"Cat" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... it be just, under this head, to omit the fondness which he shewed for animals which he had taken under his protection. I never shall forget the indulgence with which he treated Hodge, his cat: for whom he himself used to go out and buy oysters, lest the servants having that trouble should take a dislike to the poor creature. I am, unluckily, one of those who have an antipathy to a cat, so that I am ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 4 (of 6) • Boswell
... Howls and cat-calls followed the casting of the brick. Amzi lifted his hand to stay the tumult, but in his seersucker coat and straw hat his appearance was ...
— Otherwise Phyllis • Meredith Nicholson
... she pretended to look about the house, But she watched my side coat pocket like a cat would watch a mouse: And then she went to foolin' a little with her cup, And intently readin' a newspaper, a-holdin' ...
— Farm Ballads • Will Carleton
... of contrast, two hundred yards to his right, picking his way with cat-like care and rare enjoyment, was Private M'Snape. He was of the true scout breed. In the dim and distant days before the call of the blood had swept him into "K(1)," he had been a Boy Scout of no mean repute. He was clean in person and courteous ...
— The First Hundred Thousand • Ian Hay
... courtesy. She walked with measured step three or four times across the stage, in the full blaze of the flaring candles, smiling again, and hemming, to clear her voice. Presently a perfect stillness prevailed; 'awed Consumption checked his chided cough;' every urchin suspended his cat-call; and 'the boldest held his breath for a time.' Our vocalist looked at the leader of the orchestra and his fellow-fiddlers, and commenced, in harmony with their instruments. How touching was that song! I shall never have my soul so enrapt again. That freshness of young admiration possessed ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, February 1844 - Volume 23, Number 2 • Various
... brutality of his assailant who doubtless belonged to the other camp. When Godwin attempts the supernatural in his other novels, he always fails to create an atmosphere of mystery. The apparition in Cloudesley appears, fades, and reappears in a manner so undignified as to remind us of the Cheshire Cat in Alice in Wonderland: ...
— The Tale of Terror • Edith Birkhead
... as a cat might watch a mouse for two days, and made pretty sure that he did not go to his hoard in the daytime. Then I bethought myself that he always had a pocketful of apples every morning, and concluded that he must visit his preserve sometime "between days," most likely directly after he appeared ...
— When Life Was Young - At the Old Farm in Maine • C. A. Stephens
... a cheetah is just a big cat, and yet a saucer of milk does not go very far in satisfying its wants, I daresay. There is one point which I should wish to determine." He squatted down in front of the wooden chair and examined the seat of it ...
— The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... herself, to caution her mother not to interrupt Martin in his love-making, for the widow had no charity for such follies. She certainly expected her daughters to get married, and wished them to be well and speedily settled; but she watched anything like a flirtation on their part as closely as a cat does a mouse. If any young man were in the house, she'd listen to the fall of his footsteps with the utmost care; and when she had reason to fear that there was anything like a lengthened tete-a-tete upstairs, she would steal on the pair, if possible, unawares, ...
— The Kellys and the O'Kellys • Anthony Trollope
... (she sayth) by hir will marry hir cat. Ye are such a calfe, such an asse, such a blocke, Such a lilburne, such a hoball, such a lobcocke, And bicause ye shoulde come to hir at no season, She despised your maship out of all reason. Bawawe what ye say (ko I) of such a ientman, ...
— Roister Doister - Written, probably also represented, before 1553. Carefully - edited from the unique copy, now at Eton College • Nicholas Udall
... like a fairy scene. How lovely it all is; but let us penetrate beneath the canopy of leaves and the cottage roof. Ah, what suffering of man or beast they hide, where on the one hand the wolf, the fox, the wild cat, the hawk, the stoat, and all the birds and beasts of prey tear their victims, and nature's hand is like a claw, red with blood—and on the other, beneath the cottage roofs, many a bed-ridden sufferer lies groaning with painful disease, many children mourn their sires, ...
— The House of Walderne - A Tale of the Cloister and the Forest in the Days of the Barons' Wars • A. D. Crake
... her. She had seen the cat jump on that bureau a few days before and walk back and forth over it. If she (pussy) had been left in the room alone there that afternoon she might have done the same thing again, and knocked the ...
— Elsie's New Relations • Martha Finley
... mine, a sort of foot-hill mountaineer, had a pet cat, a great, dozy, overgrown creature, about as broad-shouldered as a lynx. During the winter, while the snow lay deep, the mountaineer sat in his lonely cabin among the pines smoking his pipe and wearing the dull time away. ...
— The Mountains of California • John Muir
... two lovers have a duel and one is killed. In the third act, the surviving lover commits suicide, and, in the fourth act, the daughter jumps down the well. The curtain descends leaving only the old man and the cat alive and the impression is given that if the curtain were ten seconds later either the cat would get the old man or the old man ...
