Henri The Cat Quotes

What sort of philosophers are we, who know absolutely nothing of the origin and destiny of cats?

No matter how old you are now. You are never too young or too old for success or going after what you want. Here’s a short list of people who accomplished great things at different ages 1) Helen Keller, at the age of 19 months, became deaf and blind. But that didn’t stop her. She was the first deaf and blind person to earn a Bachelor of Arts degree. 2) Mozart was already competent on keyboard and violin; he composed from the age of 5. 3) Shirley Temple was 6 when she became a movie star on “Bright Eyes.” 4) Anne Frank was 12 when she wrote the diary of Anne Frank. 5) Magnus Carlsen became a chess Grandmaster at the age of 13. 6) Nadia Comăneci was a gymnast from Romania that scored seven perfect 10.0 and won three gold medals at the Olympics at age 14. 7) Tenzin Gyatso was formally recognized as the 14th Dalai Lama in November 1950, at the age of 15. 8) Pele, a soccer superstar, was 17 years old when he won the world cup in 1958 with Brazil. 9) Elvis was a superstar by age 19. 10) John Lennon was 20 years and Paul Mcartney was 18 when the Beatles had their first concert in 1961. 11) Jesse Owens was 22 when he won 4 gold medals in Berlin 1936. 12) Beethoven was a piano virtuoso by age 23 13) Issac Newton wrote Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica at age 24 14) Roger Bannister was 25 when he broke the 4 minute mile record 15) Albert Einstein was 26 when he wrote the theory of relativity 16) Lance E. Armstrong was 27 when he won the tour de France 17) Michelangelo created two of the greatest sculptures “David” and “Pieta” by age 28 18) Alexander the Great, by age 29, had created one of the largest empires of the ancient world 19) J.K. Rowling was 30 years old when she finished the first manuscript of Harry Potter 20) Amelia Earhart was 31 years old when she became the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean 21) Oprah was 32 when she started her talk show, which has become the highest-rated program of its kind 22) Edmund Hillary was 33 when he became the first man to reach Mount Everest 23) Martin Luther King Jr. was 34 when he wrote the speech “I Have a Dream." 24) Marie Curie was 35 years old when she got nominated for a Nobel Prize in Physics 25) The Wright brothers, Orville (32) and Wilbur (36) invented and built the world's first successful airplane and making the first controlled, powered and sustained heavier-than-air human flight 26) Vincent Van Gogh was 37 when he died virtually unknown, yet his paintings today are worth millions. 27) Neil Armstrong was 38 when he became the first man to set foot on the moon. 28) Mark Twain was 40 when he wrote "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer", and 49 years old when he wrote "Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" 29) Christopher Columbus was 41 when he discovered the Americas 30) Rosa Parks was 42 when she refused to obey the bus driver’s order to give up her seat to make room for a white passenger 31) John F. Kennedy was 43 years old when he became President of the United States 32) Henry Ford Was 45 when the Ford T came out. 33) Suzanne Collins was 46 when she wrote "The Hunger Games" 34) Charles Darwin was 50 years old when his book On the Origin of Species came out. 35) Leonardo Da Vinci was 51 years old when he painted the Mona Lisa. 36) Abraham Lincoln was 52 when he became president. 37) Ray Kroc Was 53 when he bought the McDonalds Franchise and took it to unprecedented levels. 38) Dr. Seuss was 54 when he wrote "The Cat in the Hat". 40) Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger III was 57 years old when he successfully ditched US Airways Flight 1549 in the Hudson River in 2009. All of the 155 passengers aboard the aircraft survived 41) Colonel Harland Sanders was 61 when he started the KFC Franchise 42) J.R.R Tolkien was 62 when the Lord of the Ring books came out 43) Ronald Reagan was 69 when he became President of the US 44) Jack Lalane at age 70 handcuffed, shackled, towed 70 rowboats 45) Nelson Mandela was 76 when he became President

From CATS ARE KIND "A man said to the universe, 'Sir, I exist!' 'Excellent,' replied the universe, 'I've been looking for someone to take care of my cats.

Cats and monkeys - monkeys and cats - all human life is there!

Mealtime "A mousie squealing in a trap Woke me from my morning nap. Wasn't he so very sweet To tell me it was time to eat?" (From A CAT'S GARDEN OF VERSES)

You can never know where I am or what I am, But I am good company to you nonetheless, And really do regret I broke your inkwell." (From Meow of Myself, from LEAVES OF CATNIP)

I situate myself, and seat myself, And where you recline I shall recline, For every armchair belonging to you as good as belongs to me. I loaf and curl up my tail I yawn and loaf at my ease after rolling in the catnip patch." (From Meow of Myself, from LEAVES OF CATNIP)

Behold the day-break! I awaken you by sitting on your chest and purring in your face, I stir you with muscular paw-prods, I rouse you with toe-bites, Walt, you have slept enough, why don't you get up?" (From Meow of Myself, from LEAVES OF CATNIP)

we had goldfish and they circled around and around in the bowl on the table near the heavy drapes covering the picture window and my mother, always smiling, wanting us all to be happy, told me, “be happy, Henry!” and she was right: it’s better to be happy if you can but my father continued to beat her and me several times a week while raging inside his 6-foot-2 frame because he couldn’t understand what was attacking him from within. my mother, poor fish, wanting to be happy, beaten two or three times a week, telling me to be happy: “Henry, smile! why don’t you ever smile?” and then she would smile, to show me how, and it was the saddest smile I ever saw. one day the goldfish died, all five of them, they floated on the water, on their sides, their eyes still open, and when my father got home he threw them to the cat there on the kitchen floor and we watched as my mother smiled. A smile to remember

I preferred to think of myself as a cat. If I think of my behavior as cat behavior instead of people behavior, it pretty much always makes sense.

