alley cat

1. 1.

   a homeless cat

   Broaderdomestic cat

Questions about alley cat

What does alley cat mean?

alley cat means "a homeless cat".

Is alley cat a common word?

alley cat is banded "Uncommon" — turns up in careful writing rather than conversation. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.