Sleeping cat lies

I'll be watching rugby on Saturday. It's New Zealand (the All Blacks) vs. South Africa (the Springboks) in Johannesburg. A week later, the Springboks will play Australia (the Wallabies) in Pretoria. These should be two fantastic games. Rugby is about big men hitting each other, but this is all done in the spirit of fair play and afterwards the two teams shake hands. No hard feelings. Now and again, however, something ugly happens in rugby as the Sydney Morning Herald reminds us: "Hannant keen to let sleeping dogs lie but NRL will investigate".

Apart from the bizarre story, I was impressed by the use of the idiom to "let sleeping dogs lie" in the headline. If a metaphorical dog is asleep, leave it alone or it might wake up and bite you is the idea. In other words, do not disrupt anything that's going well as it could cause problems. 

A problem with the idiom is its use of the tricky little word "lie". You see, the verb can mean to make a false statement as in "Why did she lie about her trip to London?", but it can also mean to rest: "I had to lie down for ten minutes because I was tired." 

And cats? Well, when they lie down you don't whether they are sleeping or not, and you can never be sure if they're telling the truth when you wake up.