I have been thinking about getting a cat, though," he says. "One more reason I should move to Maryland," I say. "I'm allergic." "That cat's out," he says.

From CATS ARE KIND "I saw a dog pursuing automobiles; On and on he sped. I was puzzled by this; I accosted the dog. 'If you catch one,' I said 'What will you do with it?' 'Dumb cat,' he cried, And ran on.

The noisy jay swoops by and reviles me, he complains of my meow and my malingering. I too am not a bit subdued, I too am uncontrollable, I sound my splenetic yowl over the roof of the house." (From Meow of Myself, from LEAVES OF CATNIP)

Let us roam then, you and I, When the evening is splayed out across the sky [...] Paths that follow like a nagging accusation Of a minor violation To lead you to the ultimate reproof ... Oh, do not say, 'Bad kitty!' Let us go and prowl the city. In the rooms the cats run to and fro Auditioning for a Broadway show." (From The Love Song of J. Morris Housecat)

I truly believe that Henry would bring her everywhere we go in one of those cat backpacks if I let him.

It is not worth the while to go round the world to count the cats in Zanzibar.

The End of the Raven "On a night quite unenchanting, when the rain was downward slanting I awakened to the ranting of the man I catch mice for. Tipsy and a bit unshaven, in a tone I found quite craven, Poe was talking to a Raven perched above the chamber door. 'Raven's very tasty,' thought I, as I tiptoed o'er the floor. 'There is nothing I like more.' [...] Still the Raven never fluttered, standing stock-still as he uttered In a voice that shrieked and sputtered, his two cents' worth -- 'Nevermore.' While this dirge the birdbrain kept up, oh, so silently I crept up, Then I crouched and quickly leapt up, pouncing on the feathered bore. Soon he was a heap of plumage, and a little blood and gore -- Only this and not much more.

Abyssinias "I met a traveler from an antique land Who said: A huge four-footed limestone form Sits in the desert, sinking in the sand. Its whiskered face, though marred by wind and storm, Still flaunts the dainty ears, the collar band And feline traits the sculptor well portrayed: The bearing of a born aristocrat, The stubborn will no mortal can dissuade. And on its base, in long-dead alphabets, These words are set: "Reward for missing cat! His name is Abyssinias, pet of pets; I, Ozymandias, will a fortune pay For his return. he heard me speak of vets -- O foolish King! And so he ran away.

Ah, fish, there is no fare Quite like a flounder! They surely will not miss A piece or two from stacks of sole like this; I'll steal a few, but leave the lion's share. Look! the lamplight on the lane is pretty They're back from walking out on Dover Beach. I think I'll hide and spare myselpf the speech, For we are in a world untouched by pity Where ignorant humans curse the kitty." (From Dover Sole)

You see, my poor fellow, the hearts of women and she-cats are abysses that neither men nor toms will ever fathom.

Hamlet's Cat's Soliloquy "To go outside, and there perchance to stay Or to remain within: that is the question: Whether 'tis better for a cat to suffer The cuffs and buffets of inclement weather That Nature rains on those who roam abroad, Or take a nap upon a scrap of carpet, And so by dozing melt the solid hours That clog the clock's bright gears with sullen time And stall the dinner bell. To sit, to stare Outdoors, and by a stare to seem to state A wish to venture forth without delay, Then when the portal's opened up, to stand As if transfixed by doubt. To prowl; to sleep; To choose not knowing when we may once more Our readmittance gain: aye, there's the hairball; For if a paw were shaped to turn a knob, Or work a lock or slip a window-catch, And going out and coming in were made As simple as the breaking of a bowl, What cat would bear the houselhold's petty plagues, The cook's well-practiced kicks, the butler's broom, The infant's careless pokes, the tickled ears, The trampled tail, and all the daily shocks That fur is heir to, when, of his own will, He might his exodus or entrance make With a mere mitten? Who would spaniels fear, Or strays trespassing from a neighbor's yard, But that the dread of our unheeded cries And scraches at a barricaded door No claw can open up, dispels our nerve And makes us rather bear our humans' faults Than run away to unguessed miseries? Thus caution doth make house cats of us all; And thus the bristling hair of resolution Is softened up with the pale brush of thought, And since our choices hinge on weighty things, We pause upon the threshold of decision.

To a Vase "How do I break thee? Let me count the ways. I break thee if thou art at any height My paw can reach, when, smarting from some slight, I sulk, or have one of my crazy days. I break thee with an accidental graze Or twitch of tail, if I should take a fright. I break thee out of pure and simple spite The way I broke the jar of mayonnaise. I break thee if a bug upon thee sits. I break thee if I'm in a playful mood, And then I wrestle with the shiny bits. I break thee if I do not like my food. And if someone they shards together fits, I'll break thee once again when thou art glued.