— Face to Face with Kaiserism • James W. Gerard
... had been at a dinner-party of ten or a dozen, at Webster's, less than a year before the murder. They began rather uncomfortably, in consequence of one of the guests (the victim of an instinctive antipathy) starting up with the sweat pouring down his face, and crying out, 'O Heaven! There's a cat somewhere in the room!' The cat was found and ejected, but they didn't get on very well. Left with their wine, they were getting on a little better; when Webster suddenly told the servants to turn the ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... single sentence of one of its first numbers: "We have never been in a minority, and we never shall be" In his endeavors to act upon this lofty principle, he was sadly puzzled during the war,—so difficult was it to determine which way the cat would finally jump. He held himself ready, however, to jump with it, whichever side the dubious animal might select. At the same time, he never for an instant relaxed his endeavors to obtain the earliest and fullest intelligence from the seat of war. Never perhaps did ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... old woman, with an angry shake of the head; "no, I hain't got no chickens for yer. My pullet's white, and I set a heap on't an' wouldn't sell it to nobody as come askin' oncivil questions of a lone, lorn widdy. Besides, the cat eat it up las' week, ...
— Gypsy's Cousin Joy • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
... from his elevated perch with the agility of a cat. He ran up to Harry, and grasped his hand with ...
— Facing the World • Horatio Alger
... about Edgar Saltus should be vieux jeu. The man is an American; he was born in 1858; he accomplished some of his best work in the Eighties and the Nineties, in the days when mutton-legged sleeves, whatnots, Rogers groups, cat-tails, peacock feathers, Japanese fans, musk-mellon seed collars, and big-wheeled bicycles were in vogue. He has written history, fiction, poetry, literary criticism, and philosophy, and to all these forms he has brought sympathy, erudition, a fresh point of view, and a ...
— The Merry-Go-Round • Carl Van Vechten
... superficial; the difference profound. The infinitely greater complexity of legislation to-day, the vast confusion in the aims of the voting population, produce a difference of so great a degree that it amounts to a difference in kind. The naturalist may classify the dog and the fox, the house-cat and the tiger together for certain purposes. The historian of political forms may see in the town meeting a forerunner of direct legislation. But no housewife dare classify the cat and the tiger, the dog and the fox, as the same kind of animal. And no statesman ...
— A Preface to Politics • Walter Lippmann
... something—something—Ah! well—different; because he was—he; because she longed to take his head between her hands and kiss it. She remembered so well the day that longing first came to her. She was giving him tea, it was quite early in the Easter term; he was stroking her cat, who always went to him, and telling her that he meant to be a sculptor, but that his guardian objected, so that, of course, he could not start till he was of age. The lamp on the table had a rose-coloured shade; he had been rowing—a very cold day—and his face was glowing; generally ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... nebber had no children. And den man, man, when he insult me lak dat, I jump on him lak a wil' cat. We fought an' we fit. We fit an' we fought. I got him down an' bit one o' his years clean off smooth wid his head. In de las' clinch he git hol' er my lef year a'fo' I could shake him, he bit de top of hit off, sah. I got him by the froat an' choke hit outen ...
— The Man in Gray • Thomas Dixon
... been to his room all night; which thing they did not seem to believe, and kept gazing all around my room, as though wondering whether I were not hiding him there. However, as my bare chamber offered no concealment even for a cat, they had to be satisfied at last; and they went away, only charging me straitly that so soon as Dalaber should return, I must tell him to repair him instantly to the prior, who would have speech of him. This I promised to do, though with a woeful heart, for I felt ...
— For the Faith • Evelyn Everett-Green
... mayhap millenniums of centuries. No blank chaotic gap of death and darkness separated the creation to which man belongs from that of the old extinct elephant, hippopotamus, and hyaena; for familiar animals such as the red deer, the roe, the fox, the wild cat, and the badger, lived throughout the period which connected their times with our own; and so I have been compelled to hold, that the days of creation were not natural, but prophetic days, and stretched far back into the bygone eternity. After in ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller
... those symptoms,'' added M. Bidard, "I questioned Helene at once. It has not been given me more than twice in my life to see Helene's eyes. I saw at that moment the look she flung at Rosalie. It was the look of a wild beast, a tiger-cat. At that moment my impulse was to go to my work-room for a cord, and to tie her up and drag her to the justiciary. But one reflection stopped me. What was this I was about to do—disgrace a woman on a mere suspicion? I hesitated. I did not know whether ...
— She Stands Accused • Victor MacClure
... Malta, which was reached in two days, and cast anchor in the harbor of Valetta, the capital. The island is celebrated as the home of the Knights of Malta, the original birth-place of the Maltese cat, and the spot where the Maltese cross was invented—but not patented. This island was conquered by the Romans 259 B.C.; afterward by Napoleon, from whom it was taken by England in 1800, and now indeed it's "quite ...
