"Cat" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of quiet. It really costs unceasing labor to keep a regiment in perfect condition and ready for service. The work is made up of minute and endless details, like a bird's pruning her feathers or a cat's licking her kittens into their proper toilet. Here are eight hundred men, every one of whom, every Sunday morning at farthest, must be perfectly soigne in all personal proprieties; he must exhibit himself provided with every ...
— Army Life in a Black Regiment • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... must thou endure, When thou becom'st a cat demure, Full many a cuff and angry word, Chased roughly from the tempting board. But yet, for that thou hast, I ween, So oft our favored playmate been, Soft be the change which thou shalt prove! When time hath spoiled thee of our love, Still be thou deemed by housewife ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... Casas, extending from the 11th to the 29th of October, the landing being on the 12th. From the description the diary gives, and from a projection of a voyage of Columbus before and after landing, Capt. Fox concludes that the island discovered was neither Grand Turk's, Mariguana, Watling's, nor Cat Island (Guanahani), but Samana, lat. 23 deg. 05 min., N.; long. 75 ...
— Christopher Columbus and His Monument Columbia • Various
... There lay the cat asleep on the bare gravel of the path, as if beds, rugs, and carpets were unendurable. The leaves of the hollyhocks hung like half-closed umbrellas, the sap almost simmered in the stems, and foliage with a smooth surface glared like metallic mirrors. A small apple tree, of ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy
... whence they are sometimes called owl-faced monkeys. They are covered with soft gray fur, like that of a rabbit, and sleep all day long concealed in hollow trees. The face is also marked with white patches and stripes, giving it a rather carnivorous or cat like aspect, which, perhaps, serves as a protection, by causing the defenseless creature to be taken for an arboreal tiger cat or some ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 344, August 5, 1882 • Various
... I year de gals say he's a mighty prop-en-tickler[40] gentermun, en I des hope you aint gwine ter set dar en run on lak you mos' allers does w'en I got comp'ny 'bout how much soap-grease you done save up en how many kitten de ole cat got. I gits right 'shame' sometimes, dat ...
— Nights With Uncle Remus - Myths and Legends of the Old Plantation • Joel Chandler Harris
... the middle of a game of patience; her worn and tattered furniture had been sold at auction, and the house had remained unlet for a considerable period because people in the town said that the ghost of Mrs. Pentecoste's cat (a famous blue Persian) walked there. The Ronders cared nothing for ghosts; the house was exactly what they wanted. It had two panelled rooms, two powder-closets, and a little walled garden at the back with ...
— The Cathedral • Hugh Walpole
... wide with a curious conviction that there was a cat in the room, and then all in a moment she met the cool, repellent stare of the black-browed doctor whom Burke had ...
— The Top of the World • Ethel M. Dell
... The next picture illustrated Cruelty, in many compartments. In one I saw a disemboweled horse savagely spurred on by his rider at a bull-fight. In another, an aged philosopher was dissecting a living cat, and gloating over his work. In a third, two pagans politely congratulated each other on the torture of two saints: one saint was roasting on a grid-iron; the other, hung up to a tree by his heels, had been just skinned, and was not quite dead yet. Feeling no great desire, after these specimens, ...
— The Law and the Lady • Wilkie Collins
... although extremely economical in his washing bill. It was his delight to visit the various prisons and obtain a hideous pleasure in watching the tortures of the poor wretches therein incarcerated. He was fined and imprisoned for ill-treating a cat, if my memory does not play me false. I have been told that he once stole a pockethandkerchief, but at this distance of time cannot remember ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., December 13, 1890 • Various
... chuckle, a man's "Whew!" of surprise, the "Hem!" of annoyance or perplexity, the moan of pain, a scream, a whisper, a rasp, a sob, a choke, and a gasp. The utterances of animals, though wordless, are eloquent to me—the cat's purr, its mew, its angry, jerky, scolding spit; the dog's bow-wow of warning or of joyous welcome, its yelp of despair, and its contented snore; the cow's moo; a monkey's chatter; the snort of a horse; the lion's roar, and the terrible snarl of the tiger. ...
— The World I Live In • Helen Keller
... a farmhouse one day, a cat jumped from behind the door, seized the mouse and little Tom, ran off with them both, and was just going to devour the mouse when Tom boldly drew his sword and attacked the cat with great spirit. The King and his nobles, seeing Tom in danger, ...
— The History Of Tom Thumb and Other Stories. • Anonymous
... indeed, I had sat quaking in my corner, all cold with the fear of a flitting figure, appearing here and there, seen with the tail of the eye, and then disappearing like the black cat I see in corners when my ...
— The Dew of Their Youth • S. R. Crockett
... were living, Should find with delight it could motion to strike him! So found the Duke, and his mother like him: The lady hardly got a rebuff— That had not been contemptuous enough, With his cursed smirk, as he nodded applause, And kept off the old mother-cat's claws. ...
— Introduction to Robert Browning • Hiram Corson
... well for boys of adolescent years to know a few leading facts regarding female structure and function, but such knowledge is best learned from oral description by a well-balanced teacher. Diagrams and (in some schools) a demonstrated dissection of a cat or other animal will be helpful. The meaning of the ovaries as sources of the egg-cells and of the uterus as the place for development of the fertilized egg-cell should be explained in a serious way that will help boys get some fundamental ideas as to what motherhood means Boys, moreover, ...
— Sex-education - A series of lectures concerning knowledge of sex in its - relation to human life • Maurice Alpheus Bigelow
... the mouth of the river Gleni.(1) The second, third, fourth, and fifth, were on another river, by the Britons called Duglas,(2) in the region Linuis. The sixth, on the river Bassas.(3) The seventh in the wood Celidon, which the Britons call Cat Coit Celidon.(4) The eighth was near Gurnion castle,(5) where Arthur bore the image of the Holy Virgin,(6) mother of God, upon his shoulders, and through the power of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the holy Mary, put the Saxons to flight, and pursued ...
