A catspaw is somebody used by another to do their dirty work. Made a catspaw of him.
The name comes from a fable in which a monkey uses a cat's paw to pull chestnuts from a fire. A catspaw takes the risk and the other party takes the gain.
1nouncatspawSomebody used by another to do their dirty work.
“He was a catspaw for people whose names never appeared anywhere.”
catspaw is a person.
Also accepted in games: stooge
cat's-paw comes from cat + paw. In most senses, due to a resemblance of shape. In its senses as a pawn to another's interests or analysis, variant of earlier cat's-foot, derived from European tales of a monkey (attested as early as 1456 but sometimes misattributed to the 16th-century monkey of Pope Julius II) who used a sleeping puppy[[w:János
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA
Practised in A Song of Ice and Fire