cat face

n. aberrant surface features or an irregular appearance on fruit, vegetables, or trees, especially when caused by healthy tissue growing over damage. Also v., adj., attrib. Subjects: English, Food & Drink

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Citations: 1890 Montgomery M. Folsom Atlanta Constitution (Ga.) (Mar. 9) “My Blue-Eyed Babies” p. 13: I mentioned to her the fact that there was a bumble bee’s nest in the big cat-faced pine just over the branch. 1905 Washington Post (Mar. 26) “Their Speech is Vivid” p. F1: You may hear that…much of the timber is “cat-faced"…that “cat face” is a scar made by a fire in a tree. 1934 Frank Ridgway Chicago Daily Tribune (Aug. 24) “Roasts, Canned Goodes, And Fruit Cheap This Week” p. 17: Wholesale vegatable men are commenting upon the excess waste in some of the tomatoes they are handling at low prices. Many show cracks from alternate drought and rain and the fruit blotches referred to by the trade as “cat faces.” 1955 George Abraham Chronicle-Telegram (Elyria, Ohio) (May 13) “Green Thumb Queries” p. 27: When you pick up a gnarly apple or peach, or a misshapened strawberry…the cause of this damage has been attributed to cold weather, frost, lack of pollination, disease, etc., but in most instances you can put the finger of guilt on a group of “cat-facing” insects.…Although the healthy tissue around the injured spot grows, a scar is formed over the damaged spot and normal development is slowed down at this point. When thiss happens…you get a “cat-faced” or deformed fruit hardly fit to eat. 1987 Peter Korn @ Ore. Chicago Tribune (Nov. 15) “Hotshots On The Line Battling A Forest Fire” p. 12: Salladay’s greatest fear is of cat-faced timber—a tree burned out at the base by fire, leaving what appears to be a solid tree but is now just a shell with no support inside. This tree is dangerous to fell but too dangerous to let stand. 1988 Melissa Balmain Weiner Orange County Register (Jan. 14) “Irvine farmers examine effects of chill on strawberries” p. 1: Brown strawberries, almost-black strawberries, lumpy, warty cat-faced strawberries: They darken the fields of A.G. Kawamura, outnumbering the ripe, red berries by two to one in some places.…Temperatures dipped to about 30 degrees Fahrenheit the last week of December, not quite low enough to kill entire plants, they said. Winds at times were strong enough to dent, or “cat-face” fruit. 1988 Jeff Barnard Los Angeles Times (May 15) “Some Species Need Forest Fires to Survive Plants Sprouting in Charred Oregon Woodland” p. 4: Atzet stopped again, to drill into the bulging bark of a cat-faced sugar pine. The cat face is a ring of bulging bark that has grown to heal a scar left by a fire. Because the healing bark is loaded with pitch, it tends to burn more intensely each time fire sweeps past, and the cat face grows. 2001 C.L. Chia, Richard M. Manshardt @ College of Tropical Agriculture & Human Resources Fruit and Nuts (Manoa, Hawaii) (Oct.) “Why Some Papaya Plants Fail to Fruit” no. 5, p. 1: Cool winter weather or high soil moisture canlead to a shift toward femalness, where the stamens fuse to the carpels or ovary wall. The resulting fruits become severely ridged (carpelloid, or “cat-faced") and hence are deformed and unmarketable. 2004 Florence Fabricant New York Times (Dec. 21) “Forget About Taste, Florida Says, These Tomatoes Are Just Too Ugly to Ship”: Unlike the smooth, round baseball-size tomatoes usually shipped from Florida from mid-October through mid-April, the lush, vine-ripened UglyRipes have what the industry calls a “cat face,” full of uneven crevices and ridges.

Posted 29 Dec 04 | Permalink | Tell a Friend

Reader comments:

As long as anyone that I know in the plastering trade can remember. The blemishes or hollow spots that show up on the surface while troweling are known as “cat faces”. Something to be avoided they are removed by repeated troweling with additonal plaster or more likely with the “fat” which is the plaster that builds up under your trowel while water troweling the “putty coat”.

by J. Kangas 17 Apr 08, 0232 GMT