CATS IN SACKS

"Letting the cat out of the bag" has several possible derivations. The most likely comes from the old practice of selling piglets in sacks (a pig in a poke; poke being an old word for sack); fraudulent farmers sometimes put a cat in the sack and claimed it was a lively piglet. Someone checking the contents literally "let the cat out of the bag". Another saying about discovering things is "good liquor will make the cat speak" from the 16th Century. Inebriated people may talk carelessly and let the cat out of the bag. "Enough to make a cat speak" means something that is good enough to loosen one's tongue, while it is generally strong drink, it could also be a large bribe.

Another explanation for "letting the cat out of the bag" relates to Middle Ages Europe when bloodsports were rife. A cat might be kept in a sack before being released to dogs in a fighting pit. Even today, bagged foxes are sometimes used by British foxhunts. A third alternative refers to the old tradition of drowning unwanted cats in weighted sacks. A soft-hearted servant given this task might take the sack some distance away and release the cat. Cats' homing abilities are legendary and if it returned home unscathed then everyone knew he had let the cat out of the bag! Unless of course it was a case of "never was a cat drowned that could see the shore" (16th Century) which suggests that the end of an endeavour is in sight or that a task is not impossible.

A less likely derivation of "letting the cat out of the bag" is a nautical derivation which relates to getting the cat-o-nine-tails out of its protective leather or baize bag preparatory to a lashing. A less likely derivation relates to getting the cat-o-nine-tails out of its protective leather bag preparatory to a lashing. To "fight like two cats in a sack" probably also harks back to Middle Ages bloodsports - two cats might be put into a sack and bets taken on which one would survive. Another version is "as mad as a bag (full) of cats" and even "as mad as a cat in a sack" which conjure vivid images of the sport and now refer to angry individuals. An alternative, but no more humane by modern standard, is that the struggling cats were put in a sack for drowning. Intriguingly, a variant on this refers to fighting like two rabbits in a sack, which might be a reference to live rabbits in a hunters game sack.

There are references to adulteresses in Turkey being placed in a sack with a live cat. Only the woan's head was outside of the sack. Not only would the frantic cat being clawing at her body, the whole assemblage would be thrown into water, causing the cat to become even more frantic as both parties drowned. Perhaps in addition to a painful punishment, the promiscuous woman was also being likened to the notoriously promiscuous female cat.

As in the British "cat in a bag" there is the European "buying a cat in the sack" which refers to being betrayed by someone. The saying comes from an old story in which the devil gives one an exchange token when someone on a crossway gives him a cat (or other bribe) in a sack by way of payment, but when the devil opens the sack, there's nothing in it. This echoes the old Roman death mythology whereby one had to pay the ferryman in order to cross the river Styx; one should always give payment on arriving at the far bank in case Charon took the money and ran.