And indeed there will be time To wonder, 'Do I shed?' and, 'Do I shed?' Time to turn back and stretch out on the bed, And give myself a bath before I'm fed -- (They will say: 'It's the short-haired ones I prefer.') My flea collar buckled neatly in my fur, My expression cool and distant but softened by a gentle purr -- (They will say: 'I'm allergic to his fur!') Do I dare Jump up on the table? In an instant there is time For excursions and inversions that will make me seem unstable." (From The Love Song of J. Morris Housecat)

He put his hand in his pocket and found the porte-bonheur, still warm. He looked back at the pier. The one-eyed cat waited. All at once, Henri Beauchamp spun on his heels and stretched his arms wide to the morning sky. It didn't matter, did it, what Jack was? It only mattered that he loved him.

She talks about me like I'm a rug that clashes with every room in the house. Like a cat that won't stop clawing at the curtains. She talks about me like she has buyer's remorse.

If this was the true self it was marvelous and what’s more it seemed never to change but always to pick up from the last stop, to continue in the same vein, a vein I had struck when I was a child and went down in the street for the first time alone and there frozen into the dirty ice of the gutter lay a dead cat, the first time I had looked at death and grasped it. From that moment I knew what it was to be isolated: every object, every living thing and every dead thing led its independent existence. My thoughts too led to an independent existence.

If you can try to nap where someone's sitting, Although there is another empty chair, Then rub against his ankle without quitting Until he rises from your favorite lair; If you can whine and whimper by a portal Until the bolted door is opened wide, Then howl as if you've got a wound that's mortal Until he comes and lets you back inside; If you can give a guest a nasty spiking, But purr when you are petted by a thief; If you can find the food not to your liking Because they put some cheese in with the beef; If you can leave no proffered hand unbitten, And pay no heed to any rule or ban, then all will say you are a Cat, my kitten. And -- which is more -- you'll make a fool of Man!

You see, a witch has to have a familiar, some little animal like a cat or a toad. He helps her somehow. When the witch dies the familiar is suppose to die too, but sometimes it doesn't. Sometimes, if it's absorbed enough magic, it lives on. Maybe this toad found its way south from Salem, from the days when Cotton Mather was hanging witches. Or maybe Lafitte had a Creole girl who called on the Black Man in the pirate-haven of Barataria. The Gulf is full of ghosts and memories, and one of those ghosts might very well be that of a woman with warlock blood who'd come from Europe a long time ago, and died on the new continent. And possibly her familiar didn't know the way home. There's not much room for magic in America now, but once there was room. ("Before I Wake...")

A dog's life! and not so much as a cat to help me...

The Prologue to TERRITORY LOST "Of cats' first disobedience, and the height Of that forbidden tree whose doom'd ascent Brought man into the world to help us down And made us subject to his moods and whims, For though we may have knock'd an apple loose As we were carried safely to the ground, We never said to eat th'accursed thing, But yet with him were exiled from our place With loss of hosts of sweet celestial mice And toothsome baby birds of paradise, And so were sent to stray across the earth And suffer dogs, until some greater Cat Restore us, and regain the blissful yard, Sing, heavenly Mews, that on the ancient banks Of Egypt's sacred river didst inspire That pharaoh who first taught the sons of men To worship members of our feline breed: Instruct me in th'unfolding of my tale; Make fast my grasp upon my theme's dark threads That undistracted save by naps and snacks I may o'ercome our native reticence And justify the ways of cats to men.

I took a step forward. Henry caught my elbow. "No bloodshed," he said. "No blackmail. No obstruction of justice." "You drive a hard bargain," I told him. "What are your thoughts on extortion?" Without waiting for an answer, I headed for Bancroft's car. Henry and Asher followed on my heels. "The cat is dancing in the catnip," Asher reported back to Vivvie. "Grumpy lion is grumpy." "Did you just refer to me as a grumpy lion?" Henry asked Asher. "Absolutely not," Asher promised. Then he took the phone off speaker and lowered his voice. "Suspicious lion is suspicious," he stage whispered to Vivvie.

But, Henry, this is wicked!' But, Adam, the world is wicked. Maoris prey on Moriori, Whites prey on darker-hued cousins, fleas prey on mice, cats prey on rats, Christians on infidels, first mates on cabin boys, Death on the Living. 'The weak are meat, the strong do eat.

Out in the stone-pile the toad squatted with its glowing jewel-eyes and, maybe, its memories. I don't know if you'll admit a toad could have memories. But I don't know, either, if you'll admit there was once witchcraft in America. Witchcraft doesn't sound sensible when you think of Pittsburgh and subways and movie houses, but the dark lore didn't start in Pittsburgh or Salem either; it goes away back to dark olive groves in Greece and dim, ancient forests in Brittany and the stone dolmens of Wales. All I'm saying, you understand, is that the toad was there, under its rocks, and inside the shack Pete was stretching on his hard bed like a cat and composing himself to sleep. ("Before I Wake...")

