Cat-hole

In addition to these openings there was, in the lower right-hand corner of the room, the "cat-hole," --a contrivance which almost every mansion or cabin in Virginia possessed during the ante-bellum period.

Cadole, North Wales Derived from the words cat and hole, this town could be named after the cat-hole, a device used to lift men or buckets through the shafts in the lead mine.

One might be "Manual Excavation in Varied Soils." I've dug fighting holes, "ranger graves," cat-holes, slit trenches and supply caches in just about every kinda dirt, mud, permafrost, rocks, sand and loam imaginable.