Baseball "the real katish" (1898)

[Douglas G. Wilson]

I think this is probably a variant of the adjective "catish" (also "katish"
etc.) (apparently pronounced "ka-TISH" etc.) which appears in DARE meaning
"elegant" etc.

I don't have any idea of what the etymology might be, but assuming the
last-syllable stress I would tend to speculate along the lines of some kind
of dog-French, or a truncation of a fanciful adjective ("catitious" or
"caticial" or whatever).

-- Doug Wilson