— History Of The Britons (Historia Brittonum) • Nennius
... busy with the possibilities of this break in her journey. Somebody to depend upon her; somebody to have need of her, if only for a little while. In all her life no living thing had had to depend upon her, not even a dog or a cat. All other things were without weight or consequence before the fact that this poor young man would have to depend upon her for his life. The amazing ...
— The Ragged Edge • Harold MacGrath
... the darling old boy to come home to Miss Emelene and the cat and Eleanor and Alys ...
— The Sturdy Oak - A Composite Novel of American Politics by Fourteen American Authors • Samuel Merwin, et al.
... Alfred Buckley leaned forward and talked. "You must find out whether or not Steve has an option on the new tool. It would be foolish to ask outright and give ourselves away. That inventor is stupid and vain. Those fellows always are. They appear to be quiet and shrewd, but they always let the cat out of the bag. The thing to do is to flatter him in some way. A woman could find out all he knows in ten minutes." He turned to Clara and smiled. There was something infinitely impertinent in the fixed, animal-like stare of ...
— Poor White • Sherwood Anderson
... improving all the faculties on all other points. Well, the monkey midshipmen did not behave very correctly; so, Captain Reud had them one afternoon all tied up to one of his guns in the cabin, and one after the other, well flogged with the cat-o'-nine-tails. It was highly ludicrous to see the poor fellows waiting each for his turn, well knowing what was to come; they never, than when under the impression of their fears, looked more human. That night they stole into the cabin, by two or three, in the dead of the night, and nearly ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... girl has a black cat; about once in four months this cat has kittens. Opposite our place is a man who has an Airedale dog. When that dog comes across the street and that cat has no kittens, the cat immediately "beats it" as fast as she can, with the dog after her. But when that dog comes across ...
— Fundamentals of Prosperity - What They Are and Whence They Come • Roger W. Babson
... vary conveenient that they bring it you on leetle pieces of stick, for one penny: but I do not find the bif superieur.' On hearing this, the Englishman, red with astonishment, exclaimed, 'Good heavens, sir! you have been eating cat's meat.'" No, M. Curmer, we are ready to acknowledge the superiority of your cookery, but we have long since made up our minds as to the ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... in her eye—a change in her pose that, slight as it was, reminded the artist of a cat about ...
— A Girl of the Commune • George Alfred Henty
... so many ingredients in tobacco and tobacco smoke are deadly poisons. Few people know that one drop of nicotin on the unbroken skin of a rabbit will produce death.[54] Two drops on the tongue of a dog or cat will prove fatal; moreover, fatal poisonings have occurred in man from swallowing tobacco and even from external application of strong solutions. A case was recently reported from New Haven of fatal poisoning in a baby,[55] who had been fed from a milk bottle and ...
— How to Live - Rules for Healthful Living Based on Modern Science • Irving Fisher and Eugene Fisk
... one cat had a rub all the others that could get a chance had a rub as well. Then perhaps their master would stoop down with his knife in his teeth, and take a piece of bast from his pocket, to tie up a flower or a lettuce, when one of the cats was sure to jump on ...
— Brownsmith's Boy - A Romance in a Garden • George Manville Fenn
... the reins I brought my team to its haunches and reached for my revolver. Quite needless: with the quickest movement that I had ever seen in anything but a cat—almost before the words were out of the horseman's mouth—May had thrown himself backward across the back of the seat, face upward, and the muzzle of his rifle was within a yard of the fellow's breast! What further occurred among the three of us there ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce • Ambrose Bierce
... difference between a wolf and a caribou, for instance, which in doubt trusts his nose or his curiosity. So the old wolf took counsel of her fears for her little ones, and that night carried them one by one in her mouth, as a cat carries her kittens, miles away over rocks and ravines and spruce thickets, to another den where no human eye ever ...
— Northern Trails, Book I. • William J. Long
... the truth. It is simply the result of the lack of something militant, dogmatic and structural in him: whereby he could not be trusted with the trail of a very long literary process without entangling himself like a kitten playing cat's-cradle. ...
— The Victorian Age in Literature • G. K. Chesterton
... bookmaker's clerk, faro dealer, poolroom cashier and, finally, bucketshop proprietor. When the police closed him up he sought employment with Gunst & Baumer, whose exchange affiliations precluded any suspicion of bucketing, but who, nevertheless, did a thriving business in curb securities of the cat-and-dog variety, and it was in this particular branch of the science of investment and speculation that Milton excelled. Despite his expert knowledge, however, he was slightly stumped, as the vernacular has it, when Abe Potash produced B. Sheitlis' stock, for in all ...
— Potash & Perlmutter - Their Copartnership Ventures and Adventures • Montague Glass
... the wheat, too, and the fencing is all mended and white-washed. It's not the tumble-down place it was in Gideon's time—you've done wonders with it. The morning-glories were blooming over the porch, and your white cat ...
— Lewis Rand • Mary Johnston
... camping ground, compelling many a drenched soldier to shift his quarters hurriedly. We got through the dark and troublous night somehow, though keenly vexed by the muttered discontent of the camels, and the persistent, blatant, variegated amorous braying of 500 donkeys. A cat upon the tiles, a Romeo, was to this as a tin whistle to a trombone. Sleep was a nightmare. It was after six a.m. before the head of the column moved out towards the desert track. The rear did not get away before eight o'clock, much too ...
— Khartoum Campaign, 1898 - or the Re-Conquest of the Soudan • Bennet Burleigh
... from his bunk with the lithe, delicate grace of a cat. The monotony of sleep and labor was ended. Something had broken. Life was once again a ...
— A World is Born • Leigh Douglass Brackett
... poor woman taken to an excellent asylum, where she could have not only every care, but every necessary comfort and even luxury. Alas! however, general paralysis never forgives. Sometimes it releases its prey, like the cruel cat releases the mouse, for a brief moment, only to lay hold of it again later, more fiercely than ever. Fanny had that period of abatement in her symptoms, and one morning the physician was able to say ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume II (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... when two chairs met, the din shattered the atmosphere. A foreigner excites a surprising amount of curiosity, considering the number that visit Canton. Troops of boys followed us and there was a good deal of what sounded like cat-calling. But it was all good- ...
