Cats and dogs you say?

Well I must admit, I was feeling a bit adventurous when I ventured out in shorts and a t-shirt, laundry encased in a large green rucksack, sans umbrella. The looming clouds had been darkening the skies for much of the afternoon, and I figured that it might hold off for perhaps another 45 minutes. Boy, was I wrong!

Slade was unwinding at home, soaking in a bath after a particularly rough day at pushing and pulling heavy steel around. I figured he’d be in bed, deep in slumber-land, when I called him from the laundromat with my urgent pleas of “Please come pick me up! I don’t want to drown in the puddles”. What an understatement. Lightening was flashing like a fireworks display, with intermittnet showers of pellet-sized golf balls hailing down on the poor suckers (aka me) deluged by the torrential downpour, as I’ve not seen since last in the jungles of Guatemala!

Raining cats and dogs … what a funny term. But indeed it was ….
Its origins?? In medieval times, no less.

Peasants used to live in tiny hovels with thatched straw roofs. Their cats and dogs would live outside and often climbed onto the roof to bed down for the night presumably warmed by the heat from the fires inside the hovels.

When there was very heavy rain falling, the straw would become very slippery and the animals often fell to the ground!