like a cat on hot bricks

Idioms  

1. 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).

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Example Sentences

He keeps on a-hindering me, hopping up and down like a cat on hot bricks.

From Dead Man's Land Being the Voyage to Zimbambangwe of certain and uncertain blacks and whites by Wood, Stanley L.

"When Bill walked in like a cat on hot bricks and stood there looking stuffed, that was just the Personality That Wins!"

From Indiscretions of Archie by Wodehouse, P. G. (Pelham Grenville)

It didn’t seem to him to be necessary to lead up to this announcement like a cat on hot bricks, considering that Lady Feo had openly flouted his chief from the first.

From The Rustle of Silk by Hamilton, Cosmo

He sent men up to the masthead to keep a good look-out, an' he was dancing about like a cat on hot bricks all the morning.

From Many Cargoes by Jacobs, W. W. (William Wymark)

Dan moved round like a cat on hot bricks.

From A California Girl by Eldridge, Edward