#2 - The phrase "the cat is out of the bag"

I love secrets. I love keeping them. I love finding them out. But one thing I love more than secrets is dramatically revealing them when the time is right. Nothing is more awesome than putting on a big show and surprising everyone with a fantastic revelation. When Tony Stark put on a press conference after blowing up his factory in LA, nobody expected anything more than the standard industry/government cover-up story. But Tony walked up on that stage with a huge burlap sack, opened it up in front of the cameras, and a Tabby in a red and gold armored exoskeleton flew out and shot Obadiah Stone square in the dome with a Hellfire missile. Actually that probably would have been slightly less awesome that what really happened, because feline's normally don't speak enough English to say "I AM IRONMAN" the way Robert Downey Jr does. But I digress. If I ever move into a large house with a strict landlord, I will probably let them know that I'm breaking their rules about pets by bringing in a cat in a grocery bag and handing it to them along with the milk and cereal.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that I like the imagery of cats in bags more than the actual phrase. It's a great figure of speech, and I use it as often as possible. But there is something intrinsically hilarious about a house cat in a pillow case, as I discovered as a child before our cat Lucy started running out of the room every time I walked in.