— A Fantasy of Mediterranean Travel • S. G. Bayne
... to attend such mixed gatherings," said the visitor, seating himself on the edge of the library table, and beginning to play with the cat. ...
— Brooke's Daughter - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... jest as I would a three weeks' washin', the first day of the week. Ury shook our hands firmly but sadly, promisin' to the last to see to things and not let the cows into the garden, and keep the buttery door shet up nights, for though the cat is not a habitual snooper, ...
— Samantha at the St. Louis Exposition • Marietta Holley
... the bolts of war and the machinery of government with a hand especially steady and equally firm. . I do not know whether the nation is worthy of him for another term. I know the people want him. There is no mistaking that fact. But the politicians are strong yet, and he is not their 'kind of a cat.' I hope God won't see fit to scourge us for our sins by any of the two or three most prominent candidates on the ground."(28) This was the conclusion growing everywhere among the bulk of the people. ...
— Lincoln • Nathaniel Wright Stephenson
... seen any place he liked better. There was room for his big bath—his tub he called it mentally—and a comfortable chair or two, and when he had concluded these little arrangements to his own satisfaction, he joined Elizabeth, who was making friends with a great sandy cat, who rejoiced in the ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... down the long narrow calle or footway leading from the Campo San Stefano to the Grand Canal in Venice, he peered anxiously about him: now turning for a backward look up the calle, where there was no living thing in sight but a cat on a garden gate; now running a quick eye along the palace walls that rose vast on either hand and notched the slender strip of blue sky visible overhead with the lines of their jutting balconies, chimneys, and cornices; and now glancing ...
— A Foregone Conclusion • W. D. Howells
... what Mrs. Hawley-Crowles desired. The summer interim would give her time to further her plans and prepare the girl for her social debut in the early winter. "And Milady Ames will be mentioned in the papers next day as assisting at the function—the cat!" she muttered savagely, as she laid aside her ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... senseless or heedless. I am merely going to ask your brother Cecil to come in, if he is at home, and if not, no doubt our old friend Mr. Montgomery would—would help us.' Her scrutiny was still and concentrated, like that of a cat above ...
— The Return • Walter de la Mare
... predicament, and I did not trouble my head much about my various mis-performances. One thing, however, I can tell you: if her Majesty has seen me, I have not seen her; and should be quite excusable in cutting her wherever I met her. "A cat may look at a king," it is said; but how about looking at the Queen? In great uncertainty of mind on this point, I did not look at my sovereign lady. I kissed a soft white hand, which I believe ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... they were saying that they would not bury such accursed folk, but would bear them a little way so that they should not be vexed with the stink of them, and cast them into the thicket for the wolf and the wild-cat and the stoat to deal with; and they should lie there, weapons and silver and all; and they deemed it base to strip such wretches, for who would wear their raiment or bear their weapons ...
— The Roots of the Mountains • William Morris
... and friendship she felt for her, that at last the Mouse consented to live in the same house with her, and to go shares in the housekeeping. 'But we must provide for the winter or else we shall suffer hunger,' said the Cat. 'You, little Mouse, cannot venture everywhere in case you run at last into a trap.' This good counsel was followed, and a little pot of fat was bought. But they did not know where to put it. At length, after long consultation, the Cat said, 'I know of no place where it could be better put than in ...
— The Yellow Fairy Book • Leonora Blanche Alleyne Lang
... said; "even if there was a cave, no bear could be inside, for the simple reason that none, even the smallest, could possibly have squeezed his carcass through a hole like that;—a cat could hardly have crept into such an aperture. Besides, where were the tracks of the bear? There were none to be seen—neither by the mouth of the hole, nor ...
— Bruin - The Grand Bear Hunt • Mayne Reid
... and dogs, which received human names and official titles and, when they died, elaborate funerals. Kittens born at the palace at the close of the tenth century were treated with consideration comparable to that bestowed on Imperial infants. To the cat-mother the courtiers sent the ceremonial presents after childbirth, and one of the ladies-in-waiting was honoured by an appointment as guardian to ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... upholstered with some sort of soft Indian goods wrought in black and gold threads interwebbed with other threads not so pronounced in color, lay a great square of coarse white stuff, upon whose surface a rich bouquet of flowers was growing, under the deft cultivation of the crochet-needle. The household cat was asleep on this work of art. In a bay-window stood an easel with an unfinished picture on it, and a palette and brushes on a chair beside it. There were books everywhere: Robertson's Sermons, Tennyson, Moody and Sankey, Hawthorne, Rab and His Friends, cook-books, prayer-books, pattern-books—and ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... spicery. Pencils, crayons, charcoal and several large squares of cardboard and drawing-paper were heaped at one end of the bench, and beside these sat the occupant of the cell, leaning with folded arms on the table in front of her; and holding in her lap the vicious, ocelot-eyed yellow cat. ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... and some were not; some were painted yellow, and some were painted grey, and some were not painted. Mr. Haim exhibited first the kitchen. George saw a morsel of red amber behind black bars, a white deal table and a black cat crouched on a corner of the table, a chair, and a tea-cloth drying over the back thereof. He liked the scene; it reminded him of the Five Towns, and showed reassuringly—if he needed reassurance, which he did not—that all houses are the same at heart. Then Mr. Haim, ...
