Hold your horses Don't let the cat out of the bag. Don't count your chickens before they're hatched. Have you ever heard these crazy expressions? People use them even when there aren't any animals around That's because these sentences are idioms--phrases that mean something different than what the words in them actually say. But don't let idioms get your goat. Let's explore a variety of idioms involving animals and figure out what people really mean when they use them.