like a cat in a strange garret

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English

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Prepositional phrase

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like a cat in a strange garret

  1. (US, simile) Having a feeling of uncertainty and misapprehension due to being in an unfamiliar situation.
    • 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:
      Well, mass'r, I can't say for Lucinda and Dinah, but I should feel like a cat in a strange garret.
    • 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.