kittle cattle en · NOUN
Meanings
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(Scotland, plural, plural-only) Fickle, unmanageable people or things.
He had inherited his not inconsiderable fortune from an American cousin, who had in his time been a successful speculator—a speculator not exactly in crops, which are notoriously kittle-cattle, but in official crop reports.
1927, Ernest Bramah [pseudonym; Ernest Brammah Smith], Max Carrados Mysteries: