shoot the cat

shoot the cat

obsolete slang To vomit intensely or profusely, especially due to seasickness or drunkenness. I never drink spirits after I've been drinking ale, as I invariable spend the rest of the night shooting the cat. We can always tell who's new on the ship by who's shooting the cat over the side of the ship.
See also: cat, shoot
Farlex Dictionary of Idioms.

shoot the cat

Sl. to empty one's stomach; to vomit. I must have shot the cat a dozen times during the night. Shooting the cat is no fun when you're weak and dizzy.
See also: cat, shoot
McGraw-Hill Dictionary of American Idioms and Phrasal Verbs.

shoot the cat

tv. to empty one’s stomach; to vomit. I must have shot the cat a dozen times during the night.
See also: cat, shoot
McGraw-Hill's Dictionary of American Slang and Colloquial Expressions
See also:
  • buicks
  • talk to Ralph on the big white (tele)phone
  • cooky
  • talk to Huey on the big white (tele)phone
  • chow
  • launch
  • launch (one's) lunch
  • drive the big bus
  • bus
  • drive the porcelain bus
References in periodicals archive
I told him I wasn't going to shoot the cat. I know that it was just curious.
"It is believed an air weapon was used to shoot the cat three times.
Strategies include the "naughty kitchen", which is like the naughty step but I send Mummy to the kitchen to make a cup of coffee and pray she gets distracted by a load of frozen peas trapped underneath the freezer so she doesn't try to make me do "a nice jigsaw or a bit of quiet colouring" when all I want to do is charge around the lounge or chuck my toys from the top of the stairs or pretend to shoot the cat.
"They're building the blind where we'll wait to shoot the cat," Duri replied.
"I would shoot the cat if it sang as much out of tune as that," he told the shivering fans.
When that happens, herders poison or shoot the cats. It's a problem across all 12 Central Asian countries in which snow leopards live (see map, left).
If cheetahs are harming the livestock, it is legal to shoot the cats despite the fact that they are endangered, Randle says.
Animal-lover Philip Ridgeway, of Penyffordd, near Mold, said Cllr David Willliams threatened to shoot the cats or abandon them in a forest.