"Cat" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Town" is a most unusual, delightful cat story. Ban-Ban, a pure Maltese who belonged to Rob, Kiku-san, Lois's beautiful snow-white pet, and their neighbors Bedelia the tortoise-shell, Madame Laura the widow, Wutz Butz the warrior, and wise old Tommy Traddles, were really and truly cats, and Miss Taggart has here explained ...
— The Little Colonel's House Party • Annie Fellows Johnston
... the lynx, a large powerful animal of the feline race, that might well venture to attack the stag. But in Canada this species is not found. What is known as the Canadian lynx, Felis Canadensis, is only a large species of cat, which preys upon birds and the smaller quadrupeds. Champlain probably gives it the name loup-servier for the want of one more appropriate. It is a little remarkable that he does not in this list mention the American wolf, Lupus occidentalis, so common in every part of Canada, ...
— Voyages of Samuel de Champlain V3 • Samuel de Champlain
... "here is a letter for you! We stopped at your room as we came down and you weren't in, so I brought it along. I got one from papa, too, and what do you think? There has been a strike on the Tom Cat!" ...
— Tabitha at Ivy Hall • Ruth Alberta Brown
... middlin' well, as they let in plenty of air at the toes. And what's the case now? Why, on a Saturday night you can see a whole row of boots standing two and two by the cupboard door, and they shines so bright with blacking, the cat's fit to wear herself out by setting up her back and spitting at her own likeness in 'em. It's the gospel and temperance as ...
— True to his Colours - The Life that Wears Best • Theodore P. Wilson
... glass slipper thrust out before her. There was the Marquis de Carabas, who, as everyone knows, was raised to the throne as prince consort after his marriage with the daughter of the king of the period. On the arm of the throne was seated his celebrated cat, wearing boots. There, too, was a portrait of a beautiful lady, sound asleep: this was Madame La Belle au Bois-dormant, also an ancestress of the royal family. Many other pictures of celebrated persons ...
— Prince Prigio - From "His Own Fairy Book" • Andrew Lang
... more commonly termed, snapdragon (Antirrhinum majus). The gaping corollas of various blossoms have suggested such names as dog's-mouth, rabbit's-mouth, and lion's-snap, and plants with peculiarly-shaped leaves have given rise to names like these—mouse-ear (Stachys Zanaia), cat's-ears, and bear's-ears. Numerous names have been suggested by their fancied resemblance to the feet, hoofs, and tails of animals and birds; as, for instance, colt's-foot, crow-foot, bird's-foot trefoil, horse-shoe vetch, bull-foot, and the vervain, nicknamed ...
— The Folk-lore of Plants • T. F. Thiselton-Dyer
... were opposed, because the war was entered into by Socialists exclusively as a war against Russia, whilst the authorities had cleverly turned the reason as a war against England. Though the Socialists may have hated England, the war proved that they were used as a cat's paw. So riots broke out ...
— The Sequel - What the Great War will mean to Australia • George A. Taylor
... done nuthin', I tell ye!" almost shouted old Ricks, who was too excited to realize that the boys were making fun of him. "If them blamed city newspapers say I did I'll sue 'em fer damages, that's wot I'll do. I ain't teched Ham Ludd, nor his cat, nor his dog nuther! And it was the wind blew the fence down, I didn't tech that nuther!" He paused to catch his breath, "Where was Ham killed? I didn't hear of anybuddy gitting ...
— The Rover Boys in the Air - From College Campus to the Clouds • Edward Stratemeyer
... out yet on the first named but the chief engineer speaks in your behalf. The last two you certainly have. There's the story of a man who was going home late at night and picked up what he thought was a kitten and found it to be a pole-cat. It was good judgment to set it down again mighty sudden. But the skin was worth something and he resolved to have the skin to pay for the damage. Now President Whittaker and myself have been up in the north woods this season—among the big game, you understand. We picked up what ...
— The Rainy Day Railroad War • Holman Day
... more ways of killing a cat than by choking it with cream," he quoted, "but I'm not sure," he added, "that ...
— The Chronicles of Clovis • Saki
... replace the swaying motion of the wings. Again came the hoot, wild and echoing through the barren wilderness of rock walls beneath, and again with a sudden impulse the car soared. It was going in great circles now, cautious as a cat, climbing, climbing, punctuating the ascent with cry after cry, searching the blind air for dangers. Once again a vast white slope came into sight, illuminated by the glare from the windows, sinking ever more and more swiftly, receding and approaching—until for one instant a jagged line of rocks ...
— Lord of the World • Robert Hugh Benson
... 21 districts; Acklins and Crooked Islands, Bimini, Cat Island, Exuma, Freeport, Fresh Creek, Governor's Harbour, Green Turtle Cay, Harbour Island, High Rock, Inagua, Kemps Bay, Long Island, Marsh Harbour, Mayaguana, New Providence, Nichollstown and Berry Islands, Ragged Island, Rock Sound, Sandy Point, ...
— The 2007 CIA World Factbook • United States
... places, and with what seemed to me a needless amount of delay, discharged goods and natives, and natives, mats, and calabashes were embarked. In addition to the essential mat and calabash of poi, every native carried some pet, either dog or cat, which was caressed, sung to, and talked to with extreme tenderness; but there were hardly any children, and I noticed that where there were any, the men took charge of them. There were very few fine, manly dogs; the pets in greatest favour are obviously ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird
... reasonable and so refreshing. They sighed for an established fruit and a protected race of cultivators. But the stout soldier was so sworn an enemy to any Government Fruit, and so decided an admirer of the least delightful, that the people, having no desire of being forced to cat crab-apples, only longed for more ...
