To be perfectly fair I believe the usage of "pussy" to mean someone weak or cowardly came from its usage to describe a cat as they are often quick to run from confrontation. I believe it originated as "scared little pussy cat" and shifted from that to "scared little pussy" and finally over to just "pussy".
Personally if I were ever so inclined to call someone a pussy I'm thinking of the stereotypical scared cat, not a woman's vagina, those things are wonderful (as you said, they give birth and the process leading to birth ain't so bad either).
I guess it is only lost in translation when people cease being exposed to literature which is far more a window into the past than any televised or multimedia presentation could ever hope to be.
Isn't it interesting how everyone takes different meaning from words? I would never associate it with a cat, but only with anatomy when used in a derogatory manner. While I read quite a bit, I can't say I have ever read or looked into the origin of phrases. When I come across them randomly, I think it's quite fascinating.
When we had cats we actually named them Puss...Black Puss, Ivy Puss, Big Puss, ha ha! My son got in trouble at school for saying the name of his cat. Needless to say, we had a talk with his teacher about how she shouldn't teach young children meanings of bad words when they think it just means a cat.
I would have to agree on this. I literally associate pussy to a cat. How many other words are made convoluted? You never know until you look into the history of it.