If curiosity killed the cat, what did the cat want to know? :p

Well everything obviously!

But did you know 'satisfaction brought it back'?

'Curiosity killed the cat' basically means 'Mind your own business. Being nosy, inquisitive & getting yourself involved in unnecessary things can lead to problems'.

Apparently, 'The Gods fashioned Hell for the inquisitive' as well (Saint Augustine AD 397), I can't imagine somehow that Hell is full of cats, they aren't evil, just curious, so it seems a bit unfair that they should all be sent somewhere like that. Mind you, cats generally like a nice warm patch to curl up in so it might be fitting really! I suppose being in Heaven or Hell is pretty much the same for a cat, they don't have the same kind of emotions as humans as far as anyone can tell, so it's not likely they'd be punished for anything. Perhaps they rub themselves up against the perverted evildoers legs & trip them over. Instead of the rack, they get the cats!

Cat's are meant to be morbidly curious, they need nine lives as opposed to the normal one, because they get into so many scrapes in their quest for knowledge.

Take Freyon, little skinny black tomcat (male). He loved exploring so much that he got into quite a few scrapes over the years, he strutted about all over the neighbourhood, tantalising the ladies with his shiny black coat & full set of whiskers. He was quite gregarious when he wanted to be & used to invite other animals home for tea...he could be seen quite regularly trying to drag some poor unsuspecting squirrel through the catflap! He always got damaged in the process, but somehow this just added to his charm.

He got stuck on several occasions too, once in the school next door during the summer holidays. The workmen had been in fixing things while there were no kids about & Freyon decided he'd like to look for the same reason. He'd tried to go in during school time but the bloody caretaker kept bringing him home and of course there were the kids...bleurgh!

So anyway, he found an open door & in he trotted. He must have been having quite alot of fun because he completely forgot what the time was & pretty soon the workmen packed up & left. He was shut in with no water, no food & nobody to rub against! Over the course of the next two weeks Freyon regularly set off the school alarms, the caretaker was called on each occasion & the humans that Freyon had been allowing to feed him, were fretting that he'd come to a grisly fate! Not so.

One day, out he trotted. He was no worse for having been shut in a school for a couple of weeks. Not even skinnier! The alarm bells thankfully stopped & everyone went back to enjoying their summer.

Freyon eventually met his match in the vicar next door. He poisoned him. Said it was an accident & that he was dreadfully sorry, truth of it was....he didn't like cats in his garden. This could have been because of the Hell connection, the irony being, he was an evil old bastard & I hope he's down there now with Freyon (& his brother Flumpuss, who got runover several years before in his quest to see what was on the other side of the road!) wreaking vengeance on him! ha ha go Freyon & Flumpuss!!

So, in answer to your question: The cat wanted to know everything because they just naturally do!

The phrase was first used by a playwright called Ben Jonson in 1598 & later pinched by William Shakespeare in 'Much Ado About Nothing'. It didn't actually use the word 'curiosity' until around the end of the 19th century, previous to that it had been 'care'. The ending 'Satisfaction brought him back' wasn't added until 1933 & still isn't very well known.