My, you ought to seen old Henry the Eight when he was in bloom. He was a blossom. He used to marry a new wife every day, and chop off her head next morning. And he would do it just as indifferent as if he was ordering up eggs. 'Fetch up Nell Gwynn,' he says. They fetch her up. Next morning, 'Chop off her head!' And they chop it off. 'Fetch up Jane Shore,' he says; and up she comes, Next morning, 'Chop off her head'—and they chop it off. 'Ring up Fair Rosamun.' Fair Rosamun answers the bell. Next morning, 'Chop off her head.' And he made every one of them tell him a tale every night; and he kept that up till he had hogged a thousand and one tales that way, and then he put them all in a book, and called it Domesday Book—which was a good name and stated the case. You don't know kings, Jim, but I know them; and this old rip of ourn is one of the cleanest I've struck in history. Well, Henry he takes a notion he wants to get up some trouble with this country. How does he go at it—give notice?—give the country a show? No. All of a sudden he heaves all the tea in Boston Harbor overboard, and whacks out a declaration of independence, and dares them to come on. That was his style—he never give anybody a chance. He had suspicions of his father, the Duke of Wellington. Well, what did he do? Ask him to show up? No—drownded him in a butt of mamsey, like a cat. S'pose people left money laying around where he was—what did he do? He collared it. S'pose he contracted to do a thing, and you paid him, and didn't set down there and see that he done it—what did he do? He always done the other thing. S'pose he opened his mouth—what then? If he didn't shut it up powerful quick he'd lose a lie every time. That's the kind of a bug Henry was; and if we'd a had him along 'stead of our kings he'd a fooled that town a heap worse than ourn done. I don't say that ourn is lambs, because they ain't, when you come right down to the cold facts; but they ain't nothing to that old ram, anyway. All I say is, kings is kings, and you got to make allowances. Take them all around, they're a mighty ornery lot. It's the way they're raised.

I'd told Alex too about how much I loved my family, how protective I felt of them, but how even with them, I was sometimes a little lonely. Everyone else was someone else's top person. Mom and Dad. Parker and Prince. Even the huskies were paired up, while our terrier mix and the cat spent most days curled together in a sun patch. Before Alex, my family was the only place I belonged, but even with them, I was something of a loose part, that baffling extra bolt IKEA packs with your bookcase, just to make you sweat.

It often happens that a human is more humanely related to a cat or dog than to any human being.

Cat's passion for atmospheric architecture was only just second to her passion for Henry.

Sometimes Henry wishes he had a cat.

Emerson, as a sort of spiritual sun-worshipper, could have attached but a moderate value to Hawthorne’s cat-like faculty of seeing in the dark. “As

It’s naked high school with no girls to keep it sane. I break up a cat fight at least once a week. If I could afford to hire a gaybie-sitter, I totally would.

a father to a kitten is an absence a grown cat to a father is a threat

like herding cats on acid. Like the cats are on acid, and the cat shepherd is also on acid.

There are many things I love about cats but one of them is their short memories.

You’re thinking. That’s good. Not just a pretty face, then.

Maybe, for whatever reason, you just don’t want to date right now,” I say, “and that’s fine. People feel that way all the time. But if it’s something else—if you’re afraid you’re too rigid, or whatever your exes might’ve thought about you—none of that’s true. Maybe every day with you would be more or less the same, but so what? That actually sounds kind of great. “And maybe I’m misreading all of this, but I don’t think I am, because I’ve never met anyone so much like me. And—if any part of all this is that you think, in the end, I’ll want a golden retriever instead of a mean little cat, you’re wrong.” “Everyone wants a golden retriever,” he says in a low voice. As ridiculous a statement as it is, he looks serious, concerned. I shake my head. “I don’t.

One large bundle held their all—bed, coffee-mill, looking-glass, hens—all but the cat; she took to the woods and became a wild cat, and, as I learned afterward, trod in a trap set for woodchucks, and so became a dead cat at last.

It's not a cat!' Flo insisted. 'It's a horrible stripy- thing - and it's got fangs, and... and...' 'She calls it Henry,' she said, as though this was calling the Prince of Darkness Fred. 'She says her sister left it to her in her. In her will!

Cats catch mice, small birds and the like, very well. Teleology tells us that they do so because they were expressly constructed for so doing—that they are perfect mousing apparatuses, so perfect and so delicately adjusted that no one of their organs could be altered, without the change involving the alteration of all the rest. Darwinism affirms on the contrary, that there was no express construction concerned in the matter; but that among the multitudinous variations of the Feline stock, many of which died out from want of power to resist opposing influences, some, the cats, were better fitted to catch mice than others, whence they throve and persisted, in proportion to the advantage over their fellows thus offered to them. Far from imagining that cats exist 'in order' to catch mice well, Darwinism supposes that cats exist 'because' they catch mice well—mousing being not the end, but the condition, of their existence. And if the cat type has long persisted as we know it, the interpretation of the fact upon Darwinian principles would be, not that the cats have remained invariable, but that such varieties as have incessantly occurred have been, on the whole, less fitted to get on in the world than the existing stock.

