According to Snopes, this origin of the phrase is very unlikely for several reasons. First, it’s unlikely that someone expecting a pig would receive a bag with a cat in it and not immediately know something was wrong; pigs and cats don’t resemble or behave like each other at all, even inside a bag. Second, for this phrase to become so well known, the “substitute a cat for a pig” scam would have had to have worked many, many times. Considering the first reason, the second seems even more dubious.
The second possible origin of the saying comes from maritime history. The Wessex Museums explains that the British Royal Navy kept a whip known as a “cat-o’-nine-tails” on ships for disciplining unruly or incompetent sailors. The whip was supposedly stored in a red sack, and therefore, when it was extracted for use, the “cat” was out of the “bag.” Once again, however, this origin story is likely a fable, as there’s no proof that cat-o’-nine-tails were actually stored in special sacks, nor that the phrase originated in the naval community.
The actual etymology of “the cat’s out of the bag” is unclear. Snopes posits that it’s simply a good metaphor for a secret getting out — a cat leaping out of a bag is explosive, surprising, and goes where it wants to go despite the “bag holder’s” wishes. Humor writer Will Rogers was indeed correct when he quipped, per Today I Found Out, “Letting the cat out of the bag is a whole lot easier than putting it back in.”
ncG1vNJzZmhqZGy7psPSmqmorZ6Zwamx1qippZxemLyue82erqxnp52ys7GMrZ%2BeZaCdv6K%2FxGaamqyjYry2wIyonWasmJp6o63GZpqapZVis7O7zGg%3D