— The Roll-Call • Arnold Bennett
... Bess said, as they made their way down to the street. "I guess she hasn't had any easy time of it since she let the cat out of the bag to ...
— Nan Sherwood at Palm Beach - Or Strange Adventures Among The Orange Groves • Annie Roe Carr
... explained. Now supposing we have the murderer behind the curtains; that brings him within six feet of where the wee table was standing. How did he get Sir Reginald to come to the table? He made some kind of sound. What kind of sound? Some imitation of an animal; probably of a cat. How did Sir Reginald not cry out when he saw the man? Because he never did see the man! How did he ...
— Simon • J. Storer Clouston
... yield to few or none by any poet whatever; but he has printed such a large number in the aggregate, and so unequal one with the other, that the great ones are not to be found by opening at random. "How are they (the poets) to be approached?—" you innocently ask. Ye heavens! how does the cat's-meat-man approach Grimalkin?—and what is that relation in life when compared to the rapport established between the living bard and the fellow-creature who is disposed to cater to his caterwauling ...
— Recollections of Dante Gabriel Rossetti - 1883 • T. Hall Caine
... man was unwilling to do so, and said, "It may be my youngest daughter, who loves me most, and always runs to meet me when I go home." But then he thought again, "It may, perhaps, be only a cat or a dog." And at last he yielded with a heavy heart, and took the rose, and said he would give the Lion whatever should meet him first ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf (Vol 2 of 17) - Folk-Lore, Fables, And Fairy Tales • Various
... each man is responsible for his own manners; and as all the society he sees consists of a cat and some wooden pipes in a couple of dingy rooms in Sloane street, you can't expect him not to ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 31. October, 1873. • Various
... apparatus was home-made, but it seems to have been of some use. Mr. James D. Reid, author of THE TELEGRAPH IN AMERICA, would have us believe that an attempt was made to utilise the electricity obtained by rubbing a cat connected up in lieu of a battery; but the spirit of Artemus Ward is by no means dead in the United States, and the anecdote may be taken with a grain of salt. Such an experiment was at all events predestined ...
— Heroes of the Telegraph • J. Munro
... Mr. Berners," murmured Rosa, sweetly, as she got up to go out with the housekeeper "Old Cat!" she muttered, under her breath, as soon as she was out ...
— Cruel As The Grave • Mrs. Emma D. E. N. Southworth
... Malty," responded Anna quickly, pointing to the fat Maltese cat who was industriously ...
— A Little Maid of Old Maine • Alice Turner Curtis
... premises to the organization or to circulate its literature. The Employers' Association had boasted that it was due to its efforts that these ordinances had been passed. But still they were faced with the provocative and unforgettable fact, that the I.W.W. was no more dead than the cat with the proverbial nine lives. Where halls had been closed or raided the lumber workers were transacting their union affairs right on the job or in the bunkhouses, just as though nothing had happened. What was more deplorable a few Union halls were still ...
— The Centralia Conspiracy • Ralph Chaplin
... ringing laugh of a child is sweet music to the ear. There are three most joyous sounds in nature—the hum of a bee, the purr of a cat, and the laugh of a child. They tell of peace, of happiness, and of contentment, and make one for a while forget that there is so much misery ...
— Advice to a Mother on the Management of her Children • Pye Henry Chavasse
... no man would have been such a fool as to come forward with them so soon after his victim's death! This claimant doesn't know how or where or when they were obtained—he doesn't suspect that murder's in it. Now, then—where did he get them? Who's at the back of him? Who—to be plain—who's making a cat's-paw of him? Find that out, and we shall know ...
— The Middle of Things • J. S. Fletcher
... the walls. Cursorily as his cold eye wandered over them, Carker's keen glance accompanied his, and kept pace with his, marking exactly where it went, and what it saw. As it rested on one picture in particular, Carker hardly seemed to breathe, his sidelong scrutiny was so cat-like and vigilant, but the eye of his great chief passed from that, as from the others, and appeared no more impressed by it than by ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... imagine, he believes I did it. I see it. 'In that case,' I asked him, 'why have you come to defend me?' Hang them all! They've got a doctor down, too, want to prove I'm mad. I won't have that! Katerina Ivanovna wants to do her 'duty' to the end, whatever the strain!" Mitya smiled bitterly. "The cat! Hard-hearted creature! She knows that I said of her at Mokroe that she was a woman of 'great wrath.' They repeated it. Yes, the facts against me have grown numerous as the sands of the sea. Grigory sticks to his point. Grigory's ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... the top of the door frame, and entered the familiar old rooms without any trouble. But she saw in a dismayed flash that Aunt Kate was not coming back, for that night at least. The kitchen window had been left four inches open, to accommodate the cat, milk and bones were laid in waiting, and a note in the bottle notified the milkman "no milk until to-morrow." There was also a note in pencil, on the bottom of an egg-box, for the nurses who rented two rooms, should either one of them chance ...
