"hot dog" article, 1913; catfish/cat

[Laurence Horn]

At 9:11 PM -0500 10/22/03, Gerald Cohen wrote:
>At 7:11 PM -0400 10/22/03, Douglas G. Wilson wrote:
>>>---"'Hot cat' stand"--what exactly is this?
>>
>>Presumably a catfish stand (altered for humor). If the catfish stand is
>>unfamiliar, one can find several instances by the usual Googling.
>
>Thanks; this looks like the solution. But there's no need to assume
>that "catfish" was humorously altered to "cat." "Cat" can mean
>"catfish"; cf. "There's more than one way to skin a cat." It's known
>that the reference here is to a catfish, not a feline.
>
Is that in fact known?  The French say that there are more ways to
kill a cat than by drowning it in butter, and I'm pretty sure they're
not talking about catfish.  I wonder whether the English cat-skinning
might also refer originally to the feline, much as we might prefer
otherwise (I write as a cat-owner three times over, none of which are
the swimming kind).  What do the first cites tell us?  It's true that
"cat" is cited for 'catfish' as early as 1705, but when did the "more
than one way to skin a cat" originate, and how do we know the
reference was to the Annarhicas, Pimelodus, or one of the other
relevant species?

larry