— The Voyage of Captain Popanilla • Benjamin Disraeli
... king in the dialect which he spoke, and to revile him with asperity, as has been said; whoever shall wash his hands of life will utter whatever he may harbor in his heart:—"When a man is desperate he will give a latitude to his tongue, like as a cat at bay will fly at a dog"—"at the moment of compulsion when it is impossible to fly, the hand will grasp the sharp edge of a sword." The king asked, saying, "What does he say?" One of the Vizirs (or nobles in attendance), and a well-disposed man, made ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 2, Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous
... perpendicular once more. It is at the elbow of this tunnel that the Tarantula posts herself as a vigilant sentry and does not for a moment lose sight of the door of her dwelling; it was there that, at the period when I was hunting her, I used to see those eyes gleaming like diamonds, bright as a cat's eyes ...
— The Life of the Spider • J. Henri Fabre
... certain forest there once lived a fox, and near to the fox lived a man who had a cat that had been a good mouser in its youth, but was ...
— The Book of Stories for the Storyteller • Fanny E. Coe
... common in most animals that live largely in the dark—the white fish of the Kentucky caves, for instance. Then, those large eyes, with that capacity for reflecting light, are common features of nocturnal things—witness the owl and the cat. And last of all, that evident confusion in the sunshine, that hasty yet fumbling awkward flight towards dark shadow, and that peculiar carriage of the head while in the light—all reinforced the theory of an extreme sensitiveness ...
— The Time Machine • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... hung in a cage in the window, and it is not too much to say that this poor bird, born and bred in the East End, was thoroughly happy in his snug home. A soft-furred gray cat purred before the little range. The bedroom beyond was as clean and neat as the kitchen, and the tiny room where Cecile, Maurice and Toby were to sleep, though nearly empty at present, would, Mrs. Moseley assured ...
— The Children's Pilgrimage • L. T. Meade
... on the forecastle, it is hove up close to the forefoot, and by means of a ground chain (secured to a balancing or gravity band on the anchor), which is joined to a catting chain rove through a cat davit, the anchor ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... pulled up stakes and left it for good and all. It is not in the true American idea to be too content; it means running to seed, a weakening of the will and the vital force. If I remained too long in that lovely land—so admirably governed that I could not have lost myself, or my cat, had I possessed one—I should in no long course yield utterly to a certain resentfully admitted tendency to dream and drift and live for pure beauty; finally desert my own country with the comfortable reflection: Why all this bustle, this desire to excel, to keep in the front rank, to ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 5, August, 1915 • Various
... or Dominum, besides the primary idea implies something having acted upon the object of that primary idea; as felis edit murem, the cat eats the mouse. This is thus effected in the Greek and Latin by a change of termination of the noun acted upon, but is managed in a more concise way in our language by its situation in the sentence, as it follows the verb. Thus if the mouse in the above ...
— The Temple of Nature; or, the Origin of Society - A Poem, with Philosophical Notes • Erasmus Darwin
... good writer, and at Bellarmine[58] recoils as far back again; and the fathers justle him from one side to another. Now Socinus[59] and Vorstius[60] afresh torture him, and he agrees with none worse than himself. He puts his foot into heresies tenderly, as a cat in the water, and pulls it out again, and still something unanswered delays him; yet he bears away some parcel of each, and you may sooner pick all religions out of him than one. He cannot think so many wise men should ...
— Microcosmography - or, a Piece of the World Discovered; in Essays and Characters • John Earle
... world. I cannot persuade myself that a beneficent and omnipotent God would have designedly created the Ichneumonidae with the express intention of their feeding within the living bodies of Caterpillars, or that a cat should play with mice. Not believing this, I see no necessity in the belief that the eye was expressly designed. On the other hand, I cannot anyhow be contented to view this wonderful universe, and especially the nature of man, and ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume II • Francis Darwin
... water and tempered with salt, pepper, onion, and a touch of butter. And while he waited, crouched over the kettle, his son smoked his grayish clay and read his greenish journal; an old clock ticked and a little cat purred without provocation on the ledge of the tight-closed window. Then the door opened and the rogue-girl appeared. She shook her shoulders as though to dismiss the wetting she had got, took off her turn-down, speckly, straw hat, put on an apron, and rolled ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... widened the hole so as to be able to take out the water conveniently. Besides, we found in these islands large numbers of a species of cats, which are very strange creatures; they are about the size of a hare, their head resembling the head of a civet-cat; the forepaws are very short, about the length of a finger, on which the animal has five small nails or fingers, resembling those of a monkey's forepaw. Its two hind-legs, on the contrary, are upwards of half an ell in length, and it walks on these only, on the flat of the heavy ...
— The Part Borne by the Dutch in the Discovery of Australia 1606-1765 • J. E. Heeres
... there the pale lemon-tinted petals of the primrose just peeping through the partial openings in their shrouding mantles of green; and there, above us, hangs that which I had hoped to find—the catkins of the hazel, which have been hailed by children for centuries under the names of 'Pussy-cat's tails,' or 'Baa-lamb's tails;' and a more interesting flower for examination as we pass onwards we can scarcely have, for its structure is very peculiar and beautiful. We will gather a good bunch of these pretty pendent tassel-like clusters; ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 427 - Volume 17, New Series, March 6, 1852 • Various
... always reigned around her; she had no cat—that cherished society of old women—not even a sparrow came to rest under her roof. It seemed as if all animated nature shrank from her glance. The bloated spider alone took delight ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne
... whole gang in chains before morning. Then I'd give 'em a taste of the 'cat' at daybreak, and before noon I'd have the ringleaders hanging from a yard-arm," said ...
