"Cater-corner "

While reading in this morning's Times about the new H & M for men (yes, I have lots better to do; and no, my interest in fashion, as anyone who ever noted the way I dress would agree, is purely theoretical,) I cam across the word "cater-corner ."
I have always said "katty-corner" and heard "kitty-corner," mostly from southerners, I think.
In a rare moment of humility or self-deprecation I wondered if (oh horrors...) a feature writer, a style writer, were using correctly a term I had been Archie-Bunkering, to use Himself's phrase. Well, it seems we all, in a grand Anglo-phone tradition, have been butchering a French word.
(According to Kenneth G. Wilson in The Columbia Guide to Standard American English.)

kitty-corner(ed), catty-corner(ed), cater-corner(ed) (adv., adj.)
All these are Standard variants of an idiom, based on folk etymologies developed from the French cater (quatre)—“four”—prefixed to corner(ed); the idiom means “diagonal” or “obliquely opposite,” as in The gas station was kitty-corner(ed) [catty-corner(ed), cater-corner(ed)] from the flower stand.
Now, back to the Style section...