— The Beloved Woman • Kathleen Norris
... downstream, and was off. The breeze was coming in gentle puffs, so that the boat moved slowly through the water, the ripples making a sleepy whisper under the bow and the tiller, now and then, jerking lazily under his hand. One side of the stream was marshy so that he pushed into tall grass and cat-tails and startled an indignant kingfisher who was dozing on a dead tree. The bird went skimming off, a flash of blue and white that he followed ...
— The Windy Hill • Cornelia Meigs
... gossips of the town, the story says; and when these women were unkind in what they said about people the Fates—I have told you another story about the Fates—the Fates to punish them turned them into wolves. The Wolf Charmer, who really is the old gypsy who killed the black cat of the village witch, goes out into the night. The owl calls the wolves to attack the gypsy. But the gypsy knew the old women before they were turned into wolves so he calls them by name: "Kate, Anne, and Bee!" And soon they follow him down the narrow path between the rocks ...
— The Children's Book of Celebrated Pictures • Lorinda Munson Bryant
... to jump. And you bet you he did learn him, too. He'd give him a little punch behind, and the next minute you'd see that frog whirling in the air like a doughnut—see him turn one summerset, or maybe a couple if he got a good start, and come down flat-footed and all right, like a cat. He got him up so in the matter of ketching flies, and kep'him in practice so constant, that he'd nail a fly every time as fur as he could see him. Smiley said all a frog wanted was education, and he could do 'most anything—and I believe him. Why, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... brooding—witness the counterpane strewn with books, with balls of wool, a sock in leisurely process of knitting, and, in a hollow of it, Mustapha, the brindled cat, luxuriously sleeping ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... second man had arrived on the scene. His sharp, ferrety eyes, which—like the eyes of a cat—seemed capable of seeing in the darkness, ...
— The Hero of Garside School • J. Harwood Panting
... small class of animals. The other members of the class will be denoted by an ordered sequence of words in which only the letter denoting the individual is changed. Thus, if brabo means "dog," braco may be "cat," and so on: brado, brafo, brago... etc., according ...
— International Language - Past, Present and Future: With Specimens of Esperanto and Grammar • Walter J. Clark
... Berlioz, in 'Arriet's feathers as in the "Don Diegos" of the Prado—the mere sound of the title in his mouth became a tribute to the master he honoured above most—in the patter of the latest Lion-comique of the Halls as in the prose of Meredith or Borrow, in the disreputable cat stealing home through the dull London dawn as in the Romanticists emerging from the chill of Classicism—in everything, big and little, in which he felt the life so dear to ...
— Nights - Rome, Venice, in the Aesthetic Eighties; London, Paris, in the Fighting Nineties • Elizabeth Robins Pennell
... Boffin, with ineffable contempt, 'and possess her heart! Mew says the cat, Quack-quack says the duck, Bow-wow-wow says the dog! Win her affections and possess ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... unmercifully did he tear him, and lacerate him; twenty times did he make him declare his own shame in twenty different ways. Oh! what a prize for a clever, sharp, ingenious, triumphant Counsellor Allewinde, that wicked false witness, with his shallow, detected device. He played with him like a cat does with a mouse—now letting him go for a moment, with the vain hope that he was to escape—then again pouncing on him, and giving him a fresh tear; till at last, when the young man was desired to leave the chair, one was almost inclined to detest the ingenuity of the ferocious lawyer ...
— The Macdermots of Ballycloran • Anthony Trollope
... grate, relieving the gloom of a late winter afternoon with the bright flickering of its flames. Ensconced in a roomy arm-chair, our father is seated by the fire in a skullcap and list slippers, with his favourite cat perched on his knee. Opposite him sit two ladies, the elder of whom—a quaint, nice-looking old lady, dressed neatly in black, but whose innate eccentricity succeeded in imparting something odd to the simplest and quietest of attires—is leaning eagerly forward, pouring forth a long tale of ...
— A Girl Among the Anarchists • Isabel Meredith
... sisters, shall have no beast but one cat... Ye shall be cropped four times in the year for to lighten your head... Of idleness ariseth much temptation of the flesh... Iron that lieth still ...
— Halleck's New English Literature • Reuben P. Halleck
... candle in hand, I looked out into the passage. There was nothing there in human shape, but in the direction of the stairs the green eyes of a large cat were shining. I was so confoundedly nervous that even 'a harmless, necessary cat' appalled me, and I clapped my door, as if ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... Dierdre O'Farrell who spoke, and we glared into each other's eyes like two Kilkenny cats—or a surprised Kilkenny cat and a ...