— West Wind Drift • George Barr McCutcheon
... share, if he may have the Tarnhelm—a sly proposition,—he will renounce the Ring; but this Alberich hears with furious scorn, and the wrangle is at its height when Siegfried reappears at the cave's mouth. In his hands are Tarnhelm and Ring. Returning into sight after the angry cat-fight between the ill-conditioned pair, he appears more than ever large, serene, fair, noble. Mime and Alberich betake themselves quickly back to their lurking-places. Siegfried stands considering his odd-looking acquisitions: "Of what use you may be to ...
— The Wagnerian Romances • Gertrude Hall
... head, trying to clear the sleep from his brain as he turned the idea over and over in his mind. He wondered why he hadn't realized it before, long before, back when they had first started this horrible, nerve-wracking cat-and-mouse game. The idea just hadn't occurred to him. But he knew the game-playing was over. They wanted to kill him now. And he knew that ultimately they would kill him. There was no way for ...
— The Dark Door • Alan Edward Nourse
... the shelter of the trees, Petawanaquat advanced with cat-like caution, until he could clearly see the travellers. He recognised them instantly, and a dark frown settled on his features. His first thought was to steal their horses, and thus leave them incapable of ...
— The Red Man's Revenge - A Tale of The Red River Flood • R.M. Ballantyne
... all was over: two of the French boats remained alongside, and the others shoved off, half manned, and dropped astern. We gave them three cheers as a parting salutation, but we had no time to lose—the wind was evidently springing up fast; already cat's paws were to be seen here and there rippling the water, and the line on the horizon was now dark and broad. I ordered our boats to be ready for starting, the guns to be got in, and the wounded men divided among them as fast as possible. The two large French ...
— Percival Keene • Frederick Marryat
... rest, they are as unlike one another as the various shapes and hues of coarse broadcloth, woollen jeans, cottonades, coloured blankets, and buckskin, can make them. They wear caps of 'coon-skin, and cat's-skin, and squirrel; hats of beaver, and felt, and glaze, of wool and palmetto, of every imaginable shape and slouch. Even of the modern monster—the silken "tile"—samples might be seen, badly crushed. There are coats ...
— The War Trail - The Hunt of the Wild Horse • Mayne Reid
... tom-cat in a thievish vein That up fire-ladders tall and steep And round the walls doth slyly creep; Virtuous withal I feel, with, I confess. A touch of thievish joy and wantonness. Thus through my limbs already burns The glorious Walpurgis night! After tomorrow it returns; ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... 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 on his ...
— Memoir and Letters of Francis W. Newman • Giberne Sieveking
... brightly, and I saw that they too, five of them altogether, were quite dead. One was a baby. I dropped the match in a hurry, and was making my way from the hut as quick as I could go, when I caught sight of two bright eyes staring out of a corner. Thinking it was a wild cat, or some such animal, I redoubled my haste, when suddenly a voice near the eyes began first to mutter, and then to send up a succession ...
— Long Odds • H. Rider Haggard
... advantage of having arrows headed in the way mentioned. Fanciful names for war-engines and weapons derived from their resemblance to various animals are not confined to India. The "War-wolf" was used by Edward I. at the siege of Brechin, the "Cat-house" and the "Sow" were used by Edward III. at the siege ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... cat is the best remedy for these annoyances. Equal quantities of hemlock, (or cicuta,) and old cheese, will poison them, but this renders the house liable to the inconvenience of a bad smell. This evil, however, may be lessened, by placing a dish, containing oil of vitriol poured ...
— A Treatise on Domestic Economy - For the Use of Young Ladies at Home and at School • Catherine Esther Beecher
... with his lance at the one with the iron bar, but the hill-troll slipped away, and brought the great bar with a heavy blow upon his lance, so that it snapped in twain. Then one leaped like a wild cat upon the arm that held the rein, but happily Sir Geraint had drawn his sword, and with one stroke slew him. Then the two others leaped towards him, but the blows of the bar and club he caught upon his shield and slew ...
— King Arthur's Knights - The Tales Re-told for Boys & Girls • Henry Gilbert
... threw her pitying apron frill VESPERS Over a little trembling mouse When the sleek cat yawned ...
— Hillsboro People • Dorothy Canfield
... smooth. All the lines of last night had disappeared. Only at the outer corners of her eyes, between the eye and the temple, were the faintest indications of a future attack—mere kitten scratches that playfully hinted where one day the cat would claw her. He studied her without any embarrassment. Last night everything had been awkward; but now, as he held her hands, a kind of harmony came between them, a reestablishment ...
— Song of the Lark • Willa Cather
... Sergeant crept forward—an inch, two inches, a foot. The figure did not stir. Now he was sure the fellow's head was lying flat on the turf, oddly distorted by a feathered war bonnet. The strange posture, the utter lack of movement, seemed proof that the tired warrior had fallen asleep on watch. Like a cat Hamlin crept up slowly toward him, poised ...
