like a cat on hot bricks

Idioms and Phrases

Also, like a cat on a hot tin roof . Restless or skittish, unable to remain still, as in Nervous about the lecture he had to give, David was like a cat on hot bricks . The first expression replaced a still earlier one, like a cat on a hot bake-stone , which appeared in John Ray's Proverbs (1678). The second was popularized as the title of Tennessee Williams's play, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1955).