He looked fully as cunning as the Cheshire Cat. “If you tell me where it is, I’ll teleport and fetch it for us. We absolutely must review and leave notes. For the sake of future generations.” And that was why Sherard and I are friends. I beamed at him.

Someone really needed to explain to me how a magician, who’d never met a cat from Earth and had no idea what they were like, still managed to create its evil twin here in this world. I mean really, parallel universes notwithstanding, what kind of luck did this take?

Yes, thank you, it’s not like we don’t know what we’re all doing here. Could I stab him yet? I had a cat I could fling at his face, that might be satisfying. Clint would totally go for it. His fur was bristled along his spine, and while he wasn’t Halloween kitty yet, he was getting there.

Henri said our names were fitting because we were destined to be together in our old age, like our great-great-aunts. Two gray old ladies in the bodies of teenage girls. Someday we’d live in a big house with faded curtains, a dozen or so cats, and a handful of our marbles long ago lost. On all accounts—our destiny, her clairvoyance, and our soon-to-be missing marbles—I believed her.

THE YEAR 1977 marked the first significant victory in the history of the anti-vivisection movement, which had existed for over a century without stopping a single experiment. The campaign, run by activist Henry Spira, succeeded in ending experiments on mutilated cats at the American Museum of Natural History and was such a triumph that it mobilized the modern animal rights movement.

He'd been down at the Cass County Library, reading...Win danced a jig he thought that was so funny...about this cat Henry David Thoreau, which he pronounced Toe-Row. He read about his life and read some of his writings and this cat really had his shit together...Toe-Row knew better than anybody that Life is a Big Fat Asshole with everybody trying to Stick It To You when they get half the chance.

It's wonderful the way cats bound about, it's wonderful how men are not found out so far. It's miserable how many miserable are over the spread world at this tick of time. These mysteries that I'm rehearsing in the dark did brighter minds much bother through them ages, whom who finds guilty for failure? Up all we rose with the dawn, springy for pride, trying all morning. Dazzled, I subside at noon, noon be my gaoler and afternoon the deepening of the task poor Henry set himself long since to ask: Why? Who? When? --I don't know, Mr Bones. You asks too much of such as you & me & we & such fast cats, worse men.

My father was usually too far in the drink to remember he had children. My mother was half mad and had fewer morals than the barn cat we brought back today. Since none of our relations wanted custody of a pair of impoverished brats, Devon and I were sent to boarding school. We stayed there most holidays. I became a bully. I hated everyone. Henry was especially irritating- skinny, odd, fussy about his food. Always reading. I stole that book from the box under his bed because it seemed to be his favorite." Pausing uncomfortably, Mr. Ravenel raked a hand through his disordered hair, and it promptly fell back into the same gleaming, untidy layers. "I didn't plan to keep it. I was going to embarrass him by reading parts of it aloud in front of him. And when I saw what you'd written on the inside cover, I could hardly wait to torture him about it. But then I read the first page." "In which Stephen Armstrong is sinking in a pit of quicksand," Phoebe said with a tremulous smile. "Exactly. I had to find out what happened next." "After escaping the quicksand, he has to save his true love, Catriona, from the crocodiles." A husky sound of amusement. "You marked x's all over those pages." "I secretly longed for a hero to rescue me from crocodiles someday." "I secretly longed to be a hero. Despite having far more in common with the crocodiles.

In the 1990s, a set of renegade researchers set aside many of the earlier era’s assumptions, shifting their focus to machine learning. While machine learning dated to the 1950s, new advances enabled practical applications. The methods that have worked best in practice extract patterns from large datasets using neural networks. In philosophical terms, AI’s pioneers had turned from the early Enlightenment’s focus on reducing the world to mechanistic rules to constructing approximations of reality. To identify an image of a cat, they realized, a machine had to “learn” a range of visual representations of cats by observing the animal in various contexts. To enable machine learning, what mattered was the overlap between various representations of a thing, not its ideal—in philosophical terms, Wittgenstein, not Plato. The modern field of machine learning—of programs that learn through experience—was born.

Do Not Stand at My Grave and Weep By Mary Elizabeth Frye Do not stand at my grave and weep.  I am not there; I do not sleep. I am a thousand winds that blow, I am the diamond glints on snow, I am the sunlight on ripened grain, I am the gentle autumn rain. When you awaken in the morning’s hush I am the swift uplifting rush Of quiet birds in circling flight. I am the soft star-shine at night.  Do not stand at my grave and cry, I am not there; I did not die. Death Is Nothing At All By Henry Scott Howard Death is nothing at all. I have only slipped away to the next room. I am I and you are you. Whatever we were to each other, That, we still are. Call me by my old familiar name. Speak to me in the easy way which you always used. Put no difference into your tone. Wear no forced air of solemnity or sorrow. Laugh as we always laughed at the little jokes we enjoyed together. Play, smile, think of me. Pray for me. Let my name be ever the household word

I told such a man the other day that I had got a Canada lynx here in Concord, and his instant question was, “Have you got the reward for him?” What reward? Why, the ten dollars which the State offers. As long as I saw him he neither said nor thought anything about the lynx, but only about this reward. “Yes,” said he, “this State offers ten dollars reward.” You might have inferred that ten dollars was something rarer in his neighborhood than a lynx even, and he was anxious to see it on that account. I have thought that a lynx was a bright-eyed, four-legged, furry beast of the cat kind, very current, indeed, though its natural gait is by leaps. But he knew it to be a draught drawn by the cashier of the wildcat bank on the State treasury, payable at sight. Then I reflected that the first money was of leather, or a whole creature (whence pecunia, from pecus, a herd), and, since leather was at first furry, I easily understood the connection between a lynx and ten dollars, and found that all money was traceable right back to the original wildcat bank.

