Where the Word "Cat" Comes From—and Other Cat Culture Oddities

Why is a cat called a cat? It sounds like a silly question, but the answer actually tells us something about where domestic cats came from.

Almost every European language uses some version of the same word. French has chat. German has Katze. Italian has gatto. Spanish has gato. Swedish and Norwegian have katt. Dutch has Kat. Polish has kot. Around the Mediterranean, you get Yiddish kats, Greek gata, and Maltese qattus. That's not a coincidence. It's one old word that spread across the world from a single source.

The likely origin is Arabic and North Africa. The earliest form seems to be quttah, and the Berber languages have something similar. This fits perfectly with what we know: all domestic cats descend from the North African wildcat, and they were first tamed by the ancient Egyptians. The Egyptians also gave us puss and pussy, which come from Pasht, the name of an early Egyptian cat goddess.

Even the word tabby has an Eastern origin. It comes from the Turkish utabi. And in Turkish, the everyday word for cat is kedi—probably the root of our word kitty.

Now for some weird English expressions. Why do we say someone "let the cat out of the bag"? It goes back to an old market scam. Farmers would bring piglets to market in cloth bags. A dishonest seller might put a cat in the bag instead and claim it was a pig. If a buyer insisted on opening the bag, the cat would jump out and the scam was exposed. The secret was out. The same scam gave us the phrase "never buy a pig in a poke"—a poke being the bag.

Why do we say it's "raining cats and dogs"? The most colorful explanation comes from old European cities. Streets were narrow, dirty, and poorly drained. A heavy storm would flood everything, drowning stray cats and dogs that lived in the gutters. After the storm, people would come out and see dead animals everywhere. Someone might joke that it had rained cats and dogs. A more scholarly theory says it comes from the Greek word catadupa, meaning waterfall. Either way, it's a strange phrase.

Why does "not enough room to swing a cat" mean a small space? In the old navy, the cat was a whip—specifically the cat-o'-nine-tails. It was long and heavy. Below deck, there wasn't enough room to swing it. A sailor being punished had to be brought up to the deck, where there was space. The whip was called a cat because the scars it left looked like cat scratches.

Why is a male cat called a Tom? That one has a clear date. In 1760, an anonymous author published a book called The Life and Adventures of a Cat. The main character was a male cat named Tom. The book was popular, and soon people started calling any male cat a Tom. The name stuck for over two hundred years.

Why do cats have nine lives? Because in ancient times, nine was considered a lucky number—three times three, a trinity of trinities. So the lucky animal got the lucky number. Simple as that.

And why is a black cat lucky in Britain but unlucky in America? In Britain, black cats have long been seen as good luck. There are three reasons. First, in ancient Egypt, sacred cats brought blessings. Second, in the Middle Ages, people feared "evil cats," so if a black cat crossed your path and didn't hurt you, you were considered lucky. Third, an old English proverb says: "Whenever the cat of the house is black, the lasses of lovers will have no lack." In other words, a black cat was thought to attract romantic attention. In America, the superstition flipped: white cats are lucky, black cats are bad luck.