railroad slang: "on the cat hop" (right on time)

[Barnhart]

Ramon F. Adams in _The Language of the Railroader_.  Norman: U. of
Oklahoma Press, 1977, p 108:

on the advertised: According to schedule; on time; also _on the card, on
the cat hop_.

In the DA:

cat hop, 1891 Quinn Fools of Fortune 195 If, on the other hand, two of the
three cards are of the same denomination, only three arrangements are
possible, ... which is technically called a 'cat hop.'  1909 Cent. Supp.,
Cat-hop, in faro, two cards of the same denomination left in the
dealing-box for the last turn.

In DARE:

cat-hop n cf cat back 1949 PADS 11.19 CO, Cat-hop  ... Mild bucking [of a
horse].

cat back v 1961 Adams Old-Time Cowhand 300, A hoss which jumped 'bout with
arched back and stiffened knees at a pretense of buckin' was said to ...
"cat back."

N.B.  The two Adams books are by the same author.

I don't find it in OED/OEDs/Chapman/Wentworth & Flexner.  MW3, Barrey and
Van den Bark (1942) have only the gambling sense.

More information as I may find it.

Regards,
David

barnhart at highlands.com

American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU> on Sunday, February 13,
2005 at 4:50 PM -0500 wrote:
>---------------------- Information from the mail header
>-----------------------
>Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>Poster:       "Cohen, Gerald Leonard" <gcohen at UMR.EDU>
>Subject:      railroad slang: "on the cat hop" (right on time)
>-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>   I've been asked by a history professor  about an expression he came
>across in his research on the railroads: "on the cat hop" (right on
>time), e.g., "The freight train left on the cat hop."
>
>    I don't have OED or DARE handy, and so maybe "cat hop" appears there.
>But in any case I don't find it in HDAS or Casell's Dictionary of Slang.
>Would anyone in ads-l be familiar with this term and how it came to mean
>"right on time"?
>
>Gerald Cohen