Kick the cat, also sometimes kick the dog, is a metaphor used to describe how a relatively high-ranking person in an organization or family displaces their frustrations by abusing a lower-ranking person, who may in turn take it out on their own subordinate.
[1] In current usage, the name envisions a scenario where an angry or frustrated employee comes home from work looking for some way to take out their anger, but the only thing present is the cat.
[2] Kicking the cat is commonly used to describe the behaviour of staff abusing coworkers or subordinates as a mechanism to relieve stress.
[5] Kicking the cat is looked upon unfavourably and viewed as a sign of poor anger management.
[7] Psychology author Raj Persaud suggests that people "kick the cat" as a means of catharsis because they fear expressing their full emotions to peers and colleagues.