cat \cat\ (k[a^]t), n. [AS. cat; akin to D. & Dan. kat, Sw.
   katt, Icel. k["o]ttr, G. katze, kater, Ir. cat, W. cath,
   Armor. kaz, LL. catus, Bisc. catua, NGr. ga`ta, ga`tos, Russ.
   & Pol. kot, Turk. kedi, Ar. qitt; of unknown origin. Cf.
   Kitten.]
   1. (Zool.) Any animal belonging to the natural family
      Felidae, and in particular to the various species of the
      genera Felis, Panthera, and Lynx. The domestic cat
      is Felis domestica. The European wild cat (Felis
      catus) is much larger than the domestic cat. In the
      United States the name wild cat is commonly applied to
      the bay lynx (Lynx rufus). The larger felines, such as
      the lion, tiger, leopard, and cougar, are often referred
      to as cats, and sometimes as big cats. See Wild cat, and
      Tiger cat.
      [1913 Webster +PJC]

   Note: The domestic cat includes many varieties named from
         their place of origin or from some peculiarity; as, the
         Angora cat; the Maltese cat; the Manx cat; the
         Siamese cat.
         [1913 Webster]

               Laying aside their often rancorous debate over
               how best to preserve the Florida panther, state
               and federal wildlife officials,
               environmentalists, and independent scientists
               endorsed the proposal, and in 1995 the eight cats
               [female Texas cougars] were brought from Texas
               and released. . . .
               Uprooted from the arid hills of West Texas, three
               of the imports have died, but the remaining five
               adapted to swamp life and have each given birth
               to at least one litter of kittens. --Mark Derr
                                                  (N. Y. Times,
                                                  Nov. 2, 1999,
                                                  Science Times
                                                  p. F2).
         [PJC]

   Note: The word cat is also used to designate other animals,
         from some fancied resemblance; as, civet cat, fisher
         cat, catbird, catfish shark, sea cat.
         [1913 Webster]

   2. (Naut.)
      (a) A strong vessel with a narrow stern, projecting
          quarters, and deep waist. It is employed in the coal
          and timber trade.
      (b) A strong tackle used to draw an anchor up to the
          cathead of a ship. --Totten.
          [1913 Webster]

   3. A double tripod (for holding a plate, etc.), having six
      feet, of which three rest on the ground, in whatever
      position it is placed.
      [1913 Webster]

   4. An old game; specifically:
      (a) The game of tipcat and the implement with which it is
          played. See Tipcat.
      (b) A game of ball, called, according to the number of
          batters, one old cat, two old cat, etc.
          [1913 Webster]

   5. same as cat o' nine tails; as, British sailors feared
      the cat.
      [1913 Webster + WordNet 1.5]

   6. A catamaran.
      [PJC]

   Angora cat, blind cat, See under Angora, Blind.

   Black cat the fisher. See under Black.

   Cat and dog, like a cat and dog; quarrelsome; inharmonious.
      "I am sure we have lived a cat and dog life of it."
      --Coleridge.

   Cat block (Naut.), a heavy iron-strapped block with a large
      hook, part of the tackle used in drawing an anchor up to
      the cathead.

   Cat hook (Naut.), a strong hook attached to a cat block.

   Cat nap, a very short sleep. [Colloq.]

   Cat o' nine tails, an instrument of punishment consisting
      of nine pieces of knotted line or cord fastened to a
      handle; -- formerly used to flog offenders on the bare
      back.

   Cat's cradle, game played, esp. by children, with a string
      looped on the fingers so, as to resemble small cradle. The
      string is transferred from the fingers of one to those of
      another, at each transfer with a change of form. See
      Cratch, Cratch cradle.

   To bell the cat, to perform a very dangerous or very
      difficult task; -- taken metaphorically from a fable about
      a mouse who proposes to put a bell on a cat, so as to be
      able to hear the cat coming.

   To let the cat out of the bag, to tell a secret, carelessly
      or willfully. [Colloq.]

   Bush cat, the serval. See Serval.
      [1913 Webster]

	

	Cat \Cat\, v. t. [imp. & p. p. Catted; p. pr. & vb. n.
   Catting.] (Naut.)
   To bring to the cathead; as, to cat an anchor. See Anchor.
   --Totten.
   [1913 Webster]

	

	Cat o' nine tails \Cat" o' nine" tails`\, cat-o'-nine-tails
\cat"-o'-nine"-tails`\n.
   1. a whip used as an instrument of punishment consisting of
      nine pieces of knotted line or cord fastened to a handle;
      -- formerly used to flog offenders on the bare back; --
      called also the cat. It was used in the British Navy to
      maintain discipline on board sailing ships.

