Seventy four adoring (and adorable) cat quotes by a mad poet - all of them apt!
My favorites:
19. For having consider'd God and himself he will consider his neighbour.
42. For he is a mixture of gravity and waggery.
70. For, tho he cannot fly, he is an excellent clamberer.
Note: Brought to the front from the comments section of a previous post. (Link: Dean)
Cats are intended to teach us that not everything in nature has a purpose. - Garrison Keillor
The scene of this chronicle is the town of Dawson's Landing, on the Missouri side of the Mississippi, half a day's journey, per steamboat, below St. Louis.
In 1830 it was a snug collection of modest one- and two- story frame dwellings, whose whitewashed exteriors were almost concealed from sight by climbing tangles of rose vines, honeysuckles, and morning glories. Each of these pretty homes had a garden in front fenced with white palings and opulently stocked with hollyhocks, marigolds, touch-me-nots, prince's-feathers, and other old-fashioned flowers; while on the windowsills of the houses stood wooden boxes containing moss rose plants and terra-cotta pots in which grew a breed of geranium whose spread of intensely red blossoms accented the prevailing pink tint of the rose-clad house-front like an explosion of flame. When there was room on the ledge outside of the pots and boxes for a cat, the cat was there-- in sunny weather--stretched at full length, asleep and blissful, with her furry belly to the sun and a paw curved over her nose. Then that house was complete, and its contentment and peace were made manifest to the world by this symbol, whose testimony is infallible. A home without a cat--and a well-fed, well-petted, and properly revered cat-- may be a perfect home, perhaps, but how can it prove title?
Mark Twain (from the opening page of The Tragedy of Pudd'nhead Wilson)
O little emperor with no orb,
conqueror without country, .....
tiny tiger of the living room,
posing four delicate feet on the ground
sniffing, mistrustful of everything on earth,
because everything is unclean
for the cat’s immaculate foot.
The above is an excerpt from Pablo Neruda's poem Ode to the Cat (Oda al Gato) which was sent to me by Narayan Acharya. Despite a severe allergy to cats, fortified with anti-histamines, Narayan entertains his neighbor's cat Sammy in his home. The full poem below the fold.
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