you feel better about the cats, this Youtube link goes to a video montage of funny cat stuff.  About 50 seconds into it though there’s a video of a cat trying to pick a fight with an alligator and you can hear people laughing in the background.  It’s pretty amazing. You’ve got to watch that part. Happy Saturday everyone. As always if you enjoy #ThePhilFactor please hit the Facebook, Twitter or other share button.