— An Inevitable Awakening • ARTHUR JUDSON BROWN
... indication of the general disposition of the people. "I would not have," said a noble peer, in the debate on this bill, "so much as a Popish man or a Popish woman to remain here; not so much as a Popish dog or a Popish bitch; not so much as a Popish cat to pur or mew about the king." What is more extraordinary, this speech met with praise ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part F. - From Charles II. to James II. • David Hume
... my mistress's favorite cat leapt into her lap. I heard a noise behind me like that of a dozen stocking-weavers at work; and, turning my head, I found it proceeded from the purring of that animal, who seemed to be three times larger than an ...
— Gulliver's Travels - Into Several Remote Regions of the World • Jonathan Swift
... cat,' said Audrey, decidedly. 'I'm glad of it, though. If another woman had helped you make a lot of money, I ...
— The Man Upstairs and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... completeness of the destruction, but had really had no idea of what it was. It was a town of about forty-five hundred souls, built on the side of a pretty hill overlooking the Meuse. There are only two or three houses left. We saw one old man, two children and a cat in the place. Where the others are, nobody knows. The old man was well over sixty, and had that afternoon been put off a train from Germany, where he had been as a prisoner of war since the middle of August. He had KRIEGSGEFANGENER MUNSTER stencilled on his coat, front and back, so that there could ...
— A Journal From Our Legation in Belgium • Hugh Gibson
... shoulder as he sprang, and we both came to the ground below together. Growling horribly close to my ear, he shook me as a terrier-dog does a rat. The shock produced a stupor similar to that which seems to be felt by a mouse after the first shake of the cat. It caused a sort of dreaminess, in which there was no sense of pain nor feeling of terror, though quite conscious of all that was happening. It was like what patients partially under the influence of chloroform describe, who see all the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various
... of the great love 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 ...
— The Yellow Fairy Book • Leonora Blanche Alleyne Lang
... and improve anything you like in the Fantaisie on the Huguenots. Pieces of this sort ought only to be brought forward by super- eminent virtuosi—Sophie Menter, for instance. The transcriber then hardly serves as "Klecks." [Klecks is the name of Mme. Menter's favorite cat.] ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 2: "From Rome to the End" • Franz Liszt; letters collected by La Mara and translated
... were soon so thick that he could no longer follow Crump by sight, and every few yards he had to stop to listen, and then steal on like a mountain-cat towards the leaves rustling ahead of him. Half-way up the ravine Crump turned to the right and stopped. Puzzled, Isom pushed so close that the spy, standing irresolute on the edge of the path, whirled around. The boy sank to his face, and in a moment footsteps started and grew faint; Crump had darted ...
— The Last Stetson • John Fox Jr.
... small, his brain Outweigh'd his rage but half a grain; Which made some take him for a tool 35 That knaves do work with, call'd a fool, And offer to lay wagers that As MONTAIGNE, playing with his cat, Complains she thought him but an ass, Much more she wou'd Sir HUDIBRAS; 40 (For that's the name our valiant knight To all his challenges did write). But they're mistaken very much, 'Tis plain enough he was no such; We grant, although he had much wit, 45 H' ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler
... receive Four Dozen at the Gun (for he being a kind of Officer, we did not wish to Humiliate him on deck). Half of his Punishment he endured with more doleful Squalling than ever I heard from a Penitent in my Life, although the Boatswain was very tender with him, and three Tails of the Cat were tied up. He begged pardon, and so Captain Blokes remitted him the rest of his Punishment. This Midshipman was one who sang a very good Song; and so a Cushion being brought to Ease him, we finished the Evening and the ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 3 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... holler till dark, but I ain't goin' to answer you while a blue-channel cat is nibblin' at ...
— Shawn of Skarrow • James Tandy Ellis
... opposite, and, while thus measuring each other with their eyes, Semestre looked like a cautious cat awaiting the attack of the less nimble but stronger ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... was—a man of great talents. When I was alone with her, she talked of many affairs which nearly concerned her, and she once said to me, "The King and I have such implicit confidence in you, that we look upon you as a cat, or a dog, and go on talking as if you were not there." There was a little nook, adjoining her chamber, which has since been altered, where she knew I usually sat when I was alone, and where I heard everything that was said in the room, unless it was spoken in ...
— The Secret Memoirs of Louis XV./XVI, Complete • Madame du Hausset, an "Unknown English Girl" and the Princess Lamballe
... seemed to sharpen the teeth with a ferocious laugh. When you only looked at the hound you said to yourself, "He has got him!" But the sight of the fox reassured you immediately. Beneath the velvet of his lustrous coat, cat-like almost lying along the ground, covering it rapidly without effort, you felt him to be a veritable fairy; and his delicate head with its pointed ears, which as he ran he turned towards the hound, had an expression of ironical security which ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet
... Newgate Market, all burned, and seen Anthony Joyce's House in fire. And took up (which I keep by me) a piece of glasse of Mercers' Chappell in the streete, where much more was, so melted and buckled with the heat of the fire like parchment. I also did see a poor cat taken out of a hole in the chimney, joyning to the wall of the Exchange; with, the hair all burned off the body, and yet alive. So home at night, and find there good hopes of saving our office; but great ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... while the Committee was airing another grievance. They clamored to have the twelve divisions of the army of the Potomac grouped into corps. They gave as their motive, military efficiency. And perhaps they thought they meant it. But there was a cat in the bag which they carefully tried to conceal. The generals of divisions formed two distinct groups, the elder ones who did not owe their elevation to McClellan and the younger ones who did. The elder generals, ...
— Lincoln • Nathaniel Wright Stephenson
... "A cat may look at the king," I replied, stung by the harsh words, after I had cherished so many kind feelings towards him, though I forgot that I had not expressed them, since ...