Take the oft-repeated injunction to get “its” and “it’s” straight. Everyone claims it’s remarkably easy to remember that “its” is possessive and “it’s” is a contraction. But logic tells us that in English, ’s attached to a noun signals possession: the dog’s dish, the cat’s toy, the lexicographer’s cry. So if English is logical, and there are simple rules to follow, why doesn’t “it’s” signal possession? We know that ’s also signals a contraction, but we don’t have any problems with differentiating between “the dog’s dish” and “the dog’s sleeping”—why should we suddenly have problems with “it’s dish” and “it’s sleeping”? This type of grammar often completely ignores hundreds (and, in some cases, well over a thousand) years of established use in English. For “it’s,” the rule is certainly easy to memorize, but it also ignores the history of “its” and “it’s.” At one point in time, “it” was its own possessive pronoun: the 1611 King James Bible reads, “That which groweth of it owne accord…thou shalt not reape”; Shakespeare wrote in King Lear, “It had it head bit off by it young.” They weren’t the first: the possessive “it” goes back to the fifteenth century. But around the time that Shakespeare was shuffling off this mortal coil, the possessive “it” began appearing as “it’s.” We’re not sure why the change happened, but some commentators guess that it was because “it” didn’t appear to be its own possessive pronoun, like “his” and “her,” but rather a bare pronoun in need of that possessive marker given to nouns: ’s. Sometimes this possessive appeared without punctuation as “its.” But the possessive “it’s” grew in popularity through the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries until it was the dominant form of the word. It even survived into the nineteenth century: you’ll find it in the letters of Thomas Jefferson and Jane Austen and the speechwriting notes of Abraham Lincoln. This would be relatively simple were it not for the fact that “it’s” was also occasionally used as a contraction for “it is” or “it has” (“and it’s come to pass,” Shakespeare wrote in Henry VIII, 1.2.63). Some grammarians noticed and complained—not that the possessive “it’s” and the contractive “it’s” were confusing, but that the contractive “it’s” was a misuse and mistake for the contraction “ ’tis,” which was the more standard contraction of “it is.” This was a war that the pedants lost: “ ’tis” waned while “it’s” waxed.

The Holy Roman Emperor once sent Henry III three leopards as a gift, and he kept them in the Tower of London, where they lived with an elephant, polar bear and a presumably rather nervous porcupine (this was the first such royal menagerie to be open to the public, the entrance fee being a dog or cat, for the lion to eat).

The most wonderful truths of God comes packaged in a paradox wrapped in mystery.

Juniper was dreaming about riding Sparkles the unicorn to the white waterfall in the southern part of Wildflower Kingdom. Her room was decorated in pink and yellow, with lots of hearts and polka dots. Everyone else in the castle was also asleep. The wizard who did magic, the castle’s chef, the shoemakers, the castle guard–all were asleep. Even the castle’s one cat, Henry the Eighth, was asleep. Then, suddenly– Crack! Princess Olivia’s eyes flew open. Boom! Juniper’s eyes flew open. Boom! Crack! Kapow! Olivia looked around her bedroom, wondering what had made the loud noises. However, seeing nothing, she ran out of her room to find Juniper. Juniper also ran out of her room, clutching her stuffed llama, so that she could find Olivia. Princess Olivia and Princess Juniper were the only two children in Wildflower Castle, and so they were best friends. Sometimes they quarreled, and sometimes they were cross with one another, but when there was trouble, they looked out for each other. The two girls collided in the dark hallway.

Oh, well, these are night thoughts produced by walking in the rain after two thousand years of Christianity. At least now the birds are well provided for, and the cats and dogs. Every time I pass the concierge’s window and catch the full icy impact of her glance I have an insane desire to throttle all the birds in creation. At the bottom of every frozen heart there is a drop or two of love—just enough to feed the birds.

Cat is staring at me through the glass door. Meow. "What?" Meow. "Sorry, I'm more of a dog guy." Meow. "I don't know, go drink out of the toilet." Meow. "There's plenty of string cheese in the fridge." Meow. "Fine." I quickly open the door and Cat jumps into my arms.

Even some of the scariest men in history were afraid of cats! Julius Caesar, Charles XI and Henry II all had a phobia of cats.