— Molly McDonald - A Tale of the Old Frontier • Randall Parrish
... refinements. She did not like to dwell upon anything that was painful or even sordid; and when memory persisted in dragging before her reluctant eyes the dead body of any particularly hateful scene in her past, as a cat will sometimes obstinately lay before its master a rat it has mangled, she was in the habit of dulling her sensibility by drinking a little absinthe in which some ...
— The Castle Of The Shadows • Alice Muriel Williamson
... for want of something more to the purpose, that I hoped he had not been tormented by the strange cat the night before. ...
— J. S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 4 • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... they are toe-nails," said the Doctor. "Don't nails grow on the ends of toes? All kinds of claws, on the ends of birds' and other animals' toes, are the same as nails. Some are long, sharp, and curved, like a cat's or a Sparrow's, and some are flat and blunt, like ours. I could show you some birds with claws that look just like our finger-nails. Toes, too, are pretty much the same; only this Sparrow, like most other ...
— Citizen Bird • Mabel Osgood Wright and Elliott Coues
... sneered like some animal snorting. "She may make of you a cat's paw to play at her feet, but she shall never be your friend. If she just knows ...
— Jane Allen: Junior • Edith Bancroft
... left and found it in like case, and so became conscious of something that gripped me about the throat, and ever my wonder and unease grew. And now, opening my eyes, the first thing they lighted on was a small pool of blood and beyond this a battered turnip, and beyond this, the carcass of a dead cat, and beyond this again, a pair of trim, buckled shoes, cotton stockings, wide breeches and a broad belt where swung a tuck or rapier prodigiously long of blade; in a while (my eyes ranging higher yet) ...
— Black Bartlemy's Treasure • Jeffrey Farnol
... from the fatal neighborhood of Lake Taupo. Paganel took the post of leader, and his wonderful instinct shone out anew in this difficult mountain journey. His nyctalopia was a great advantage, his cat-like sight enabling him to distinguish the smallest object in the ...
— In Search of the Castaways • Jules Verne
... as nimble as that with which a cat springs on its victim while the company watched spellbound. He slipped away into a corner and would dance ...
— Sowing Seeds in Danny • Nellie L. McClung
... just sufficient to carry the ship safely down to the lake's surface at a point about three miles from the town. Fortunately one of Tom's friends was sailing near-by in his cat-boat and gladly offered to take the three over to the Swift dock, which jutted out from the grounds behind ...
— Tom Swift and His Giant Telescope • Victor Appleton
... howling. A band of youths behind him began singing, "Tell me the old, old story." In the gallery they sang "Sit down, sit down," to the tune of the Westminster chimes. Half the theatre joined in one song, half in the other, and the singing ended in cat-calls, whistles, and shrieks of mockery. The red-haired girl stood pale and motionless, her eyes fixed on some point of vacancy ...
— Essays in Rebellion • Henry W. Nevinson
... Crusoe's, saw in one terrifying instant the shirt drying on the quaking-asp, the smoldering fire, the empty bean-can. This man was a tramp! He belonged to that disgusting clan of vagabonds who asked for food at back-doors, and whom one, if frightened into doing it, fed on back stoops as one fed the cat! He, like his fellows, would inspire one to lock all the doors at noonday, and to tell one's neighbors there was a ...
— Virginia of Elk Creek Valley • Mary Ellen Chase
... all her sails set, though at present they were useless; but on looking over the side I observed cat's-paws playing on the surface of the ocean. Now they appeared, now they vanished, but as yet we had not felt the slightest breath of wind. Presently, however, I saw the dog-vane rise and flutter ...
— The Young Llanero - A Story of War and Wild Life in Venezuela • W.H.G. Kingston
... known. The Spectator also, if I remember right, declared the old sign of the Cat and the Fiddle to be quite beyond his comprehension. In truth, no two objects in the world have less to do with each other than a cat and a violin, and the only explanation ever given of this wonderful union, appears to be, that once upon a time, a gentleman kept a house with the sign of a Cat, and a lady one, with the sign of a Fiddle, or ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 366 - Vol. XIII, No. 366., Saturday, April 18, 1829 • Various
... skin; the egg becomes a maggot and stays there until it feels fit to enter into external life. Then there are "slimy things that crawl with legs upon a slimy sea," and any quantity of hopping mud-fish, and crabs, and a certain mollusc, and in the water various kinds of cat-fish. Birdless they are save for the flocks of gray parrots that pass over them at evening, hoarsely squarking; and save for this squarking of the parrots the swamps are silent all the day, at least during ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... Dr. Constance E. Long.] The Zurich Association Studies indicate clearly that slight mental fatigue, an inner disturbance of attention or an external distraction, tend to "flatten" the quality of the response. An example of the very "flat" type is the clang association (cat-hat), a reaction to the sound and not to the sense of the stimulant word. One test, for example, shows a 9% increase of clang in the second series of a hundred reactions. Now the clang is almost a repetition, a very ...
— Public Opinion • Walter Lippmann
... winter, when I had to get that tincture dropped into them so often that your father could not always be at home to do it? You dropped the tincture as well as your father could, and though I know I must have made faces wry enough to frighten a cat, you never vouchsafed a remark, and I did not hear the ghost of a laugh. Poor Dora was ready to read to me by the hour, and to fetch and carry for me all day long, but when she tried to drop the tincture ...
— A Houseful of Girls • Sarah Tytler
... Hatfield, and as he shouted, the lithe cat sprang over the brush heap and landed in the road, right ...
