While browsing through the law-lib archives, I saw that Rich Leiter posted
a message on June 3 asking about the origin of the expression "more
than one way to skin a cat." Rich thought the "cat" in the expression was
actually a nautical or military term having nothing to do with animals.
In fact, the "cat" in the expression does refer to a cat. If you look in
any of the major proverb dictionaries you will see that this expression is
merely a variant of old proverbs about "There are more ways to skin a cat
(dog) than ...", going back to the 17th century.
Fred Shapiro
Associate Librarian for Public Services
Lillian Goldman Library
Yale Law School
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