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Definition: Cat |
CatNoun1. Feline mammal usually having thick soft fur and being unable to roar; domestic cats; wildcats. 2. An informal term for a youth or man; "a nice guy"; "the guy's only doing it for some doll". 3. A spiteful woman gossip; "what a cat she is!". 4. A whip with nine knotted cords; "British sailors feared the cat". 5. (trademark) a tractor that is driven by caterpillar tracks. 6. Any of several large cats typically able to roar and living in the wild. 7. A method of examining body organs by scanning them with X rays and using a computer to construct an image. Verb1. Beat with a cat-o'-nine-tails. 2. Eject the contents of the stomach through the mouth; "After drinking too much, the students vomited". Source: WordNet 1.7.1 Copyright © 2001 by Princeton University. All rights reserved. |
Date "cat" was first used in popular English literature: sometime before 1258. (references) |
| Domain | Definition |
Satire | CAT, n. A soft, indestructible automaton provided by nature to be kicked when things go wrong in the domestic circle. This is a dog, This is a cat. This is a frog, This is a rat. Run, dog, mew, cat. Jump, frog, gnaw, rat. Elevenson. Source: Devil's Dictionary. |
Computing | Cat [from `catenate' via {Unix `cat(1)'] vt. 1. [techspeak] To spew an entire file to the screen or some other output sink without pause (syn. blast). 2. By extension, to dump large amounts of data at an unprepared target or with no intention of browsing it carefully. Usage: considered silly. Rare outside Unix sites. See also dd, BLT. Among Unix fans, `cat(1)' is considered an excellent example of user-interface design, because it delivers the file contents without such verbosity as spacing or headers between the files, and because it does not require the files to consist of lines of text, but works with any sort of data. Among Unix haters, `cat(1)' is considered the canonical example of _bad_ user-interface design, because of its woefully unobvious name. It is far more often used to blast a file to standard output than to concatenate two files. The name `cat' for the former operation is just as unintuitive as, say, LISP's cdr. Of such oppositions are holy wars made.... See also UUOC. Source: Jargon File. |
Agriculture | Catastrophic crop insurance. (references) |
Food & Agriculture | Any track-laying not wheeled tractor. Source: European Union. (references) |
Literature | Cat Called a "familiar," from the mediæval superstition that Satan's favourite form was a black cat. Hence "witches" were said to have a cat as their familiar. Cat. A symbol of liberty. The Roman goddess of Liberty was represented as holding a cup in one hand, a broken sceptre in the other, and with a cat lying at her feet. No animal is so great an enemy to all constraint as a cat. Cat. Held in veneration by the Egyptians under the name of Ælurus. This deity is represented with a human body and a cat's head. Diodorus tells us that whoever killed a cat, even by accident, was by the Egyptians punished by death. According to Egyptian tradition, Diana assumed the form of a cat, and thus excited the fury of the giants. The London Review says the Egyptians worshipped the cat as a symbol of the moon, not only because it is more active after sunset, but from the dilation and contraction of its pupil, symbolical of the waxing and waning of the night-goddess. (See Puss.) Hang me in a bottle like a cat. (Much Ado about Nothing, i. I.) In olden times a cat was for sport enclosed in a bag or leather bottle, and hung to the branch of a tree, as a mark for bowmen to shoot at. Steevens tells us of another sport: "A cat was placed in a soot bag, and hung on a line; the players had to beat out the bottom of the bag without getting besmudged, and he who succeeded in so doing was allowed to hunt the cat afterwards. Some ... are mad if they behold a cat. (Merchant of Venice, iv. l.) Henri III. of France swooned if he caught sight of a cat, and Napoleon I. showed a morbid horror of the same; so did one of the Ferdinands, Emperor of Germany. (See Antipathy, page 53; Pig.). Source: Brewer's Dictionary. |
Multilingual Slang | English (pussy). (references) |
Slang | Noun. Source: The word derives from a domestic animal called a cat. Definition: The term "cat" referes to a guy of any sort. usually ranging from the ages of 18 yrs. and up. Context: One would use the term to describe a guy. Social Source: Swingers. Source: Compiled by The University of Oregon. (additional references) |
Slang in 1811 | CAT. A common prostitute. An old cat; a cross old woman. Source: 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue. |
Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. | |
(From Wikipedia, the free Encyclopedia)
This article deals with the domestic cat. For other species of the cat family, please see Felidae.
Cat Typical short-haired domestic cat Scientific classification
Kingdom: Animalia Phylum: Chordata Class: Mammalia Order: Carnivora Family: Felidae Genus: Felis Species: silvestris Subspecies: catus The cat, Felis silvestris catus, is a small feline carnivore that has been domesticated for several millennia. The term cat most commonly means a domestic cat, although it can also be used to refer to the other members of the feline family. For example lions, tigers, jaguars and the like are often referred to as the big cats.
