I have heard the expression used when talking about a small room or similar, ie: “Not enough room to swing a cat around”, but have never been able to find out where the saying originated.
Not sure but I’m thinking that whoever originated the term had never tried to swing a cat before thinking it up or they wouldn’t have been around to come up with the statement.
wolf189 (possessed of a healthy respect for the little fuzzballs)
It comes from a short lash, often used in early naval discipline. As in a cat o’ nine tails.
Sorry, but I’m too lazy to look up a cite right now. That leaves my explanation woefully open to dispute.
No, you’re right. “Cat” here is most likely short for “cat 'o nine tails.” It certainly seems the simplest and most logical.
Well there you go. You learn something new every day.
Thanks for that!
Cheers.
Check out http://www.bartleby.net/81/3164.html for an explanation
I’m not disputing the origin of the term, but does anyone have an actual cite in print? Colin’s link doesn’t quite make it, unless I missed it.
Well, I suppose you will just have to take my word for it that this is a print source, of genuine paper, etc. 
There are probably other and better ones, but this is what is available to me.
“Brewer’s Dictionary of Phrase & Fable” edition pub. Wordsworth Editions 1993, Ware, Hertfordshire, U.K.
The “hang me in a bottle” bit is, (says Brewer) a game of putting a cat into a bag or a bottle and hanging it from a tree for bowmen to shoot at, and is referred to in Much Ado about Nothing. The Kilkenny cats reference (acc. Brewer) was similarly cruel - two soldiers (in 1789) tied two cats together by their tails and hung them over a rope in order to watch them fight. When an officer approached to stop this, one soldier cut the two tails and the cats ran away pretty damn fast. Being asked for an explanation, the soldiers told the officer that the cats had been fighting fiercely and had devoured each other all but their tails.
Pretty gruesome, eh? I know “Brewer’s” is also available online, but I don’t have a link right now. Hope this helps.
on the other hand, I’ve often used the expression “You can’t swing a dead cat without hitting…”
As in, “You can’t swing a dead cat without hitting someone who has a theory on where this phrase came from.”
Just wanted to second spritle’s observation as to the “dead cat” phrase. As in, “My commuter train is so lousy with lawyers you couldn’t swing a dead cat without hitting one.”
I always have a mental image of Huck Finn or Tom Sawyer, who I seem to recall had an affinity for dead cats.
In the Adventures of Tom Sawyer, th boy’s cure for warts was to tie something to the tail of a dead cat, say some incantation, swing the cat around their head a certain number of times and by flinging the cat they flung the warts.
Mark Twain used the phrase in the early part of “The Innocents Abroad” in reference to the size of the rooms on the ship in which the innocents were traveling to Europe.
(paraphrasing some here, its been awhile):
“Our staterooms were of a size that one couldn’t swing a cat around by its tail, at least without doing serious damage to the cat.”
Beyond that, I haven’t seen it in print, which could merely mean I need to read more.
It was well-known enough in the 1910s to be used in a Jerome Kern song:
"When it’s nesting time in Flatbush we will take a little flat,
With a ‘Welcome’ on the mat,
Where there’s room to swing a cat . . . "
Hmmm…cats do seem to figure in these expressions pretty often. My favorite, which is pretty common around my old home town, is “not enough room to cuss a cat without getting fur in your mouth”. Is this in use anywhere other than rural Louisiana? It’s self-explanatory, of course, but could it have been derived from/inspired by the phrase Wytehawk asked about?
Of course, if you are cruel enough to pick a cat up by the tail, you’d better swing him around. Otherwise, he’ll bow up and grind your hand into hamburger to free himself.
Damn, balance, I’m gonna be looking for opportunities to use that one!
Continuing the feline fever, there’s always the chestnut, “Jumpy as a long tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs.”
The phrase in question is:
“If I do, hang me in a bottle like a cat and shoot
at me; and he that hits me, let him be clapped on
the shoulder, and called Adam.”
–Much Ado About Nothing, Act 1, Scene i
“if I do” refers to falling in love and getting married, as
Benedick (the speaker) shortly after says:
“The savage bull may; but if ever the sensible
Benedick bear it, pluck off the bull’s horns and set
them in my forehead: and let me be vilely painted,
and in such great letters as they write ‘Here is
good horse to hire,’ let them signify under my sign
‘Here you may see Benedick the married man.’”
No comments on Benedick’s attitude about marriage.
My grandmother, from rural South Carolina, constantly bemoans the size of her kitchen and says that there is neither “room to swing a cat” or “room to cuss a cat.” She doesn’t say the part about the fur, but the two expressions seem interchangeable.