— Down The River - Buck Bradford and His Tyrants • Oliver Optic
... framed by short, clipped hair. Every now and then a young officer came up to her and took her hand, and asked if she wanted anything. She answered him indifferently, but when he went back to his seat, her eyes followed him and rested on him with the long, narrow look of a watchful cat. ...
— Trapped in 'Black Russia' - Letters June-November 1915 • Ruth Pierce
... she came back to Haworth, in a letter to one of the household in which she had been staying, there occurs this passage:—"Our poor little cat has been ill two days, and is just dead. It is piteous to see even an animal lying lifeless. Emily is sorry." These few words relate to points in the characters of the two sisters, which I must dwell upon a little. Charlotte was more than commonly ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte - Volume 1 • Elizabeth Gaskell
... woods; once he talked about a mouse-hole he had found, and made a lot of that; another time it was a great fish as big as a man, he had seen in the river. But it was all evidently his own invention; he was somewhat inclined to make black into white, was Sivert, but a good sort for all that. When the cat had kittens, it was he who brought her milk, because she hissed too much for Eleseus. Sivert was never tired of standing looking at the box full of movement, a nest ...
— Growth of the Soil • Knut Hamsun
... common leopard and the hunting leopard; besides, I think, two or three smaller varieties, as the tiger-cat and wild cat. What do you propose doing to-day? Do you stay here, or ...
— The Mission • Frederick Marryat
... remained in the dining-room after breakfast in case Miss Wilkinson should insist on kissing him on the stairs. He did not want Mary Ann, now a woman hard upon middle age with a sharp tongue, to catch them in a compromising position. Mary Ann did not like Miss Wilkinson and called her an old cat. Aunt Louisa was not very well and could not come to the station, but the Vicar and Philip saw her off. Just as the train was leaving she leaned out and ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham
... p. 10.).—On the day on which this Query met my eye, a friend informed me that she had just received a letter from an American clergyman travelling in Europe, in which he mentioned having seen a tailless cat in Scotland, called a Manx cat, from having come {480} from the Isle of Man. This is not "a Jonathan." Perhaps the Isle of Man is too small to swing ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 238, May 20, 1854 • Various
... not bother any more about me than about the cat and not even so much. Tell your little mother, just that. Then I shall see you at last, all I want to for two days. Do you know that you are INACCESSIBLE in Paris? Poor old fellow, did you finally sleep like a dormouse in your cabin? ...
— The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Letters • George Sand, Gustave Flaubert
... not a little more than surprising that the common domestic cat, an animal which we are better acquainted with than the dog, should be permitted to grow up with so little instruction? I think so. Almost every dog has some tricks; many dogs have a great number. Yet how rarely ...
— Happy Days for Boys and Girls • Various
... is, lying ones), the King's Head and the Queen's Arms, ropes of onions, dried herbs, smoked fish, holly boughs, hall lanthorns, framed piety texts, and adored frights of family portraits, all hang! Likewise corkscrews, cat-skins, glittering trophies, sausage links, shining icicles, the crucifix, and the skeleton in chains. There, we all swing, my masters! Tut! hanging's a high Act of ...
— The Works of Christopher Marlowe, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Christopher Marlowe
... detect its presence. Not a sound came from the open trap, no figures were to be seen, no spoken voice to be heard. The moaning waves upon the iron reef, the echo of gunshots in the silence of the night, alone spoke of life and being and the open sea without. And I went up like a cat, rung by rung, my hand hot upon the iron, the thought in my head that madness sent me and that I might never see ...
— The House Under the Sea - A Romance • Sir Max Pemberton
... that universal explanation for all mysterious disappearances, 'the cat did it'?" ...
— Sylvie and Bruno • Lewis Carroll
... there is any use in my sitting here at the window any longer. Bricks and mortar, mortar and bricks! and little strips of yards not big enough to swing a cat round in. You may, perhaps you will, ask with the Frenchman, "Vat for you want to ...
— Little Ferns For Fanny's Little Friends • Fanny Fern
... not tempt to imitation. And in making overtures for peace, with whom are we to treat? Talking vaguely about "the South," "the Confederate States," or "the Southern people," does not help the matter; for the cat under all this meal is always the government at Richmond, men with everything to expect from independence, with much to hope from reconstruction, and sure of nothing but ruin from reunion. And these men, who were arrogant as equals and ...
— The Writings of James Russell Lowell in Prose and Poetry, Volume V - Political Essays • James Russell Lowell
... of flight, and whose nest, as we are told by Cauche, never contained more than one egg, became totally extinct soon after coming into contact with man. Nor would man alone be directly the dodo's destroyer; his immediate followers, the cat, hog, and dog, must have been fatal neighbours to its young. Leguat, a gentleman of education, spent several months on the Mauritius in 1693, but makes no mention of the dodo. He says: 'This island was formerly ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 440 - Volume 17, New Series, June 5, 1852 • Various
... were both dead, her facile tears were dried, she satisfied her maternal instinct by the keeping of three pug dogs which her husband secretly detested. She also had a scarlet-and-blue macaw and two cockatoos and a Persian cat; but these last her husband liked or tolerated for their colour or their biological interest; only, as in the case of the dogs, he objected (though seldom angrily, out of consideration for his wife's feelings) to their being ...
— Mrs. Warren's Daughter - A Story of the Woman's Movement • Sir Harry Johnston
... He looked at me hard, kept on watchin' me for mebbe a full hour, until he figured I was sound asleep. Then he crept near an' touched me: caught hold o' this yer vest an' tugged at it till he tore a hole in it. Then he went about the room, silent as a cat. He drew my boots away from the stove, where I'd put 'em to dry. He went to the shelf, where that old pipe was lyin'. I dunno what else he did. I was too much asleep t' know anythin' or care anythin'. ...
— Kiddie the Scout • Robert Leighton
... Christmas tree," something that he had forgotten yesterday, or to inquire earnestly after the sale of a mechanical frog, which he claimed as his own invention and patent. He had never succeeded in getting Win to serve him, but he was as free to look at her as a cat is free to ...
