Take this The Proverbial Cat Quiz! Difficult Trivia | Idioms and Proverbs

Answer: All cats love fish but fear to wet their paws

The adage Lady Macbeth refers to is an old Chinese proverb that had become well known in Shakespeare's day - it was probably brought back from China by Marco Polo, and spread through Europe. It's a lovely instance of anachronism, because 'Macbeth' is set in the 11th century and Marco didn't go to China until the 13th century - 1271, in fact.

A side serving of trivia: Macbeth was a real person, and he did indeed overthrow Duncan to gain the throne of Scotland. However, it should be noted that Duncan was not the nice person Shakespeare made him out to be - he was a tyrant - and Macbeth was not the vacillating catspaw of an ambitious wife.

In fact, after the overthrow of Duncan, Macbeth was elected king by the Scottish nobles and reigned for 17 years.

Answer: A blind bargain

While the saying has morphed into meaning keeping a secret, it originally meant a blind bargain. Unscrupulous farmers would palm off a cat in a bag in place of a suckling pig on some poor unsuspecting person who was hoping to buy a pig for a nice pork dinner. If the buyer opened the bag, the trick would be exposed, of course. A similar saying is "buying a pig in a poke" (poke, in this case, being a corruption of the French 'poche' or pocket). The saying first appears in Thomas Tussers 'Five Hundreth Good Points of Husbandrie', published in 1580. The French "chat en poche" is similar.

It is a well-known, and in my view cruel, practice to drown unwanted cats and kittens by putting them in a sack and hurling said sack into the nearest body of water. Nasty!

I don't really know if ratting cats were kept in bags until they were released to wreak havoc on the rodent population, but my grandfather had a ferret whose job it was to keep down rats in the barns and the ferret lived in a barrel, not a bag. And who on earth would waste good liquor on a cat?

Answer: Stirring up trouble

You must have seen what happens if a cat appears when a flock of birds - pigeons or any other kind of bird - are feeding on the lawn. There's an instant flurry of wings as the birds fly up every which way to get out of reach of the cat's claws and jaws. Cats spell trouble for birds. Evidently the term originated during the British Raj in India. British soldiers, when they weren't on military duty, amused themselves by putting a cat into a pigeon pen and then placing bets as to how many pigeons the cat could dispose of with one swipe of its paw.

I've never tried herding pigeons, so I don't know if it's possible, but I know that it's impossible to herd cats! Nor do I know whether or not one can frighten a pigeon into submission. It would be daft to try to hide a cat in the middle of a flock of pigeons, since the pigeons wouldn't stick around long enough to provide any kind of camouflage.

Answer: I'm as good as you are

A political pamphlet with the title 'A Cat May Look at a King' was published in 1652 in England. This was during the Commonwealth period (the Parliamentary forces had lopped off the head of King Charles I for treason!) and the implication in the title is that "all men are equal". The saying itself was known in the 16th century.

Perhaps it has to do with that unblinking stare that a cat can turn on one, which is slightly discomfiting. Cats are supremely self-assured (it's probably a race-memory thing from the days when they were worshipped in Egypt). I've always enjoyed the sayings "Dogs have owners; cats have staff." and "Dogs come when you call them; cats tell you to leave a message and they'll get back to you when its convenient for them."

Answer: an agent who carries out nefarious deeds for another

A cat's paw is one who is hired to do the dirty work planned by another. The term stems from an old fable about a monkey who wanted to pull roasted chestnuts from the fire but, afraid of getting his own paw burned, persuaded his good friend the cat to do the deed for him.

There are other definitions of cat's paw that do not apply to people. In the nautical vocabulary a cat's paw is both a ripple on a calm sea that usually indicates a coming storm, and a loop in a rope to which a hook can be attached.

The stand-in clue refers to Cyrano de Bergerac who stood beneath the balcony of the fair Roxane (where she couldn't see him) and told her of his love for her while the handsome Christian stood where Roxane could see him and lip-synched.

Answer: 1948

The cat o' nine tails, usually referred to as the cat, was a short-handled whip with nine independent braided ropes or leather thongs. It was used to punish soldiers and sailors for various misdeeds. It had nine thongs, so the story goes, because the number nine is three times three - a trinity of Trinities - which would be more efficacious than punishment by a whip with just one thong!

The first mention of the cat o' nine tails in use in Britain occurs in 1695, although such whips have been around since the days of the ancient Egyptians. Indeed, the flagellum which which Jesus was scourged prior to his crucifixion was a seven-thonged short-handled whip with iron barbs along the edges of each thong that would tear the flesh of the person being whipped as the whipper pulled away the whip to strike the next blow.

The cat was also used in British prisons and throughout the former British Empire, later the Commonwealth. Its use was banned in the UK in 1948, but it was still in use in Australia as late as 1957. It was banned in the Bahamas in 1993, Jamaica and Barbados in 1994, and St. Vincent and the Grenadines, South Africa and Zambia followed suit in 1997, with Uganda banning it in 2001 and Fiji in 2002. In several other former British colonies, the cat o' nine tails is still in use, and even in some of the places where it was banned there has been a movement to reinstate the cat o' nine tails as a method of punishment. Trinidad and Tobago has never banned the use of the cat.

The term "No room to swing a cat" refers to the cat o' nine tails. Sometimes punishment was administered below decks on a ship and there may have not been elbow room enough to swing the cat high to get a really hard blow coming down on the victim.

Answer: Carl Sandburg

Carl Sandburg's poem 'Fog' reads:

The fog comes
on little cat feet.

It sits looking
over harbor and city
on silent haunches
and then moves on.

A lovely image, to my way of thinking.

Answer: Dawn

Cat light is a common phrase in Herefordshire in England, and it describes that pearly-grey sky that precedes sun-up. Presumably the term comes about because that's usually when cats come home after a night of hunting. My grandfather and I used to venture out into cat light to gather mushrooms, which we would then take home to fry up with home-cured bacon. Yum!

Answer: A British law passed to prevent hunger strikes

The Cat and Mouse Act was the popular name for a law passed by the British parliament in 1913. Its actual name was the Prisoners Temporary Discharge for Ill-health Act, and it was designed to prevent women who had been arrested during suffragette demonstrations from going on prolonged hunger strikes in prison, thereby becoming martyrs for their cause.

The law provided for the release of the suffragettes following their arrest and conviction for disturbing the peace. They were released on licence (a form of parole, if you will) and were subject to re-arrest at any time.

The Act came to be known as the Cat and Mouse Act because to play cat and mouse with someone in your power is to toy with them, just as a cat will play with a mouse that it has caught.

Answer: Scottish monoliths

Cat stanes can be found all over Scotland in places where ancient battles were fought. The name comes from the Gaelic word cath, meaning battle. Cat stanes are often mistaken by the uninitiated for Druidical monuments, but there is absolutely no connection.