She’s looking at me now with that hopeful Libby look of hers. It’s halfway between the expression of a cat who’s dropped a mouse at a person’s feet and that of a kid handing over a Mother’s Day drawing,

Benji had the distinct impression that Cat could cut out his kidneys, sell them on eBay, and (as long as she could quote from Ulysses) remain a keeper in Henry’s book. Not

Uneori sunt atat de flămand,atat de rapace,încat i-aș putea manca pe oameni.Nu am răbdare să-i aștept să-mi povestească...cum se simt...ce doresc..și așa mai departe.Vreau să-i mestec de vii.. să descopăr singur...repede,totul deodată. (...)Uneori simt că sunt gata să fac explozie.Relamente,nu mă sinchisesc nici cat negru sub unghie de mizeria omenirii.O iau de bună.Ce vreau eu e să mă deschid.Vreau să știu ce e înăuntrul meu.

We get in the elevator, and he signs to me from the back. Are you all right? You look upset? I’m fine. Just told Trip he has to find a place to live. He rolls his eyes. He already did. He’s working on it. I’ll believe it when I see it. Henry rushes forward and opens the door for us when we get downstairs. “You look lovely, Miss Madison,” he says to me as Trip gets into the limo. I squeeze Henry’s hand. He holds the door of the limo, and I slide inside. Logan gets in next to me, and I don’t feel at peace until his shoulder touches mine. You sure you’re okay? he asks. He tucks a lock of hair behind my ear, his hands lingering at my temple. I arch into him like a cat and pull his hand down so I can kiss the center of his palm. I lean my head on his shoulder and nod. I am okay, as long as he’s beside me.

He struggles, however, to get past ‘aardvark’—‘Mediumsized insectivore with protruding nasal implement’. A repentant Baldrick is on hand with some characteristically hopeless suggestions. ‘C’, he suggests, is a ‘big blue wobbly thing that mermaids live in’. Blackadder is unamused. Baldrick tries out another of his efforts: ‘I’m quite pleased with “dog”,’ he says, pausing before supplying his definition—‘Not a cat’. Droll this may be, but

First published in 1721, Bailey’s dictionary went through thirty editions over the next eighty-one years. It was more useful and wide-ranging than its predecessors, but its definitions were often poor: ‘cat’ was ‘a creature well known’, ‘to get’ was defined simply as ‘to obtain’, ‘cool’ meant ‘cooling or cold’, ‘black’ was ‘a colour’, ‘strawberry’ ‘a well known fruit’, and ‘to wash’ meant ‘to cleanse by washing’ (although ‘washing’ was not defined).

Despite Grumblethorpe's noises of disapproval, Esme knew she liked the family pets.She just did't approve of having so many of them in her mistress's bedroom at once. Still, it was an old battle and one the lady's maid had given up waging long ago. Good thing too, since four of Esme's six cats- who had all started life in either Braebourne stables or as strays she'd rescued- were snoozing in various locations around her room. They included a big orange male, Tobias, who was curled up in a cozy spot in the middle of her bed; Queen Elizabeth- a sweet-natured tabby, who was lounging in her usual window seat; Mozart- a luxuriously coated white longhair who luckily loved being brushed; and Naiad, a one-eyed black female, whom Esme had rescued from drowning as a kitten. Her other two cats, Persephone and Ruff, were out and about, seeing to their own cat business. As for the dogs, Burr lay stretched out on the hearthrug in front of the fireplace. He snored gently, clearly tired after their recent adventures. And joining him in the land of dreams was dear old Henry, a brindle spaniel who was curled up inside a nearby dog bed lined with plush pillows that helped cushion his aging joints. Handel and Haydn, a pair of impish Scottish terriers, were absent. She suspected they were on the third floor playing with her increasingly large brood of nieces and nephews. The dogs loved the children.

She left the room, with her black-and-white kitty, Ruff, Elizabeth, Naiad and Persephone- a spotted gray-and-white shorthair- following on her heels in hopes of getting breakfast. As for her other two cats, she knew they must be out hunting rodents and birds rather than waiting to go down to the kitchens with everyone else. Burr and old Henry, who had climbed with a stiff gait out of his basket, joined the furry entourage, tails wagging and tongues lolling as they descended the stairs. The Scotties were probably asleep in the nursery, happy to wait to see what tidbits the children would sneak them during their breakfast in another hour or two.

Later, in the late twentieth century and the early twenty-first, this thinking informed theories of AI and machine learning. Such theories posited that AI’s potential lay partly in its ability to scan large data sets to learn types and patterns—e.g., groupings of words often found together, or features most often present in an image when that image was of a cat—and then to make sense of reality by identifying networks of similarities and likenesses with what the AI already knew. Even if AI would never know something in the way a human mind could, an accumulation of matches with the patterns of reality could approximate and sometimes exceed the performance of human perception and reason.

There are women in Maple Hills who would give an organ to have Henry talk about them the way he talks about my cat.

I like being a cat in my home circle," said Mrs. Bantry. "I don't much like women anyway, and you know it. I like men and flowers.” "Excellent taste," said Sir Henry. "Especially in putting men first.

Yet still, beneath all the marketing and social construction of attitudes and desires and shopping habits, there is a deep yearning for connection. The main reason people seek the company of pets must be psychological: animals make people happy and satisfy a basic urge to tend, to love, to bond. “Companion animals,” write Henri Julius and colleagues, “may satisfy the need of individual humans for a reasonably compassionate partner . . . whom they can care for and attach to, at comparatively low ‘social costs.’ For example, cats and dogs do not argue verbally and are less demanding in many respects than a human partner.