— Winnie Childs - The Shop Girl • C. N. Williamson
... we slew stoat or wild-cat,' cried the other, slipping under the waggon. 'We are keeping the Lord's preserves now, brother Wat, and truly these are some of the vermin ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle
... second skin. Her beautiful black hair looked as smooth as satin under her hat. Her little ears were like rosy shells—they had a pearl dangling from each of them. She came swiftly out to us, as straight as a lily on its stem, and as lithe and supple in every movement she made as a young cat. Nothing that I could discover was altered in her pretty face, but her eyes and her lips. Her eyes were brighter and fiercer than I liked to see; and her lips had so completely lost their colour and their smile that I hardly knew them again. She kissed her mother in a hasty and ...
— The Moonstone • Wilkie Collins
... beanfeasters going to Tintern. There is no mob so cruelly sarcastic as the British, and it may be that the revelers in the break envied the dusty chauffeur his pretty companion. At any rate, they greeted the passing of the car with jeers and cat-calls, and awoke Mrs. Devar. It is a weakness of human nature to endeavor to conceal the fact that you have been asleep when you are supposed to be awake, so she leaned forward now, and ...
— Cynthia's Chauffeur • Louis Tracy
... Herminius He leaned one breathing-space; Then, like a wild cat mad with wounds, 160 Sprang right at Astur's face. Through teeth, and skull, and helmet, So fierce a thrust he sped, The good sword stood a hand-breadth out ...
— The Ontario High School Reader • A.E. Marty
... can't look at pictures in a shabby old album until you feel so tired you fall asleep," grumbled Laura, feeling like a cat that has just had a saucer of rich cream snatched from under its nose. "You girls wouldn't know a mystery if you ...
— Billie Bradley on Lighthouse Island - The Mystery of the Wreck • Janet D. Wheeler
... Might attract too much attention. Told him not to. We'll get a couple of ponies at Bluewater and ride across the mountains. But we've got to be slick. The old man is no fool. He'll hang on to the location of the treasure till the last old cat's ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in New Mexico • Frank Gee Patchin
... attempted to find the chat's nest, the bird himself accompanied me up and down the borders of this well-fortified blackberry thicket, mocking at me, and uttering his characteristic call, a sort of mew, different from that of the catbird or the cat, at the same time carefully keeping his precious body entirely screened by the foliage. Well he knew that no clumsy, garmented human creature however inquisitive, could penetrate his thorny jungle, and doubtless the remarks so glibly poured out were sarcastic or exultant over my failure; for though ...
— Upon The Tree-Tops • Olive Thorne Miller
... plaguy, heavy Lubber! Sure this fellow Has a bushell of plot in's belly, he weighes so massy. Heigh! now againe! he stincks like a hung poll cat. This rotten treason has a vengeance savour; This venison wants pepper ...
— A Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. II • Various
... face an' crackin' my coat-tails. I were lonesome—lonesomer'n a he-bear—an' the cold grabbin' holt o' all ends o' me so as I had to stop an' argue 'bout whar my bound'ry-lines was located like I were York State. Cat's blood an' gun-powder! I had to kick an' scratch to keep my nose an' ...
— In the Days of Poor Richard • Irving Bacheller
... among our more primitive forms of dogs nor the wild allied species as a marked feature. All the canine animals trust rather to furious chase than to the cautious form of assault by stealthy approach and a final spring upon their prey, as is the habit with the cat tribe. Granting this somewhat doubtful claim that the induced habits of these dogs which have been specially adapted to the fowling-piece rest upon an original and native instinct, the amount of specialization which has been attained in about thirty generations ...
— Domesticated Animals - Their Relation to Man and to his Advancement in Civilization • Nathaniel Southgate Shaler
... began the construction of still another playhouse, and when I had it about two-thirds finished, Steve slyly sneaked up to the spot and tipped the whole thing over. I jumped for him with the quickness of a cat, and clutching him by the throat for a moment I had the advantage of him. But he was too strong for me, and soon had me on the ground and was beating me severely. While away from home I had someway come into possession of a very small pocket dagger, which I had carried about ...
— The Life of Hon. William F. Cody - Known as Buffalo Bill The Famous Hunter, Scout and Guide • William F. Cody
... and the admiration of strength is his keynote." (Aloud.) You must see for yourself that your hand isn't a weak one, and see how the lines are cut—as if with a chisel. (Aside.) He's purring already like a Cheshire cat. ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 6, July 1905 • Various
... hops off. If he does, you catch him again, and put him on the end of the wood over and over again till he sits still, and he does when he is tired. Then you have a stick ready, as if you were going to play at cat, and you hit ...
— Quicksilver - The Boy With No Skid To His Wheel • George Manville Fenn
... Boy, especially if he is in dinner costume. If the quadruped can get into a garden and root up unreplaceable flowers and fruits, before he retires to his lair, his bliss is perfect. So the Boy; if he can manage to break two or three windows, tear his best clothes into ribbons, chase the family cat up a tree with hound, whoop, and halloo, and then stone her out of it, and, as she with thickened tail scampers to some more secure retreat, follow her with hoots and missiles—he also retires, conscious ...
— Punchinello, Vol.1, No. 4, April 23, 1870 • Various
... had been every sort of journalist in America and in London, and some years previously had been brought into the editorship of the County Times. The Press, broad-based on the liberty of the English people and superbly impervious to whatever temptation to jump in the direction the cat jumps, is, on the other hand, singularly sensitive to apparently inconsequent trifles in the lives of its proprietary. Pike, with his reputation, was brought into the editorship of the County Times solely because ...
— If Winter Comes • A.S.M. Hutchinson
... annihilation by going into mined harbors, and ships can do little or nothing against coast fortifications equipped with 14-inch guns. Experience at Gallipoli emphasizes this fact. And yet"—here the secretary became cryptic—"there is more than one way to kill a cat. No place is ...
