I couldn’t help but think of those words while looking at this pose of Valerio. No doubt he rocks the look of being covered in a pattern of jaguar rosettes from head to tail, and it reminds me of some of the most stylish sleepwear out there.
So, what’s the meaning of “the cat’s pajamas”? The definition is an excellent person or thing. But since the phrase became popular in the 1920s, I’d say some other words from those days, “nifty” and “keen”, would work as synonyms. It was in the 1920s that pajamas were first introduced to America, and made quite a fashion statement, so there may have been added meaning as being stylish, new, and exciting. “The cat’s pajamas" was part of the typical vocabulary of flappers & hipsters, along some other nonsense phrases from the Roaring Twenties: cat’s meow, bee’s knees, duck’s quack, elephant’s instep, and bullfrog’s beard. Some say "the cat’s pajamas” was popularized by cartoonist Tad Dorgan (1877-1929) when used in his comic strip. By 1926, the phrase was well-known enough to also become the title for a Hollywood comedy.
Though the idiom is dated, it’s still understood to mean a person or thing that’s pretty darn cool. And that fits Valerio just fine! Valerio the male Jaguar born March 12, 2015