THE CAT’S OUT OF THE BAG
An untimely letter sinks a boater’s scheme.
As luck would have it, Karen Schultz had taken a well-deserved day of PTO from the hospital and was at home weeding her garden when the sound of tires crunching on gravel announced the arrival of the mail truck at the box near the end of the driveway. In the box, she found a letter from the bank, addressed to Karen, a “just so you know” memo alerting one spouse to the fact that the other had applied for a personal loan.
The amount was $3,600.
Dean Schultz intended to deposit these borrowed funds into his classified executive account for the purchase of a 12-foot pre-owned aluminum boat and 6-horse outboard, an ideal auxiliary rig for exploring the upper reaches of Wisconsin’s Wolf River.
Usually, Dean is home first to collect the mail.
Karen was surprised to receive this announcement. Dean found the page of bank letterhead on the kitchen table when he arrived home from work. Later that evening he related the story to us all at the Lakeview Inn.
“She didn’t say a word but wrote ‘WTF?’ with a thick black Sharpie on the bottom of the letter,” he said. “I didn’t know the bank would send that notice for such a small loan. It wasn’t a second mortgage!”
“Well, I guess that really let the cat out of the bag,” opined my good friend Chuck Larson.
To which bartender Wally interjected, “Appropriate use of a marine-based idiom there, Chuck.”
Silence as the group with collective furrowed brow waited for Wally to elaborate.
“The origin of the expression ‘let the cat out of the bag’ dates to the 18th century,” Wally said as he wiped dry a glass. “The cat, or cat o’ nine tails, was a whip of nine knotted cords attached to a handle and used to flog seamen as punishment for drunkenness or insubordination. In the Royal Navy, the cat o’ nine tails was kept in a red bag and not removed until the offender was secured on deck. When the cat was pulled from the bag, his punishment was revealed. In other words, the secret was out.”
Silence at the bar.
“The Royal Navy did not formally suspend use of the cat until 1879.”
Wally then answered our unspoken question.
“I found that tidbit in Breverton’s Nautical Curiosities,” Wally said. “The phrase ‘no room to swing a cat’ relates to the fact that there was only 4 feet 6 inches of headroom on the gun decks, too low to effectively deliver a blow with the cat o’ nine tails, so the punishment had to be administered on the open main deck.”
Which is why Dean has been hanging out in the basement — belowdecks as it were — lest Karen remove her metaphorical cat from the bag.
The cat, or cat o’ nine tails, was a whip of nine knotted cords attached to a handle and used to flog seamen as punishment for drunkenness or insubordination.