Why do we speak of someone 'having
kittens'?
When we say 'she will have kittens if she
finds out about this' we mean that someone will be terribly upset,
almost to the point of hysteria.
At first sight there is no obvious
connection between distraught human behaviour and giving birth to
kittens. True, a panic-stricken or hysterical woman who happens to
be pregnant might suffer a miscarriage as a result of the intense
emotional distress, so suddenly giving birth as a result of panic
is not hard to understand. But why kittens?
Why not puppies, or some other animal
image?
To find the answer we have to turn the clock
back to medieval times, when cats were thought of as the witch's
familiars. If a pregnant woman was suffering agonizing pains, it
was believed that she was bewitched and that she had kittens
clawing at her inside her womb.
Because witches had control over cats, they
could provide magical potions to destroy the litter, so that the
wretched woman would not give birth to kittens. As late as the
seventeenth century an excuse for obtaining an abortion was given
in court as removing 'cats in the belly'. Since any woman believing
herself to be bewitched and about to give birth to a litter of
kittens would become hysterical with fear and disgust, it is easy
to see how the phrase 'having kittens' has come to stand for a
state of angry panic.