cat on a hot tin roof, like a

Skittish, nervous, ill at ease. A similar anal- ogy—“like a cat on a hot bake-stone”—appeared in John Ray’s Proverbs of 1678. It was later replaced by “like a cat on hot bricks,” still used in the mid- twentieth century, but Tennessee Williams preferred the more picturesque “hot tin roof ” for the title of his 1955 play, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.