cat   (kāt)    n.   A small carnivorous mammal (Felis catus or F. domesticus) domesticated since early times as a catcher of rats and mice and as a pet and existing in several distinctive breeds and varieties. Any of various other carnivorous mammals of the family Felidae, which includes the lion, tiger, leopard, and lynx. The fur of a domestic cat. A person, especially a man. A player or devotee of jazz music. A cathead. A device for raising an anchor to the cathead. A catboat. A catamaran. Informal A woman who is regarded as spiteful. Slang A person, especially a man. A player or devotee of jazz music. A cathead. A device for raising an anchor to the cathead. A catboat. A catamaran. A cat-o'-nine-tails. A catfish. Nautical A cathead. A device for raising an anchor to the cathead. A catboat. A catamaran. v.   cat·ted, cat·ting, cats v.   tr. Nautical To hoist an anchor to (the cathead). v.   intr. Slang To look for sexual partners; have an affair or affairs: "catting around with every lady in sight" (Gore Vidal). [Middle English, from Old English catt, from Germanic *kattuz. Sense 6d, short for catamaran.]

Cat

Cat\, n. [AS. cat; akin to D. & Dan. kat, Sw. kett, Icel. k["o]ttr, G. katze, kater, Ir. Cat, W. cath, Armor. kaz, LL. catus, Bisc. catua, NGr. ?, ?, Russ. & Pol. cot, Turk. kedi, Ar. qitt; of unknown origin. CF. Ketten.]

1. (Zo["o]l.) An animal of various species of the genera Felis 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) See Wild cat, and Tiger cat.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

5. A cat o' nine tails. See below.

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

Bush cat, the serval. See Serval.

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.
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....

cat 

Main Entry: cat
Pronunciation: 'kat
Function: noun
often attributive 1 : a carnivorous mammal (Felis catus) long domesticated and keptas a pet or for catching rats and mice
2 : any of a family (Felidae) of mammals including the domestic cat, lion, tiger, leopard, jaguar, cougar, wildcat, lynx, and cheetah

CAT abbr.
computerized axial tomography

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).
[The Jargon File]

cat

In addition to the idioms beginning with cat, also see alley cat; bell the cat; curiosity killed the cat; fat cat; grin like a Cheshire cat; let the cat out of the bag; like a cat on a hot brick; look like something the cat dragged in; look like the cat that ate the canary; more than one way to skin a cat; not enough room to swing a cat; play cat and mouse; rain cats and dogs; when the cat's away.

cat cataract