a small furry flesh-eating mammal kept as a pet or for catching rats and mice: Felis catus
any of a family of carnivores that includes the domestic cat, lion, tiger, leopard, jaguar, cougar, lynx, and cheetah: family Felidae
informal a malicious woman
= cat-o’-nine-tails
informal
a player or devotee of jazz
a person, esp a man
let the cat out of the bag
to divulge a secret, esp inadvertently
[from the diabolical associations of cats in the Middle Ages, and the fact that cats are notoriously averse to being confined]like a cat on a hot tin roof/on hot bricks
very agitated or uneasy
put/set the cat among the pigeons
to do or say something that causes trouble
catlike adj
[Old English catt from a Germanic word prob borrowed from Latin cattus, catta cat]