   Syn: cat.
        [WordNet 1.5 +PJC] Catopter

	

	cat
    n 1: feline mammal usually having thick soft fur and no ability
         to roar: domestic cats; wildcats [syn: cat, true cat]
    2: an informal term for a youth or man; "a nice guy"; "the guy's
       only doing it for some doll" [syn: guy, cat, hombre,
       bozo]
    3: a spiteful woman gossip; "what a cat she is!"
    4: the leaves of the shrub Catha edulis which are chewed like
       tobacco or used to make tea; has the effect of a euphoric
       stimulant; "in Yemen kat is used daily by 85% of adults"
       [syn: kat, khat, qat, quat, cat, Arabian tea,
       African tea]
    5: a whip with nine knotted cords; "British sailors feared the
       cat" [syn: cat-o'-nine-tails, cat]
    6: a large tracked vehicle that is propelled by two endless
       metal belts; frequently used for moving earth in construction
       and farm work [syn: Caterpillar, cat]
    7: any of several large cats typically able to roar and living
       in the wild [syn: big cat, cat]
    8: a method of examining body organs by scanning them with X
       rays and using a computer to construct a series of cross-
       sectional scans along a single axis [syn: computerized
       tomography, computed tomography, CT, computerized axial
       tomography, computed axial tomography, CAT]
    v 1: beat with a cat-o'-nine-tails
    2: eject the contents of the stomach through the mouth; "After
       drinking too much, the students vomited"; "He purged
       continuously"; "The patient regurgitated the food we gave him
       last night" [syn: vomit, vomit up, purge, cast,
       sick, cat, be sick, disgorge, regorge, retch,
       puke, barf, spew, spue, chuck, upchuck, honk,
       regurgitate, throw up] [ant: keep down]

	

	128 Moby Thesaurus words for "cat":
   Abyssinian cat, Adamite, Angora cat, Argus, Cheshire cat,
   Chinchilla cat, Himalayan cat, Maltese cat, Manx cat, Persian cat,
   alley cat, barf, bastard, being, belt, bird, blacksnake, bloke,
   blue cat, blue devils, blues, body, boy, buck, bugger, bullwhack,
   bullwhip, calico cat, cascade, cast, chap, character, coon cat,
   cowhide, creature, crop, customer, dods, dorts, duck, dumps, eagle,
   earthling, feline, feller, fellow, ferret, flagellum, frumps, gee,
   gent, gentleman, gib, gib-cat, grimalkin, groundling, grumps, guy,
   hand, hawk, head, heave, homo, horsewhip, house cat, human,
   human being, individual, jasper, joker, kit, kitling, kitten,
   kitty, kitty-cat, knout, kurbash, lad, lash, life, living soul,
   lynx, man, mopes, mortal, mouser, mulligrubs, mumps, nose, one,
   party, person, personage, personality, pouts, puke, puss, pussy,
   pussycat, quirt, rawhide, razor strap, scourge, silver cat, single,
   sjambok, somebody, someone, soul, spew, strap, stud, sulks,
   sullens, tabby, tabby cat, tellurian, terran, thong, throw up,
   tiger cat, tom, tomcat, tortoise-shell cat, weasel, whip, whiplash,
   worldling

	

	CAT
       Condition Access Table (DVB)

	

	CAT
       Computer Aided Testing

	

	CAT
       Central Alaska Time [-1000] (TZ)

	

	CAT
       Common Authentication Technology (IETF, RFC 1511)

	

	CAT
       Computer Aided Technology (fair)

	

	CAT
       Computer Aided Telephony

	

	cat
 vt.

    [from catenate via Unix cat(1)]

    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.

	

	CAT

   Common Abstract Tree Language.  R. Voeller & Uwe Schmidt, U
   Kiel, Germany 1983.  Universal intermediate language, used by
   Norsk Data in their family of compilers.  "A Multi-Language
   Compiler System with Automatically Generated Codegenerators,
   U. Schmidt et al, SIGPLAN Notices 19(6):202-2121 (June 1984).

   [Jargon File]

	

	cat

    (From "catenate") Unix's command which copies one or
   more entire files to the screen or some other output sink
   without pause.

   See also dd, BLT.

   Among Unix fans, cat 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
   (the pr command can be used to do this), 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 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 files.  The name "cat"
   for the former operation is just as unintuitive as, say,
   LISP's cdr.

   Of such oppositions are holy wars made.

   (1994-11-29)

	

	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