— Ruth Fielding at Snow Camp • Alice Emerson
... lane which led from the pasture to the cow-yard, striped squirrels were playfully skipping through the dilapidated wall, coming out, and disappearing; sitting down and putting their forefeet up to their faces as if they were convulsed with laughter to think how the old black-and-white cat had gone to sleep lying on the wall in the sun, only ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Vol. 1, Issue 1. - A Massachusetts Magazine of Literature, History, - Biography, And State Progress • Various
... enough," laughed Larry, "although I hadn't thought about it before. Maybe I'd have had a poor pussy cat wrapped about my neck before this if I'd been doing my ...
— The Radio Boys at the Sending Station - Making Good in the Wireless Room • Allen Chapman
... party to detect; tied to his haversack, the local banjo, or charango, an instrument which the Paganinis of the country make for themselves out of half a calabash and the unfeeling bowels of the cat. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 11, - No. 22, January, 1873 • Various
... rather it was so; keep your money! I'll give mother Coupeau a home, do you hear? I picked up a cat the other evening, so I can at least do the same for your mother. And she shall be in want of nothing; she shall have her coffee and her drop of brandy! Good heavens! what a ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola
... that's he, that pennes and purges Humours and diseases.' He must promise 'not to brag in Bookebinders shops that your Vize-royes or Tributorie Kings have done homage to you, or paide Quarterage.' And—'when your Playes are misse-likt at Court, you shall not Crye Mew like a Pusse-Cat, and say you are glad you write out of the ...
— Shakspere And Montaigne • Jacob Feis
... of birds are chiefly timed by the advance of vegetation; and the thing most thoroughly surprising about them is not the general fact of the change of latitude, but their accuracy in hitting the precise locality. That the same Cat-Bird should find its way back, every spring, to almost the same branch of yonder larch-tree,—that is the thing astonishing to me. In England, a lame Redstart was observed in the same garden for sixteen successive years; and the astonishing precision of course which ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... right to speak; "it is plain to us, dear papa, that you want more prompting. When I tell you that Nourhadeen, in this case, is a little basket house, with a lovely red rug in it, that will let the cat out of the bag;" whereupon dear, clever papa guessed ...
— Harper's Young People, December 23, 1879 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... horse merchant from the City pulled a putrid cat out of the river mud and held it over his head. He shrieked: 'Hic hocus pocus,' parodying the 'Hoc corpus meum' of the Mass. The soldiers of the Duke of Norfolk were unable to reach him for the crowd. There were but ten of them, under a captain, set to guard the little ...
— The Fifth Queen • Ford Madox Ford
... hosses to sleep in," interrupted the host, "and the floor is for the cat. 'Tain't my idee of fairness to allow human bein's to squat on proppety that rightfully belongs to hosses an' cats,—so I guess you'll have to sleep in a bed, Mr. Gwynne." He spoke with a drawl. "Zachariah c'n spread his blankets on the ...
— Viola Gwyn • George Barr McCutcheon
... and roaring and flaming like the infernal regions, rose from the dust of memory and stood once more among the trees. The limpid spring bubbled and laughed at the foot of the hill. Flocks of nimble, noisy boys turned somersaults and skinned the cat and ran and jumped half hammon on the old play ground. The grim old teacher stood in the door; he had no brazen-mouthed bell to ring then as we have now, but he shouted at the top of his voice: "Come to books!!!" And they came. Not to ...
— Gov. Bob. Taylor's Tales • Robert L. Taylor
... other god of the Whole Land than Amonra, king of the gods!'" Another Pharaoh of popular romance, Nectanebo, possessed, at a much later date, mares which conceived at the neighing of the stallions of Babylon, and his friend Lycerus had a cat which went forth every night to wring the necks of the cocks of Memphis:* the hippopotami of the Theban lake, which troubled the rest of the King of Tanis, were evidently of close ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 4 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... eloquent remarks, and fetch him in guilty, the silent twitches of conscience will follow you over every fair cornfield, I reckon; and my injured and down-trodden client will be apt to light on you one of these dark nights, as my cat lights on a ...
— The Book of Anecdotes and Budget of Fun; • Various
... you do!" The tramp hitched himself up on another vertebra of his limp spine. "Why, I thought you were probably just making a cross-country flight, and had a wreck. I was going to bone yuh for a lift, in case you were alone. You live here! Why, for cat's sake?" ...
— Skyrider • B. M. Bower
... my apartments in the Albany,—No. 3 A. I have had them ten years, and it was only last Christmas that I bought my Japan cat." ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... gives a fellow an appetite!" cried Andy, after he had eaten his second sandwich and his third doughnut. "I could eat a whole rabbit or a squirrel myself." And then, feeling in fine fettle, he proceeded to pull himself up on a near-by tree limb and "skin the cat," as it is called by ...
— The Rover Boys on Snowshoe Island - or, The Old Lumberman's Treasure Box • Edward Stratemeyer
... faces, two you love best, then drive those tears away, What is there to cry for child, in a locket that's new and bright, It was to have been your Christmas gift, but it's just as good to-night, It bears the name of the day you came to spoil my dog and cat, My birds and me too I'm afraid, if you say much more like that. Sing me something instead, it's scarcely supper time yet—my child; I see you are weary, go and rest while these winter winds blow wild, Ethel, before you say 'good night,' we will sing ...
