Talk:Cat o' nine tails

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My understanding is that "letting the cat out of the bag" does NOT come from the cat-o-nine-tails, but rather Sicily during the Muslim occupation. Christians who desired pork were sometimes sold piglets in bags, often late at night or in hurried exchanges, since eating pork was illegal. Unscrupulous vendors would sometimes put a cat in a bag instead and sell it as if it was a piglet, with the purchaser not discovering the ruse until he arrived home. Sometimes the cat would worm out of the bag...hence, the cat would be out of the bag, leading to the modern sense of the phrase as "the jig is up".

[edit] construction

I think the opening should be edited somehow, it seems inconsistent. Maybe split sections up more evenly between the naval use and the army use?

Also, where did the info on naval cats come from? I have no idea on the weight, but naval cats, as far as I know, did not typically have a handle. They were simply made from rope and thrown away after use.

I think you have recently been reading a book which I have seen describing word for word what you have written about this absurd piglet thing!! The saying letting the cat out of the bag IS to do with the cat o nine tails. You should not quote what you read without referencing. Its called plagiarism!!

18:00, 3 April 2006 (UTC)

Meiow Flog him!!

[edit] Pokemon?

Uh, I believe that the pokemon reference is NOT to the cat o' nine tales. Ninetales is from a Japanese tradition that has to do with foxes, with their tails splitting or something. Ninetales isn't even a cat!

[edit] bdsm

i'm going to include about five or six words in the "modern use" section on its' bdsm ties, since, to be honest, that's what a lot of people (westerners, at least) associate it with. as there is an absolutely ridiculous brouhaha going on at Bullwhip over a reference to it's bdsm ties by some deranged deletionist, i just wanted to state my intention first. Joeyramoney 18:34, 6 June 2006 (UTC)