The nickname of the act came about because of the domestic cat's purported habit of playing with its prey, allowing it to temporarily escape a number of times, before killing it.

[4] To attain the goal of suffrage on the same basis as men, the Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU, known colloquially as the suffragettes) engaged in acts of protest such as the breaking of windows, arson, and the "technical assault" (without causing harm) of police officers.

In response to what the organisation viewed as brutal punishment and harsh treatment by the government at the time, imprisoned WSPU members embarked on a sustained campaign of hunger strikes.

Faced with growing public disquiet over the tactic of force feeding, and the determination of the jailed suffragettes to continue their hunger strikes, the government rushed the act through Parliament.

[7] In general, the medical procedure of force feeding was described as a physical and mental violation that caused pain, suffering, emotional distress, humiliation, anguish and rage.

[8] Violet Bland also wrote in Votes for Women about her experiences of being force-fed, explaining how, "they twisted my neck, jerked my head back, closing my throat, held all the time as in a vice," while they tried to force feed her.

She wrote how the guards were always six or seven to one and that, "there was really no possibility of the victim doing much in the way of protesting excepting verbally, to express one’s horror of it; therefore no excuse for the brutality shown on several occasions.

Many of them eluded arrest with the help of a network of suffragette sympathisers and an all-women team of bodyguards, who employed tactics of misdirection, subterfuge and occasionally direct confrontation with the police.

This act was aimed at suppressing the power of the organisation by demoralising the activists, but turned out to be counter-productive as it undermined the moral authority of the government.

At one point, the Bishop of London was persuaded to visit Holloway personally in connection with allegations of female prisoners being poisoned during force feeding.