This phrase may have something to do with the old 'sport" of swinging cats by their tails as targets for archers. The words aren"t nautical in origin, as is often said. The expression goes back at least to the mid-sixteen hundreds, and cat-o-nine-tails isn"t recorded until about 1670, which makes it unlikely that the phrase originated with some sea captain having no room to punish a rebellious sailor with a cat-o-nine-tails, or cat as it was called for short.