— Our Navy in the War • Lawrence Perry
... that, your Honor! An' it's near the middle of the night! No, I'll not be findin' hard-boiled eggs for you—oh, he's laughin' at me! Now you come into the dinin'-room, an' I'll be hottin' some milk for you, for you're wet as any drowned little cat. An' the mare's fine, an' I've the fishin'-sticks all dusted, an' your new bathin'-tub's to your bath-room, though ill fate follow that English pig Percival that put it in, for he dug holes with his heels! An' would you ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... put my nose in one! My body must follow, however, where Raffles had led the way; and when it did I came to ground sooner than I expected on something less secure. The dying firelight, struggling through the bars of a kitchen range, showed my tennis-shoes in the middle of the kitchen table. A cat was stretching itself on the hearth-rug as I made a step of a wooden chair, and came down ...
— Mr. Justice Raffles • E. W. Hornung
... form. That son with whom his parents become angry, has, in consequence of his evil thoughts towards them, to take birth as an ass. As an ass he has to live for ten months. He has then to take birth as a dog and to remain as such for four and ten months. After that he has to take birth as a cat and living in that form for seven months he regains his status of humanity. Having spoken ill of parents, one has to take birth as a Sarika. Striking them, one has to take birth, O king, as tortoise. Living as a tortoise for ten years, he ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... of the wild-cat and the hungry Kaffir dogs. It should be wide, to leave room for him. The ground was hard, with boulders of ironstone embedded in it. What did that matter? All the day through, and all through the night ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... think you all know why we are here. Last night Mrs. Whitenose, whom we all love, and all her family were killed by the big white cat. The night before, while Mrs. Blackfoot was out hunting, all her cunning little babies were killed by the same cat. Early this week one of my finest boys was killed. You or ...
— Fifty Fabulous Fables • Lida Brown McMurry
... and all the manifest evils that follow from the lack of a highly developed civic spirit. In this connection may be noted also the influence of frontier conditions in permitting lax business honor, inflated paper currency and wild-cat banking. The colonial and revolutionary frontier was the region whence emanated many of the worst forms of an evil currency.[32:1] The West in the War of 1812 repeated the phenomenon on the frontier of that day, while ...
— The Frontier in American History • Frederick Jackson Turner
... next moment two brown and sinewy hands appeared on the edge of one of the cases—the edge next the wall; the case vibrated and rocked a little, and the next moment there mounted on the top of it not a cat, nor a monkey, as might have been expected, but an animal that in truth resembles both these quadrupeds, viz., a sailor; and need we say that sailor was the mate of the Proserpine? He descended lightly from the top of the case behind which he had been jammed for ...
— Foul Play • Charles Reade
... Turks are supposed to have a great tenderness for animals. There is a popular saying, which he quotes, "A Turk cares more for the life of a cat than of a man." The following curious scene was witnessed by him in a town ...
— Memoir and Letters of Francis W. Newman • Giberne Sieveking
... The cat and the fiddle, The cow jumped over the moon; The little dog laughed, To see such sport, And the dish ran away ...
— Children's Rhymes, Children's Games, Children's Songs, Children's Stories - A Book for Bairns and Big Folk • Robert Ford
... one knew, except that he was so ugly. He had so many scars on his face, from falls and fights, that somehow he produced the impression of a target. His hair stood out like a halo of straw, and one defiant wisp reared itself above his forehead with the grace of a cat's whisker. Mrs. Lilly could never sleep until he was safe in her arms, and his life knew no cross until after the accident to Katharine Kirk, who became, in her turn, the pivot round which the family revolved. Horrible ...
— Harper's Young People, October 19, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... I do—" Before I could complete the sentence she bounced out of the room. I sat over an hour waiting for her to return; but as she did not, I determined I would go to bed. I discovered Carrie had gone to bed without even saying "good-night"; leaving me to bar the scullery door and feed the cat. I shall certainly speak to her about this in ...
— The Diary of a Nobody • George Grossmith and Weedon Grossmith
... my revolver twice at the ceiling, hoping to arouse some one, either guests or servants, and fired again at the shoulder of the man whose leap towards me was like the spring of a wild-cat. Both rooms were suddenly plunged into darkness, the elder of the two men, stepping back for a moment, had turned out the electric lights. For a short space of time everything was chaos. My immediate assailant I ...
— The Great Secret • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... take care of that in short order. Tom was a big, black, bobtailed cat eleven years old who had lived with Ed since he was a kitten. Not having any feline companionship to distract him, his only interest was hunting mice. Generally he killed a lot more than he could eat, racking the surplus in neat piles beside the trail, on the doorstep, or on a ...
— Cat and Mouse • Ralph Williams
... Within the room were several persons who came to pay their court to the doctor (for every man who is an officer of the court has his levee), and from remarking them, I learnt how necessary it was, in order to advance in life, to make much of everything, even the dog or the cat, if they came in my way, of him who can have access to the ear of men in power. I made my reflections upon the miseries I had already undergone, and was calculating how long it would take me to go through a course ...
— The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan • James Morier
... sport with men. Curious rather than affrighted, I sat up once more, and looked around, when I saw two bright spots of light in the dark. Then deeming that, for some reason unknown to me, the prison door had been opened while I slept, and a cat let in, I stretched out my hands towards the lights, thence came a sharp, faint cry, and something soft and furry leaped on to my breast, stroking me with ...
— A Monk of Fife • Andrew Lang
... smiling elders march ahead; We dance, without a fiddler, We play at cross-touch, White and Red, Tip-cat, ...
— Fringilla: Some Tales In Verse • Richard Doddridge Blackmore
... exclaimed Jerry. "Here's a swamp with all manner of wild animals in it, from alligators and wildcats to mosquitoes by the million. How do we know but what some of them might take a notion to come aboard in the night? I can see myself waking up to find a bobtailed cat cuddling up under my blanket with me; or a ten-foot 'gator sprawled out across Will, here, asking to have his picture taken. Tell me ...
— The Outdoor Chums on the Gulf • Captain Quincy Allen
... Going abroad? Uncle Henry's ancient dame was a she-devil, to carry her off! Then, in the midst of his anger, he recognized his opportunity: "The hell-cat has done me a good turn, I do believe! I'll get her! Bless the woman! I'll pay her passage myself, if she'll only go and ...
