Meanings
- USsimileHaving a feeling of uncertainty and misapprehension due to being in an unfamiliar situation.
1862 Annual Report of the Secretary of the Vermont Board of Education Mothers cannot conveniently leave home to get about, and fathers, to use their own expression, "feel like a cat in a strange garret," when screwed up in one of the seats to the school house.
1 more example
Well, mass'r, I can't say for Lucinda and Dinah, but I should feel like a cat in a strange garret.
1851 June – 1852 April, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Uncle Tom’s Cabin; or, Life among the Lowly, volume (please specify |volume=I or II), Boston, Mass.: John P[unchard] Jewett & Company; Cleveland, Oh.: Jewett, Proctor & Worthington, published 20 March 1852, →OCLC
Cite this entry
like a cat in a strange garret. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 5, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/like%20a%20cat%20in%20a%20strange%20garret
“like a cat in a strange garret.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/like%20a%20cat%20in%20a%20strange%20garret. Accessed November 5, 2026.
WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “like a cat in a strange garret,” accessed November 5, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/like%20a%20cat%20in%20a%20strange%20garret.
Source: like a cat in a strange garret on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.