— Everyman's Land • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... is, and I hope will long be, a cat; but unless one has lived at Kittery Point, and realized, from observation and experience, what a leading part cats may play in society, one cannot feel the full import of this fact. Not only has every house in Kittery its cat, but ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... and, scampering up the trees, peeped down at the visitors to their domains. Ah, how Fred longed to have one of the little bushy-tailed fellows, as he watched their nimble tricks, scampering and leaping from bough to bough as easily and fearlessly as a cat would upon the ground. Then there were so many pretty wildflowers in the banks and hedge-rows; so many birds to learn the names of, for they were all strangers to Fred, who only knew sparrows—and they were different to ...
— Hollowdell Grange - Holiday Hours in a Country Home • George Manville Fenn
... ideas of a semi-barbarous durbar. He is well aware that neither bad roads, troops, nor any other obstacle that he could oppose to our advance, would avail in case of our invading Nepaul. His feeling as regards a war with the British was not inaptly expressed in a remark he once made to me,—"If a cat is pushed into a corner it will fly at an elephant, but it will always try to keep out of the ...
— A Journey to Katmandu • Laurence Oliphant
... more appealing to the fancy because she suffered beyond her deserts, but Elizabeth was to be pitied because Mary had made it politically imperative for her to kill her. All this we had threshed out many times before, and had said that, cat for cat, Mary was the more dangerous because she was the more feminine, and Elizabeth the more detestable because she was the more masculine in her ferocity. We were therefore in the right mood to visit Mary's prison, and we were both indignant and dismayed ...
— Seven English Cities • W. D. Howells
... alone were enough to harrow up your soul. Huge beyond belief, round and luminous as full moons, they were filled with the phosphorescent greenish-yellow glare that sometimes appears in the expanded pupils of a cat or a wild beast. The great hairy head was black, but the stocky body was as white as a polar bear. The arms were apelike and very long and muscular, and the entire aspect of the creature ...
— A Columbus of Space • Garrett P. Serviss
... the house 'cept that some doors and windows had been torn out by the crowd. They sho did git mad, but nobody seemed to know who started that ruction. My old Hardshell Baptist friend came up then and said: 'Curiosity brought us here, and curiosity like to have killed the cat.'" ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Georgia Narratives, Part 3 • Works Projects Administration
... raced up two flights of stairs and a short ladder—often losing half of their burden on the way—and passed them through a skylight to those outside. A dozen times the dry shingles caught fire under the rain of sparks, but Mr. Brady, climbing along the ridge like a cat, tossing buckets of water with unerring precision, kept the fire at bay. It was warm work for all. On the roof the heat of the fire was unpleasantly apparent, while in the house it was stiflingly close and the work of carrying the pails up and down stairs soon had the ...
— Left Guard Gilbert • Ralph Henry Barbour
... had the glare of the mountain-cat When it springs on the hunter's spear, At the head of the board when that lady sate Hungry men could not ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... meadows down by the limes; All things I saw at a glance; the quickening fire-tongues leapt Through the crackling heap of sticks, and the sweet smoke up from it crept, And close to the very hearth the low sun flooded the floor, And the cat and her kittens played in the sun by the open door. The garden was fair in the morning, and there in the road he stood Beyond the crimson daisies and the bush of southernwood. Then side by side together through the grey-walled place we ...
— Poems By The Way & Love Is Enough • William Morris
... skill has not deserted me," he said, "That's the cats. The man who can wing a cat by moonlight can put a bullet where he likes on a target. I didn't hit the bull every time, but that was to give the other fellows a chance. My fatal modesty has always been a hindrance to me in life, and I suppose it always will be. Well, well! And what of the old homestead? Anything ...
— Mike • P. G. Wodehouse
... how he used to like to come to mill with his father. The whole process of milling was mysterious to him then; and the mill house and the miller's wife were mysterious; even Enid was, a little—until he got her down in the bright sun among the cat-tails. They used to play in the bins of clean wheat, watch the flour coming out of the hopper and get themselves ...
— One of Ours • Willa Cather
... said the gardener. "Here's a nice plaid shawl, as belonged to my missus, and a wun'erful old bonnet of hers—as the cat has had kittens in since she went to her rest—and left me to mine. You are heartily welcome. I can't let you turn out in the cold with nothing on your ...
— The Broom-Squire • S. (Sabine) Baring-Gould
... tidings, and when he had finished his description of the prison, Darius exclaimed: "I believe a little courage will save him. He's as nimble as a cat, and as strong as a bear. I have thought of ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... her large hoops. A white muslin cape covered her shoulders; and her head was adorned with a yellow straw shaker bonnet, in the depths of which her wrinkled face, with its pointed chin and bright eyes, looked like the face of some mammoth specimen of the cat tribe, an effect that was increased by her high, shrill voice. Black lace mitts covered her hands; and she carried, point upward, a venerable brown umbrella, loosely rolled up, and held in place with ...