— The Vehement Flame • Margaret Wade Campbell Deland
... nor do birds keep open nest. Certain wolves and tigers, it is true, have been so seduced by man from their natural state that they will deign to accept man's hospitality. But when you give a bone to your dog, does he run out and invite another dog to share it with him?—and does your cat insist on having a circle of other cats around her saucer of milk? Quite the contrary. A deep sense of personal property is common to all these creatures. Thousands of years hence they may have acquired some willingness to ...
— And Even Now - Essays • Max Beerbohm
... describing his afternoon's adventures, or listening to the afternoon's adventures of other people; the room itself, the gas-fire, the arm-chair—all had been fought for; the wretched bird, with half its feathers out and one leg lamed by a cat, had been rescued under protest; but what his family most resented, he reflected, was his wish for privacy. To dine alone, or to sit alone after dinner, was flat rebellion, to be fought with every weapon of underhand stealth or of open appeal. Which ...
— Night and Day • Virginia Woolf
... we got a front seat, and long before the time for the speakers to appear every corner was packed, and women as well as men were standing in rows fronting the stage. A great buzz of conversation at the front, and stampeding and cat-calling among the youths at the back, was terminated by the arrival of the three speakers of the evening, who were received amid deafening cock-a-doodling, cheering, stamping, and clapping. An old warrior of the class dressed up to the position of M.P. sat ...
— Some Everyday Folk and Dawn • Miles Franklin
... relinquish his scholastic duties and make way for a certified teacher. One day he heard the new master tell his pupils: "'A' is an indefinite article. 'A' is one, and can only be applied to one thing. You cannot say a cats or a dogs; but only a cat, a dog." The clerk at once reported the matter to his rector. "Here's a pretty fellow you've got to keep school! He says that you can only apply the article 'a' to nouns of the singular number; and here have I been singing ...
— The Parish Clerk (1907) • Peter Hampson Ditchfield
... give the alarm till I'm certain there's danger coming," he said, rather sulkily. "I haven't got eyes like a cat, and I don't know that he can ...
— Mass' George - A Boy's Adventures in the Old Savannah • George Manville Fenn
... was a non-T/O outfit; he came directly under Division command and didn't have to bother reporting to any regimental or brigade commanders. He walked for an hour with half a dozen lightly wounded Scots, rode for another hour on a big cat-truck loaded with casualties of six regiments and four races, and finally reached Division Rear, where both the Division and Corps commanders took time to compliment him on the part his last hunter ...
— Hunter Patrol • Henry Beam Piper and John J. McGuire
... day. I ask you to compare Plutarch's lives of demigods and heroes with our modern biographies of deminoughts and zeroes. Those will appear but tailors and ninth-parts of men in comparison with these, every one of whom would seem to have had nine lives, like a cat, to justify such prolixity. Yet the evils of print are as dust in the balance to those ...
— The Function Of The Poet And Other Essays • James Russell Lowell
... force the moderates into their ranks from dread of personal consequences. Such a claim is weak upon its very face, and will not bear examination. Most of the moderates were but waiting to see how the cat would jump, and when once a preponderance of sentiment showed they speedily took sides. Had there been in the colonies a majority desirous of a return to allegiance, the Whig cause surely could not have survived the dark days of the war. We can safely conclude the majority to have been in favor ...
— The Siege of Boston • Allen French
... doves, adieu! Adieu, my playful cat, to thee! Who every morning round me came, And were my little family. But thee, my dog, I shall not leave No, thou shalt ever follow me, Shalt share my toils, shaft share my fame ...
— Memoirs of the Court of St. Cloud, Complete - Being Secret Letters from a Gentleman at Paris to a Nobleman in London • Lewis Goldsmith
... said she, "he'll miss me, and that's the truth. Good bye, Jane; mind you look after everything till I come back, and take care of the dog and cat. Come, ...
— Poor Jack • Frederick Marryat
... flock of poultry scratching among the staves in search of food, and instinctively calling them, they flew towards him, as if delighted at the unwonted sound of a human voice. These, and a half-starved cat, were the only things living that he could perceive. At the further end of the street he caught sight of the river, speeding in its course towards the bridge, and scarcely knowing whither he was going, sauntered ...
— Old Saint Paul's - A Tale of the Plague and the Fire • William Harrison Ainsworth
... lifeless Bloomsbury, not so far towards the last bounds of Atlas as the desolation of Podden Place, but the solitude deepening as he passed. There it is, a quiet street indeed! not a soul on its gloomy pavements, not even a policeman's soul. Nought stirring save a stealthy, profligate, good-for-nothing cat, flitting fine through yon area bars. Down that street had he come, I trove, with a livelier, quicker step the day when, by the strange good-luck which had uniformly attended his worldly career of honours, he had been suddenly called upon to supply ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... up in the midst of a veritable tempest, bird cries, cat-calls, and a heavy rhythmical refrain of "Ruy Blas! Ruy Blas! Victor Hugo! ...
— My Double Life - The Memoirs of Sarah Bernhardt • Sarah Bernhardt
... imitation of the thing to which he and his ancestors must have been for thousands of years accustomed; and for the first two nights he slept perched among its branches. On the third the little brute turned the poor cat out of its basket and slept on the eiderdown, after which no more tree for him, real or imitation. At the end of the three months, if we offered him monkey-nuts, he would snatch them from our hand and throw them at our head. He much preferred ...
— Tea-table Talk • Jerome K. Jerome
... she's really gone!" she muttered. "Always snooping about like a cat,—prying and fussing. She's such a ...
— One Woman's Life • Robert Herrick
... Minister is not very sure of his position; if he is backed, not by a united party, but by a haphazard coalition; if he is unduly anxious about his own official future; if his eye is nervously fixed on the next move of the jumping cat, he always fails to govern. He neither protects the law-abiding citizen nor chastises the criminal and the rebel. In this particular, there is no distinction of party. Tories can show no better record than Whigs, nor Liberals than ...