— Victor Roy, A Masonic Poem • Harriet Annie Wilkins
... room to room, slowly and thoughtfully, stopping to pick up my broken pipe, which lay where I had dropped it; and then going on into the next room, where, under the window, lay the bit of cotton cobweb and cat's-cradle work Lizzy had been doing, and had left behind. I gave a bit of a gulp as I picked that up, and I was tucking it inside my jacket when I stopped short, for I thought I heard ...
— Begumbagh - A Tale of the Indian Mutiny • George Manville Fenn
... breaking two saucers and a cup, by upsetting a basin of milk, and by disappearing with the leg of a chicken. In consequence, she was in great disgrace, and Mrs. Flint had been heard to speak of her as "that odious cat!" The Pink, however, was safe for the present, and the girls set out on ...
— The Palace Beautiful - A Story for Girls • L. T. Meade
... But this applies to very few of the species. My definition of man is, 'a Cooking Animal'. The beasts have memory, judgment and all the faculties and passions of our mind, in a certain degree; but no beast is a cook. The trick of the monkey using the cat's paw to roast a chestnut is only a piece of shrewd malice in that turpissima bestia, which humbles us so sadly by its similarity to us. Man alone can dress a good dish; and every man whatever is more or less a cook, in seasoning what he himself eats. 'Your definition is good,' said ...
— The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D. • James Boswell
... the whole to me. I'll show him the foretopsail, I will. If so be your shipmates are jolly boys, and won't flinch, you shall see, you shall see; egad, I'll play him such a salt-water trick I'll bring him to the gangway and anoint him with a cat-and-nine-tails; he shall have a round dozen doubled, my lad, he shall—and be left lashed to his meditations." We were very proud of our associate, who immediately went to work, and prepared the instrument of his revenge with great skill and expedition; ...
— The Adventures of Roderick Random • Tobias Smollett
... awake a good part of that night, hearing, above the roar of the water, the far-off noises of the wild-animal world. A wolf howled, a cat screamed, and ...
— They of the High Trails • Hamlin Garland
... a cat she has kittens—four little spotlessly white ones, among whom she'd give her head that Mr. French should make his pick. He could do it with his eyes shut—you can't tell them apart. But she has every name, every date, as you may say, for my dark ...
— The Great English Short-Story Writers, Vol. 1 • Various
... thanks more to the suggestions of a friendly cat than to John's acquaintanceship with the geography of his own house; and Anne rakes together the fire and clears the table for her work. What possible use John is to her—what need there was for her stipulating that he should accompany ...
— John Ingerfield and Other Stories • Jerome K. Jerome
... hat—a soft grey hat, not even a new one—a dusty thing with a shapeless crown. "So, extraordinary, my dear—so odd," Aunt Hester, passing through the little, dark hall (she was rather short-sighted), had tried to 'shoo' it off a chair, taking it for a strange, disreputable cat—Tommy had such disgraceful friends! She was disturbed ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... not so heavy; he is more cat-footed. 'Tis some belated wayfarer like ourselves, in a hurry to reach ...
— For The Admiral • W.J. Marx
... Georgia beauty,—a fairy princess,—a consumptive school-mistress,—a young woman dying of the perfidy of her lover,—a mysterious widow; and I daily expect to hear that a caterpillar which figured as hero in one of my tales was an allegory of myself, and that a cat mentioned in "The New Tobias" is a travesty ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 5, No. 28, February, 1860 • Various
... round eyes sparkled brightly and it seemed to the youth as if the countenance of the man, whose comfortable plumpness and smooth rotundity at first appeared like a mirror of the utmost kindness of heart, now had the semblance of a cat's. ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... hotel, "you will have to remain nearly all night in Atlanta. That is a fine city, but I advise you not to put up at the Breathitt House, one of the principal hotels. It is an old wooden building in urgent need of repairs. There are breaches in the walls that you could throw a cat through. The bedrooms have no locks on the doors, no furniture but a single chair in each, and a bedstead without bedding—just a mattress. Even these meager accommodations you cannot be sure that you will have in monopoly; you must take your chance of being stowed in with a lot of others. ...
— Present at a Hanging and Other Ghost Stories • Ambrose Bierce
... a fortune the ownership of which was to be decided in a single moment, and by the movement of a hand. The crowd swayed eagerly forward, their heads craned over to see more clearly, their breathing hushed. Willis was gasping, his whole body quivering; Slavin was watching Hampton's hands as a cat does a mouse, his thick lips parted, his fingers twitching nervously. The latter smiled grimly, his motions deliberate, his eyes never wavering. Slowly, one by one, he turned up his cards, never even deigning to ...
— Bob Hampton of Placer • Randall Parrish
... began to play and run about, and Scamp went after him as fast as his little short legs would go; and by-and-by he grew tired, and lay down, panting, on the pavement, and the big dog went away home. Then Scamp saw a cat coming very slowly across the street to the little strip of grass that was surrounded by a railing on the other side, and if there was one thing he hated it was cats—nasty, cowardly, furry things! So he banged up suddenly, ...