— Half a Dozen Girls • Anna Chapin Ray
... detective stories would probably never have been written had not Poe first composed "The Murders in the Rue Morgue"; and the stories of horror and fear so common to-day are possible because Poe wrote "William Wilson," "The Black Cat," and other stories ...
— Four Famous American Writers: Washington Irving, Edgar Allan Poe, • Sherwin Cody
... he said stubbornly, "no more than one somebody clapped on to me when they put me on the Home books, with not the thought or care they'd name a house cat. I've seen how they enter those poor little abandoned devils often enough to know. What they called me is no more my name than it is yours. I don't know what mine is, and I never will; but I am going to be your man and do your work, and I'll be glad to answer to any name you choose to call ...
— Freckles • Gene Stratton-Porter
... bosom. There's no telling when a man's sins may show themselves, for hares pop out of the ditch just when you are not looking for them. A horse that is weak in the legs may not stumble for a mile or two, but it is in him, and the driver had better hold him up well. The tabby cat is not lapping milk just now, but leave the dairy door open, and see if she is not as bad a thief as the kitten. There's fire in the flint, cool as it looks: wait till the steel gets a knock at it, and you will see. ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller
... manager, W. A. Brady, wishing to emulate the success of "The First Born," got together a production of "The Cat and the Cherub," another Chinese play, and secured time in London, hoping to beat Frohman out. It now became a race between Frohman and Brady for the first presentation in London. Both managers ...
— Charles Frohman: Manager and Man • Isaac Frederick Marcosson and Daniel Frohman
... of amazement and cries of "Shame!" from the galleries, Brown told of the abuses laid bare by the prison commission. He told of prisoners fed with rotten meal and bread infested with maggots; of children beaten with cat and rawhide for childish faults; of a coffin-shaped box in which men and even women were made to stand or rather crouch, their limbs cramped, and their lungs scantily supplied with air from a few holes. Brown's speech virtually closed the case, although Macdonald ...
— George Brown • John Lewis
... had an opportunity of examining them closely. the small corvus discribed at Fort Clatsop is a different speceis, tho untill now I had taken it to be the same, this is much larger and has a loud squawling note something like the mewing of a cat. the beak of this bird is 11/2 inches long, is proportionably large, black and of the form which characterizes this genus. the upper exceeds the under chap a little. the head and neck are also proportionably large. the eye full and reather prominent, the iris dark brown and puple ...
— The Journals of Lewis and Clark • Meriwether Lewis et al
... want so much to see him! But, as you may suppose, an old maid like Cousin Betty, who had managed to keep a lover for five years, keeps him well hidden.—Now, just let me alone. You see, I have neither cat nor canary, neither dog nor a parrot, and the old Nanny Goat wanted something to pet and tease—so I treated myself ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... in a low sweet tone,—"why does the Pale Face still follow the track of the Red Man? Why does he pursue him, even as O-kee chow, the wild cat, chases Ka-ka, the skunk? Why are the feet of Sorrel-top, the white chief, among the acorns of Muck-a-Muck, the mountain forest? Why," he repeated, quietly but firmly abstracting a silver spoon from the table,—"why do you seek to drive him from the wigwams of ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... known that the prologue serves the critic for an opportunity to try his faculty of hissing, and to tune his cat-call to the best advantage; by which means, I have known those musical instruments so well prepared, that they have been able to play in full concert at the first ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... that the biological traditions of women have been associated with a primitive period when they were the delighted spectators of combats. "Woman," thought Nietzsche, "is essentially unpeaceable, like the cat, however well she may have assumed the peaceable demeanour." Steinmetz (Philosophie des Krieges, p. 314), remarking that women are opposed to war in the abstract, adds: "In practice, however, it happens that women ...
— The Task of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis
... the thing for steamers. Away we went! past berg, past floe, winding in and out quietly, yet steadily!—and the whalers were soon astern. Penny, indefatigable, was seen struggling along the shore, with his boats ahead, towing, and every stitch of sail set to catch the lightest cat's paw: him too, however, we soon passed. The water ahead increased as we advanced, and we found, as is well known to be the case, that the pack-edge is always the tightest part ...
— Stray Leaves from an Arctic Journal; • Sherard Osborn
... spontaneously; but as the Boy had ungallantly called Gaeta "a little cat," and I was slightly blase of her dimples, I thought that I might count ...
— The Princess Passes • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... name. He's a young Scotchman—father's a Presbyterian minister. He's a little, insignificant runt of a chap to look at—but I learned a long time ago not to judge a singed cat by his looks. ...