— Prime Ministers and Some Others - A Book of Reminiscences • George W. E. Russell
... him, to prepare the prisoners, and to caution them not to make any complaints. What a farce is kept up by the parade of visiting magistrates, who pass through a gaol, for instance, once a month, "like a cat over a harpsichord;" inquiring, most likely, in the presence of the gaoler or turnkey, if any of the prisoners have any complaint to make to the magistrates! Oh what a horrible farce is this. A planter in the West Indies may just as well expect to hear the truth if he were to ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 1 • Henry Hunt
... none of them so large as that upon which Ozuluama itself is situated. Riding to the town-house, the secretario was at once sent for. He ordered supper, and put a comfortable room, behind the office, at our disposal. On the back porch, just at our door, was chained a tiger-cat. It belonged to the jefe, and was a favorite with his little children, but since they had been gone, it had been teased until it had developed an ugly disposition. It was a beautiful little creature, graceful in form and elegantly spotted. But it snarled and strove to get at everyone who ...
— In Indian Mexico (1908) • Frederick Starr
... increasing the knowledge of his pupil. Hence it is, that hundreds of agreeable and useful little histories have been composed for children, with no other machinery than a mamma and her child, and the occasional introduction of a doll or a dog, a cat or a canary bird. To the child, there is in these numerous groupings no appearance of sameness, nor want of variety; and although so much circumscribed in their original elements, they never fail to amuse ...
— A Practical Enquiry into the Philosophy of Education • James Gall
... given by the fairy-tale tellers of his earliest youth. She had the traditional hook-nose and peaked chin, the glittering eyes, the thousand wrinkles and the toothless gums. He looked about for the raven and the cat, but if she had them, they were not in evidence. At a rough guess, he calculated her age at one hundred years. A youth of extreme laziness, who Baron Dangloss said was the old woman's grandson, appeared to be her man-of-all-work. He fetched the old woman's crystal, placed stools for the visitors, ...
— Truxton King - A Story of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... others of his race, was not averse to talking, either. The little Filipino knew that he had the whole situation in his hands. With the cruelty of a cat, Tomba delighted in the feline pastime of playing with a victim that could not ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys in the Philippines - or, Following the Flag against the Moros • H. Irving Hancock
... the ground on dry leaves, or in a little hollow in rock or stump — never in a nest built with loving care. But in extenuation of such carelessness it may be said that, if disturbed or threatened, the mother shows no lack of maternal instinct, and removes her young, carrying them in her beak as a cat conveys her kittens to secure ...
— Bird Neighbors • Neltje Blanchan
... said leisurely, regarding the small fury before him with mournful interest. "Eh, but thee do be a little spit-cat, surely!" ...
— Bob, Son of Battle • Alfred Ollivant
... Walker's father" and "Sarah Walker's mother," and never as Mr. and Mrs. Walker, addressed her only as "Sarah Walker"; two animals that were occasionally a part of this passing pageant were known as "Sarah Walker's dog" and "Sarah Walker's cat," and later it was my proud privilege to sink my own individuality under the title of "that friend of ...
— By Shore and Sedge • Bret Harte
... stated, survived in historical times. The following are the mammalia alluded to:—The bear (Ursus arctos), the badger, the common marten, the polecat, the ermine, the weasel, the otter, wolf, fox, wild cat, hedgehog, squirrel, field-mouse (Mus sylvaticus), hare, beaver, hog (comprising two races, namely, the wild boar and swamp-hog), the stag (Cervus elaphus), the roe-deer, the fallow-deer, the elk, the steinbock (Capra ibex), the ...
— The Antiquity of Man • Charles Lyell
... is necessary! One cannot expect victory from a baby who imagines a tiger to be a house cat! Powerful hands are my ...
— Autobiography of a YOGI • Paramhansa Yogananda
... curious fascination in Mrs. Pipchin. He would sit by the hour before the fire looking steadily at her, where she sat with her old black cat beside her, till his gaze quite disturbed her. He did not care to play with other children—only with Florence, whom he called "Floy." Often, as they sat together on the beach, he would ask her what it was the sea was always saying, and would ...
— Tales from Dickens • Charles Dickens and Hallie Erminie Rives
... when at length we moved into our new house, and we soon had plenty of our Indian friends to visit us. Widow Kwakegwah brought a black and white cat as a present for my wife. She threw the cat into the kitchen in front of her, and then followed laughing. It was amusing to watch the cat making a survey of the whole house with true Indian curiosity. The Indians did not generally venture ...
— Missionary Work Among The Ojebway Indians • Edward Francis Wilson
... have opened your eyes at last, my friend,' said the man; 'you have had a narrow squeak for it. When I dragged you out of the water, like a drowned rat, I thought all was over with you. Have you as many lives as a cat that you can afford to throw away one ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume VI • Various
... leisurely pace the other way towards the horse-gate. Fleda let down the curtain, then the other two quietly, and then left the room and stole noiselessly out at the front door, leaving it open that the sound of it might not warn Hugh what she was about, and stepping like a cat down the steps ran breathlessly over the snow to the courtyard gate. There waited, shivering in the cold but not feeling it for the cold within,—while the person she was watching stood still a lew moments by the horse-gate and came again ...
— Queechy • Susan Warner
... moment's pause, a dozen greyhounds stepped daintily in on their padded cat-like feet; and round the neck of each dog was slung a roundish thing that looked like one of the little barrels which St. Bernard dogs wear round their necks in the pictures. And when these were loosened and laid on the table Philip ...
— The Magic City • Edith Nesbit
... especially the conspicuous figures of four elderly grizzled negroes, their heads like black, doddered willow tops, who, in venerable contrast to the tumult below them, were couched, sphynx-like, one on the starboard cat-head, another on the larboard, and the remaining pair face to face on the opposite bulwarks above the main-chains. They each had bits of unstranded old junk in their hands, and, with a sort of stoical ...
— The Piazza Tales • Herman Melville |