— The Children's Book of London • Geraldine Edith Mitton
... 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
... tar, pitch, turpentine, staves, shingles, lumber, corn, peas, pork, and beef; tobacco, deer skins, indigo, wheat, rice, bee's-wax, tallow, bacon, and hog's-lard, cotton, and squared timber; live cattle, with the skins of beaver, racoon, fox, minx, wild-cat, and otter. South Carolina is much better cultivated; the people are more civilized, and the commerce more important. The capital of this province, called Charles Town, is finely situated at the confluence of two navigable rivers, having the ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... matter, and freely marked his sense of the latter's conduct upon Mr. Will's eyes and nose. Respecting the Countess and Lady Fanny, Harry spoke in a manner more guarded, but not very favourable. He had heard all sorts of stories about them. The Countess was a card-playing old cat; Lady Fanny was a desperate flirt. Who told him? Well, he had heard the stories from a person who knew them both very well indeed. In fact, in those days of confidence, of which we made mention in the last volume, Maria had freely ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... prime quality that has made him immortal. When the Journal was in the press, Hannah More, studious of the name of the moralist and the sage, 'besought him to mitigate his asperities.' 'I will not,' said Boswell roughly, but wisely for posterity, 'cut off his claws, nor make a tiger a cat to please anyone.' ...
— James Boswell - Famous Scots Series • William Keith Leask
... to the paling, and taking an axe from under his cloak drove it hard into the wood as high above his head as he could reach. Then with the agility of a cat he drew himself up by it, seized the top of the fence, and sat ...
— Vandrad the Viking - The Feud and the Spell • J. Storer Clouston
... upland horse-thief. How was he to mount that wild stallion? Sears was noted for two qualities—his nerve before men and his skill with horses. Assuredly he would not risk an ordinary mount. Wildfire began to suspect Sears—to look at him instead of the other horses. Then quick as a cat Sears vaulted into the saddle. Wildfire snorted and lifted his forefeet in a lunge that meant ...
— Wildfire • Zane Grey
... of a cat Pierre raised the butt of the heavy dog-whip which he held in his hand and it came down with a sickening thud on Billy's head. As he staggered into the middle of the cabin floor, groping blindly for ...
— Isobel • James Oliver Curwood
... striking; a swarthy complexion, thick, shiny, black curly hair and mustache, lustrous black eyes and delicate features, and a lithe sinewy body, every movement of which was cat-like and expressive of treachery. ...
— When Dreams Come True • Ritter Brown
... I sniffed, and became more convinced than ever that my senses were not deceiving me. But from what part of the raft could the smell proceed? I rose to my knees, and having satisfied myself that the odor came from the front, I crept stealthily as a cat under the sails and between the spars in that direction. Following the promptings of my scent, rather than my vision, like a blood- hound in track of his prey. I searched everywhere I could, now finding, now losing, the smell according to my change of position, or the dropping of the wind. At ...
— The Survivors of the Chancellor • Jules Verne
... the other side of the river two bright eyes, like those of a cat, beneath a tuft of alders; then he saw the tanned forehead and tangled hair of a boy about ten years of age, who was lying on his stomach and making signs towards the otter to let his master know he kept it well in sight. Blondet, completely mastered ...
— Sons of the Soil • Honore de Balzac
... collectors was M. Gustave Dreyfus, a high authority on Donatello and on the medallists of the Italian Renaissance. At his house there was another attraction in the shape of the concierge's cat, on whom Sir Charles would call before paying his respects upstairs. At another house a cat named Pouf was held in great honour by him, and his feelings were deeply wounded when, with feline capriciousness, it turned, on Paul Hervieu's entrance, to bestow all its blandishments on the ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke, Vol. 2 • Stephen Gwynn
... "A cat may be choked with cream as well as fishbones, Mrs Stella. Keep your pretty little eyes open, child, and thou ...
— The Ladies - A Shining Constellation of Wit and Beauty • E. Barrington
... lurked under the water-lilies in inlets and sheltered coves. The air and the water were populous as the earth. The river swarmed with fish, from the fierce and restless gar, cased in his horny armor, to the lazy cat-fish in the muddy depths. There were the golden eagle and the white-headed eagle, the gray pelican and the white pelican, the blue heron and the white heron, the egret, the ibis, ducks of various ...
— Pioneers Of France In The New World • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... that a man runnin' for congress in this country has a hard time sinkin' his reputation; but the way 'at Monte Cristo mined around in a feller's past was enough to scare a cat out of a cellar. They don't run things over in France like they do here; they make Counts an' Markusses an' Bankers out of the bad men, an' slap the innocent ones into dungeons to keep 'em from gettin' spoilt. But this didn't suit ...
— Happy Hawkins • Robert Alexander Wason
... I look about me. The first object that attracts my attention is the lithe form of my pursuer who is running up and down the bank lashing his tail in fury, and occasionally breaking forth in the most savage roars. In its yellow coat and cat-like movements I recognize the dreaded cougar—the tiger of the western mountains—an animal that, when once aroused, will not hesitate to attack man or beast. He seemed to be deliberating whether to follow me into the stream. It was plain he ...
— Seven and Nine years Among the Camanches and Apaches - An Autobiography • Edwin Eastman
... He struck as a cat strikes when it hooks the fish out of the stream—he struck as the snapper on the end of a whiplash doubles back. And well and truly did that steel uphold ...
— Ronicky Doone • Max Brand
... be his in his lifetime, but a vow was a vow. He no more suspected that Taxmar was taking note of his behavior, than a man standing in front of the lion's cage at the menagerie can translate the thoughts behind the great cat's intent eyes. ...
— Days of the Discoverers • L. Lamprey
... preyed, a cub might be born with an innate tendency to pursue certain kinds of prey. Nor can this be thought very improbable; for we often observe great differences in the natural tendencies of our domestic animals: one cat, for instance, taking to catching rats, another mice; one cat, according to Mr. St. John, bringing home winged game, another hares or rabbits, and another hunting on marshy ground!, and almost nightly catching woodcocks or snipes. The tendency ...
