have kittens

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have kittens (third-person singular simple present has kittens, present participle having kittens, simple past and past participle had kittens)

1. (informal) To become extremely upset.

   Your mum will have kittens when she sees what you've done to your hair!

   My teacher has kittens every time I get a question wrong.

   • 1960, P[elham] G[renville] Wodehouse, chapter VII, in Jeeves in the Offing, London: Herbert Jenkins, →OCLC:

     He re-gurgled. “But this is terrible.” “Might be considerably better, I agree.” “Your uncle will be most upset.” “He'll have kittens.”

   • 2010, Jennifer Egan, “Safari”, in A Visit from the Goon Squad:

     ‘Prepare yourself,’ he warned. ‘Your dad is having kittens.’

2. (informal) To be in a state of frantic nervousness.

   The guests are starting to arrive, but the hostess is having kittens because nothing is ready yet.

   • 2011 [1965], Olivia Manning, Friends And Heroes (The Balkan Trilogy)‎, Random House, →ISBN:

     Phipps went on: “One of our chaps, out on a reccy over the Bulgarian front, thought he saw something in the snow. Something fishy. He dropped down to have a dekko and nearly had kittens. What d'you think? Jerry's got a mass of stuff there—tanks, guns, lorries, every sort of heavy armament. All camouflaged. White.”

3. (literal) Usually of a female cat, to give birth to kittens.

• have a cow

• “have kittens v.”, in Green’s Dictionary of Slang, Jonathon Green, 2016–present