Where You'll Find the Cat Box and Kitty Litter on a Golf Course
Do you know what the golf slang terms "cat box" and "kitty litter" refer to? They are both alternate names for sand bunkers (sand traps) on golf courses.
Of course, these slang terms originate from the resemblance some golfers see between a bunker and the cat litter our feline friends do their business in. (Hopefully, in this anology, your shot out of the bunker doesn't wind being up the equivalent of cat poo.) Many cat owners scoop their litter boxes, and too many recreational golfers "scoop" their shots out of sand.
Related: 34 slang terms golfers have for bunkers and sand
The "cat box" in the photo above shows a Pete Dye-designed bunker at Blackwolf Run in Kohler, Wisconsin. The terms "cat box" and "kitty litter" do not imply anything about the quality of a bunker's design or the qualities of the sand within it. They are simply slang synonyms.
The earliest appearances in newspapers that we've seen for either term are in the early 1970s. But if the terms were making it into newspapers then, they were definitely being used on golf courses much earlier. Actual, real kitty litter, however, was only invented in 1947, so that's as far back as it's possible for "kitty litter" to go as a golf term. "Cat box" predates "kitty litter" in its non-golf usage, so probably also predates it as golf lingo.
One golfer, after hitting into a bunker, might bemoan to another, "Dang it, in the cat box again." And the reply might be something like, "The kitty litter seems to be calling your ball today."
Photo credit:
More golf slang:
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Brown, Hal. "Sports Signals," The Lincoln (Neb.) Star, August 23, 1972.
Cornell, Si. "Corkage fee," The Cincinnati (Ohio) Post, May 30, 1972.
Pedroli, Hubert, and Tiegreen, Mary. Let the Big Dog Eat! (affiliate link), William Morrow Publisher, 2000.