— Darwiniana - Essays and Reviews Pertaining to Darwinism • Asa Gray
... turned some of his thoughts to the celebration of living characters; and wrote a poem on the Kit-cat Club[21], and Advice to the Poets how to celebrate the Duke of Marlborough; but, on occasion of another year of success, thinking himself qualified to give more instruction, he again wrote a poem of Advice ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson
... many of the birds he had marked by cutting off the two claws. For two or three consecutive years he examined their nesting places, and always found some of his marked birds. At the end of seven years a cat brought a swift into the farmer's kitchen, and this was one of those which Dr. Jenner had marked. Now, Willy, I will ask you a question in geography. The swallow family visits this country from Africa. What sea, then, ...
— Country Walks of a Naturalist with His Children • W. Houghton
... figures reeled about the living-room. . . . They broke. . . . Shane, livid with rage, side-stepped, and with the agility of a wild-cat leaped again at his adversary. His arm encircled and tightened about the trader's neck. Kilbuck turned in the grip and chest to chest they swayed, strained, their tentative blows rendered impotent by their very ...
— Where the Sun Swings North • Barrett Willoughby
... is true, Walter, and no one can regret it more than I do. Still, I do think that you would be worse off under France than under England. Louis would drain the island of its men to fill his army. He uses you only as a cat's paw in his struggle against England and Holland, and would not hesitate to turn you over to England again, did it at any time suit him to make peace on such terms; or to offer Ireland as an exchange for some piece of territory he coveted, ...
— Orange and Green - A Tale of the Boyne and Limerick • G. A. Henty
... soon perceived what she was, and forthwith cast his kamund over her, and in spite of all her entreaties, bound her too fast to escape. In this extremity, she successively assumed the shape of a cat, a wolf, and a decrepit old man: and so perfect were her transformations, that any other person would have been deceived, but Isfendiyar detected her in every variety of appearance; and, vexed by her continual attempts to ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 1,Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous
... my surprise at this queer sight, when I saw a cow fly up through the air, over the new moon that hung there, and come down and disappear in the woods. I really didn't know what to make of this, but had no time to ask the old men what it meant; for a cat, playing a fiddle, was seen on the shore. A little dog stood by, listening and laughing; while a dish and a spoon ran away over the beach with all their might. If the boat had not floated up to the land, I think I should ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag VI - An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott
... time," exclaimed Freddie, following close on Dinah's heels, with the box containing Snoop, his pet cat, who always went traveling with ...
— The Bobbsey Twins at the Seashore • Laura Lee Hope
... make me afraid, I guess, Ruthy Warren," sniffed Ruby, scornfully. "You are such a 'fraid-cat that you never want to do anything in all your life but play paper dolls. I might have known you would n't see what fun it is to play Swiss Family Robinson. Now don't you dare tell any one a single word about it. Remember you promised across ...
— Ruby at School • Minnie E. Paull
... music in that cat nohow," said Captain Jim. "He won't stay long enough to learn to like it. When we got the organ up at the Glen church old Elder Richards bounced up from his seat the minute the organist began to play and scuttled down the aisle and out of the church at the rate of no-man's-business. ...
— Anne's House of Dreams • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... at the last they clustered so thickly about him that he no longer had room in which to swing his arms. The horse performed some wonderful kicking and even Eureka assisted when she leaped bodily upon the Gargoyles and scratched and bit at them like a wild-cat. ...
— Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz • L. Frank Baum.
... if thou dost not want to be carried to thy father by the scuff of thy neck, like a cat, and well thrashed to end with, let that lad ...
— The King's Daughters • Emily Sarah Holt
... produced the noise; a human being would either have come up to him if a friend, or kept absolutely still if a foe. He looked and looked, and at last caught a glimpse of the panther's yellowish fur gliding along the ground. When a cat glides stealthily she is on the hunt. His curiosity was fully aroused; he longed to see what the animal was hunting and how he would succeed. Furthermore the panther is in the eyes of the Pueblo Indian the ...
— The Delight Makers • Adolf Bandelier
... so wrapped up in his prophecy that he missed his shot by fully half an inch and put the wrong end of his cigar in his mouth. After carefully wiping the ashes out of his teeth and kicking the proprietor's cat, he resumed: ...
— Said the Observer • Louis J. Stellman
... most curious and weird circumstances connected with this meeting. Hardly had he laid himself back in his chair before I heard a faint scratching against the table leg, and next moment an enormous cat, black as the Pit of Tophet, sprang with a bound upon the table and stood there steadfastly regarding me, its eyes flashing and its back arched. I have seen cats without number, Chinese, Persian, Manx, the Australian wild cat, and the English tabby, but never in the whole course of my existence ...
— A Bid for Fortune - or Dr. Nikola's Vendetta • Guy Boothby
... the line of the ceiling. He had known that Norfolk, who was the Earl Marshal, had the mean mind to make him set these indignities upon the Archbishop, and loftily he considered this result as if the Archbishop were a cat mauled by his own dog whose nature it ...
— The Fifth Queen Crowned • Ford Madox Ford
... washing the dinner-dishes, and I was on the kitchen floor, playing with Queen Victoria, our old yellow cat, trying to teach her to stand on her hind-legs and beg, like Johnny Dane's dog. But Vic was cross, and wouldn't learn; and when I boxed her ears, she scratched me on my chin, and bounced over my shoulder, and was off to the barn in less than ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, January 1878, No. 3 • Various |
