Gruesome Proverb!

by Elizabeth Emerald

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Cat Watch by Brendaartwork18 on FanArtReview.com THANK YOU!

Thanks for the challenge, Helen!

Though my pick is considered a proverb, rather than an idiom, you encouraged me to post it to the book.

There's more than one way to skin a cat, meaning there is more than one way to do something.

Somebody once told me the expression pertains to skinning catfish.

Alas, I googled it and the derivation refers to cats (and dogs); thus, the gruesome imagery of my cats being so tortured persists. The catfish version is limited to the US southern states.

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https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/32123/origin-of-the-phrase-theres-more-than-one-way-to-skin-a-cat

Discussion as to the origin below; two responses are quoted as written by the contributors. (Don't cite me for SPAGs!)

1) There are many versions of this proverb, which suggests there are always several ways to do something. The earliest printed citation of this proverbial saying that I can find is in a short story by the American humorist Seba Smith - The Money Diggers, 1840:

"There are more ways than one to skin a cat," so are there more ways than one of digging for money. Charles Kingsley used one old British form in Westward Ho! in 1855: “there are more ways of killing a cat than choking it with cream”. Other versions include “there are more ways of killing a cat than by choking it with butter”, and “there are more ways of killing a dog than choking him with pudding”. The earliest version appears as far back as 1678, in the second edition of John Ray’s collection of English proverbs, in which he gives it as “there are more ways to kill a dog than hanging”...

... Writers have pointed to its use in the southern states of the US in reference to the catfish, often abbreviated to cat, a fish that is indeed usually skinned in preparing it for eating. However, it looks very much from the multiple versions of the saying, their wide distribution and their age, that this is just a local application of the proverb.

2) ... Apparently the debate on cat-skinning boiled down to whether or not it was done while the cat was still alive. Here's a clip from the disturbing House of Commons' Minutes of Evidence Taken Before Committee on Bill for Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, 1832:

And if I understand you, you saw this man skinning this cat alive?
You are perfectly satisfied that those cats were skinned alive?
I should think so.

And here's confirmation from The Leisure Hour, 1879, that cats were used for womens' furs, but with a denial they were ever skinned alive:

The Dutch cat-killers had a most peculiar and clever way of killing their cats. It is a fallacy to suppose that cats are skinned alive. In the first place, to skin a cat when alive would be utterly impossible; and, secondly, it does not make any difference in the quality of the skin. The origin of the fallacy is probably that a cat is easier skinned immediately after death than if allowed to become rigid.

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