Is She?

My sisters and I used to laugh when our grandmother would tell us, “She is a cat,” as a reprimand for our using the pronoun she. Whatever was wrong with she? And who was a cat, and why was she a cat? What the heck?

I never heard the expression from anyone else, don’t remember reading it anywhere, and never met anyone who was familiar with it. Until the other day, that is, when I was looking up English expressions using cat (not an interesting story) and discovered, “She is a cat” in an online list.

More precisely, I found this expression: “Who is she? The cat’s mother?” It has an English and Irish origin, which is about right, because our grandmother was an Irish immigrant and must have picked up the phrase from her forebears.

Here’s the Oxford English Dictionary explanation: “said to one (esp. a child) who uses the pronoun of the third person singular impolitely or with inadequate reference.” I guess if we, as kids, referred to our mom or to our grandmother herself as she, it sounded rude. Instead of saying, “She’s picking us up at 3:00,” we were supposed to say, “Our mom is picking us up at 3:00.” She was somehow disrespectful. If you’re talking about a cat, however, or a cat’s mother, it’s okay to use a slighting pronoun.

The first OED citation explains that the phrase’s purpose is “to enjoin perspicuity of speech and precision  in reference.” Which begs the question, why isn’t he unacceptable also? Why does the OED refer to the third personal singular pronoun when the only pronoun in question is the feminine third person singular pronoun? Are you familiar with the phrase?

And, finally, why is it perfectly acceptable to insult cats?