"A forty-acre cropper and he ain’t been dusted out and he ain’t been tractored out?"…"Croppers going fast now," he said. "One cat’ takes and shoves ten families out. Cat’s all over hell now. Tear in and shove the croppers out. How’s your old man hold on?"
– John Steinbeck
The Grapes of Wrath, Chapter 2. The truck driver’s comments on Tom Joad’s father are foreshadowing of the shock discovery Tom will make in Chapter 6 – the abandonment of his family farm house. A "cat’" is a Caterpiller tractor, which is being used by the landowners and banks to force poor tenant farmers off the land.