Raining Cats and Dogs

Day 230 / 365

I have my fingers crossed as I write this, but I think that these dreaded rains in Mumbai might just be coming to an end. This rainy season was horrible all around the country, and we read this phrase a lot all over the internet -

It’s raining cats and dogs!

Which makes me think, what does that even mean? Where does this phrase come from and why would, even metaphorically, heavy rain imply that cats and dogs will start falling from the sky?

To answer this question we have to go back a few centuries like we often do in these types of articles. We don’t know for sure how this expression originated, but it starts coming up in literature around the 17th century. Here are a few possible origin stories

Dead animals washed up in the rain

Back in the 1600s, the streets in England were filthy, and the storm waters would often carry away dead stray cats and dogs. Poet Jonathan Swift mentions this in his poem “A Description of a City Shower’. So maybe seeing dead animals floating in the rainwater might have lead to people coming up with the phrase — “It’s raining cats and dogs!”

Pets falling from the roof

This is a popular but slightly less believable theory. It goes like this, back in the 17th Century England, people kept their pets like cats and dogs on the roofs. When it rained, it got slippery up there, and the animals would fall down. Thus causing the aforementioned rains of cats and dogs.

This post is part of my 365 Day Project for 2019. Read about it here

Yesterday’s blog — A 60-year-old broth