Physiology
The physiology of cats is fairly consistent, especially when compared to the other most common domestic animal, the dog. Cats typically weigh somewhere in the range of 5 to 7 kg (10 to 15 pounds), rarely over 9 kg (20 pounds). In captivity cats typically live 10 to 15 years, though the oldest known cat lived to age 34. Domestic cats, on average, live longer if they are not permitted to go outdoors, and if they are spayed or neutered.
Cats (including domesticated cats) have a scent organ in the roof of their mouths called the vomeronasal, or Jacobson's Organ. When a cat wrinkles its muzzle, raises its chin, and lets its tongue hang a bit, it is opening the passage to the vomeronasal. This is called the flehman response.
The wild ancestor of the cat is believed to have been from a desert climate, and cats display behaviours associated with such creatures. They enjoy heat and sunning themselves. Their feces are usually very dry and cats prefer to bury them in sandy places. They are able to stay unmoving in one place for long periods of time, usually when observing prey. In North Africa there are still small wildcats that are probably the ancestors of todays domesticated breeds.
Baby cats are known as kittens, which is the same term used for baby squirrels.
The sound a cat makes is written "meow" in American English, "miaow" in British English and "mjá" in icelandic. Cats can also produce a purring noise, in the presence of their humans, that is immensely pleasurable to many humans. Some cats growl when they see other cats on their territory.
History and mythology
The cat was first domesticated by the Ancient Egyptians in 4000 BC, to keep mice and rats away from their grain stores. They regarded cats as embodiments of the goddess Bast; the penalty for killing a cat was death, and when a cat died it was sometimes mummified in the same way as a human. In the Middle Ages, though, cats were often thought to be witches' familiars. Today some people believe that white cats are unlucky, or that it is unlucky if a black cat crosses your path, but others believe that black cats are lucky.
The Cat is one of the 12-year cycle of animals which appear in the Vietnamese zodiac related to the Chinese calendar.
Domestication
Cats are kept for companionship as pets, and to hunt mice and rats. Farms often have dozens of cats, living semi-wild in the barns. Hunting in the barns and the fields, they kill and eat rodents that would otherwise eat large parts of the grain crop. (Many pet cats successfully hunt and kill mice, birds and fish by instinct, but may not eat their prey.) Feral cats may live alone or in large groups with communal nurseries, depending on resource availability.
Like many other domesticated animals, cats lived in a mutualistic arrangement with humans. The benefit of removing rats and mice from humans' food stores outweighed the cost of allowing a formerly-wild animal to enjoy the relative safety of a human settlement; hence, the relationship between cat and human has continued. However, unlike other domesticated species, housecats' ancestors did not hunt socially or enjoy the safety of a herd, as other domesticated animals did. This evolutionary history may be the reason cats do not 'understand' the desires of humans in the same way that dogs do; before humans, cats had fewer social relationships to benefit from. This may also contribute to a sense common among pet owners that cats are both more aloof and more self-sufficient than other pets. However, cats can be very affectionate towards their humans, especially if they imprint on them at a very young age and are treated with consistent affection.
For more information on the care of domestic cats, see How to choose your pet and take care of it, which has a section on cats.
Varieties of domestic cat
There are many named breeds, each with distinct features and heritage. However, due to common cross-breeding in populated areas, many cats are simply identified as belonging to the homogeneous breeds of domestic longhair and domestic shorthair, depending on their type of fur.
Calico (US) or tortoiseshell (UK) cats have multiple colors. Bicolor cats are partly white. A tabby cat is a striped cat.
A male cat is usually called a tom cat, a female cat is called a queen. A young cat is called a kitten. A cat whose ancestry is officially registered is called a purebred cat or a Pedigreed cat or a Show cat. The owners and breeders of show cats compete to see who can breed the cat with the closest resemblance to the 'ideal' definition of the breed. Less than one percent of the total feline population are purebred cats - the remaining 99% have mixed ancestry and are generally known as moggies, or more properly domestic longhairs and domestic shorthairs.
Cats as food
In desperate times, people have been known to be reduced to cooking and eating cats. This occurred in Argentina in 1996. [1] In some poor parts of Africa, there are no stray cats on the street, because every stray that is found gets caught and cooked. Cats, like many other animals, are also occasionally prepared in Cantonese cuisine.
Quotations
- "The cat is a wild animal that inhabits the homes of humans." -- Konrad Lorenz, Man Meets Dog
Related Topics
- List of historical cats
- List of fictional cats
- Big cat
- Cat is also a commonly used short form for catamaran.
- For the Unix command see cat (Unix).
- CAT also stands for Computed Axial (or Assisted) Topography-see Cat Scan.
Source: adapted by the editor from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia under a copyleft GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL) from the article "Cat."
(From Wikipedia, the free Encyclopedia)
