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Swinging Cat Reprised

Posted by Word Camel on April 28, 2002

I found an interesting reference to room to swing a cat in the Peter Ackroyd Biography of London. He mentions a reference from Edward Lovett's Magic in Modern London, 1925 in which "a woman in White Chapel told an investigator that when moving house, it was customary to swing the cat around the room to induce it to stay."

It's not clear whether that was supposed to make the cat stay in the old place or the new. What is clear - at least to me - is that none of these people seem to know much about cats!

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