cat's-foot

Etymology
From. For its obsolete figurative sense, see.

Noun

 * : a foot of a cat; a person used unwittingly or through trickery by another.
 * 1) * c. 1661, Argyle's Last Will in The Harleian Miscellany, Vol. VIII, p. 30:
 * ...like the Monkey, that took the Cat's Foot to pull the Chesnut out of the Fire...