— The Market-Place • Harold Frederic
... sticking finger down in it, then fill the hole with molasses. That was a rarity they had just cooked molasses. He was sitting in front of the fire place. Big White Bobby stuck his nose and mouth to take a bite of his bread. He picked the cat up and threw it in the fire. The cat ran out, smutty, just flying. The old mistress came in there and got after him about throwing the cat in ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - Volume II. Arkansas Narratives. Part I • Work Projects Administration
... wider than that which is considered by physical hygiene. The mother who has given her child his bath and sent him in his perambulator to the park has not fulfilled the mission of the "mother of humanity." The hen which gathers her chickens together, and the cat which licks her kittens and lavishes on them such tender care, differ in no wise from the human mother in the ...
— Dr. Montessori's Own Handbook • Maria Montessori
... books of musical studies by moonlight, for want of a candle churlishly denied. Nor was he disheartened when these copies were taken from him. The boy painter West, began his work in a garret, and cut hairs from the tail of the family cat for bristles to make his brushes. Gerster, an unknown Hungarian singer, made fame and fortune sure the first night she appeared in opera. Her enthusiasm almost mesmerized her auditors. In less than a week she had become popular ...
— The True Citizen, How To Become One • W. F. Markwick, D. D. and W. A. Smith, A. B.
... and white and irregular with a verandah running along in front, it had red curtains that would draw over the lower halves of the windows and hints of chintz at the upper portions; the door was open and revealed a tall clock in the hall, a stand of flowers, and a cat asleep in a large round chair; at one side a flight of steps led down to the kitchen door at which a buxom maid in bare arms stood in a pink gown and a pinker face, and at the other side was the boarded square that held the pump—the village pump—around ...
— Crowded Out! and Other Sketches • Susie F. Harrison
... ferreting in the coverts previous to rabbit-shooting, the keeper bolted a huge fox out of one burrow and a cat out of the other. He also tells me that he once found a hare and a fox lying in their forms, within three yards of one another, in a small disused quarry. There is no doubt that, like jack among fish, the fox is friendly enough on some days, when his belly is full. He then "makes ...
— A Cotswold Village • J. Arthur Gibbs
... STROLL, then A LOOK IN, then A RAMBLE, and presently A STRUT. When George, Prince of Wales, was twenty, I have read in an old Magazine, "the Prince's lounge" was a peculiar manner of walking which the young bucks imitated. At Windsor George III. had A CAT'S PATH—a sly early walk which the good old king took in the gray morning before his household was astir. What was the Corinthian path here recorded? Does any antiquary know? And what were the rich wines which our friends took, and which enabled them ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... along the walls, and lie buried in the chambers in argillaceous mud. Rounded flint stones are constantly associated with the bones, and the latter are always in great disorder. The species that I met with were as follows: the great cave bear, the little bear, the hyena, the great cat, the rhinoceros, the ox, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 508, September 26, 1885 • Various
... on. He went to the forest to cut bamboo with which to make a floor, and he carried cooked rice with him. When he got there he hung the rice in a tree and went to cut the bamboo. While he was gone, a cat came and ate the rice, so when the man got hungry and came to eat, he had no rice, so he went home. The next day he went to cut again, and when he had hung the rice in the tree, the cat came to eat it. The third day he went again and hung the rice in the tree, but fixed it in a trap; then he hid ...
— Traditions of the Tinguian: A Study in Philippine Folk-Lore • Fay-Cooper Cole
... horse, if you have in your mind's eye at the same time a picture of the more cumbrous and slower movements of a cow; and you will be helped in the same way when you are carving a dog, by remembering that the movements of a cat afford a striking contrast, in being stealthy where the other is ...
— Wood-Carving - Design and Workmanship • George Jack
... "Holy cat!" he cried, or English words to that effect, "you can't come over here and do that way. It's not done," he declared. "You can't meet Englishmen in that fashion. These people will think you are a wild, bounding ...
— Walking-Stick Papers • Robert Cortes Holliday
... fish is the mathemegh, cat-fish, or barbue. It belongs to the genus silurus. It is rare but ...
— The Journey to the Polar Sea • John Franklin
... and stems are used medicinally and make a beverage called Balm Wine. A variety of cat-mint called Moldavian balm is used in Germany ...
— Vaughan's Vegetable Cook Book (4th edition) - How to Cook and Use Rarer Vegetables and Herbs • Anonymous
... I'd die. I thought I'd scream. I thought I'd run. I thought I'd faint. But I didn't—for there, asleep on a rug that some one had forgotten to take in, was the house cat. I gave her a quick slap, and she flew out and across ...
— In the Bishop's Carriage • Miriam Michelson
... steps, neither of them caring for any one else in the world. Let any listen or watch who pleased; the night was theirs, the world was theirs, and the spring-time was about them, drawing them together. He watched her like a cat; every movement of her body set his blood tingling; he was ready to spring upon her in a moment. And when it came near to action there was a power of will in his manner towards ...
— Wanderers • Knut Hamsun |