I DID MY HOMEWORK in record time. I’m not going to say much more about it, because we all know that doing homework was invented by King Boring of Boringville, which is found just on the outskirts of I-Can’t-Find-the-Answers-in-My-Brainville. I’ll bet you’ve visited there yourself.

Mental note to self. Don’t use a cardboard box that our dog Cheerio pooped in.

Well, hello.” I flinch toward Libby’s voice and find her smiling like a cartoon cat whose mouth is stuffed with multiple canaries.

we had the goldfish and they went around and around in the bowl on the table near the purple drapes across our front picture window and my mother, poor fish, always smiling, wanting to appear happy, she always told me, "be happy, Henry," and she was right: it's better to be happy if you can be but my father beat her two or three times a week while raging through his 6 foot two frame because he couldn't defeat what was attacking him. my mother, poor fish, poor goldfish, poor nothing fish, wanting to be happy, being beaten two or three times a week and telling me to be happy: "Henry, smile! why don't you smile? and then, she always did to show me how, and it was the saddest smile I ever saw upon the earth, like hell and hell and hell and hell, and nothing else one day all the goldfish died, all five of them, they floated on top of the water, on their sides, the eye on each top side still open, and when my father got home he threw them to the cat there on the kitchen floor and we watched as my mother smiled

The process of getting everyone and everything out the door is like herding cats on acid. Like the cats are on acid, and the cat shepherd is also on acid.

Death Is Nothing At All By Henry Scott Howard Death is nothing at all. I have only slipped away to the next room. I am I and you are you. Whatever we were to each other, That, we still are. Call me by my old familiar name. Speak to me in the easy way which you always used. Put no difference into your tone. Wear no forced air of solemnity or sorrow. Laugh as we always laughed at the little jokes we enjoyed together. Play, smile, think of me. Pray for me. Let my name be ever the household word that it always was. Let it be spoken without effect. Without the trace of a shadow on it. Life means all that it ever meant. It is the same that it ever was. There is absolute unbroken continuity. Why should I be out of mind because I am out of sight? I am but waiting for you for an interval. Somewhere. Very near. Just around the corner. All is well.

When we dare to lift our cat and let our friends know what is in it, they will be encouraged to lift their cups and share with us their own anxiously hidden secrets. The greatest healing often takes place when we no longer feel isolated by our shame and guilt and discovered that others often feel what we feel and think what we think and have the fears, apprehensions, and preoccupations we have.

One sees what he wants to see or allows to be planted in his mind. It’s like a blind man in a dark room searching for a black cat that isn’t there — and finding it.” - UNCLE HENRY

There is a parrot living in a bar in Tijuana—I have this on excellent authority—who causes people to order more drink than they intended by sidling up to them, cocking his head, and asking, “Can you talk?” And there was Napoleon, a parrot from Brazil, who put on airs at Riverside’s Mission Inn from the time in 1907 when he was given as a gift to Frank Miller, the inn’s founder, until 1956. Napoleon held his own with more dignitaries than any other parrot in history, so Riversiders say, including Andrew Carnegie, Henry Ford, Albert Einstein,

Amanda is wrong. I do have an instinct about people, and it tells me David is just fine. I wonder if he doesn't cook because his wife did all the cooking until she died. I wonder what she was like. Like Ma, maybe, capable and in charge, always repeating rules and being protective. I felt smothered sometimes but I know Ma always tried to do what was right for me. One of her unsuccessful lessons in how to make and keep friends was 'Be a little mysterious.' Of course I could never find the right level of mystery. If I asserted myself, she said, 'Don't be too insistent,' and if I hung back too much, it was 'Don't be such a little wallflower.' I preferred to think of myself as a cat. If I think of my behavior as cat behavior instead of people behavior, it pretty much always makes sense. Maybe that's part of why I love Midnight. Maybe she reminds me of me.

Indiferent cat de mult crezi că ştii despre gandurile tainice ale unei persoane, despre impulsurile sale inconştiente şi aşa mai departe, totuşi, cand conversia are loc sub ochii tăi, incepi să te intrebi dacă ai cunoscut vreodată persoana alături de care ţi-ai petrecut intreaga viaţă. E simplu să-ţi spui in sinea ta, in legătură cu un prieten drag: „Are toate instinctele unui asasin" - dar cand il vezi năpustindu-se cu un cuţit asupra ta, atunci e cu totul altceva. Intr-un fel, niciodată nu eşti pregătit pentru una ca asta, oricat de deştept ai fi. in cel mai bun caz, poţi admite că o s-o facă altei persoane - dar niciodată ţie...o, nu! Acum, insă, simt că ar trebui să mă aştept la orice din partea celor pe care ii bănuiesc cel mai puţin. Nu vreau să spun că ar trebui să fim ingrijoraţi, nu, nu de asta-i vorba... Doar că nu trebuie să fim surprinşi.

The heavy mangle stood in the kitchen between the tall cupboard and the window under the clothes line. Blocky as a medieval torture instrument oozing black grease it stood foursquare in wrought iron on its castors; the space between it and the wall was used regularly by the cats as their lavatory, the old messes growing fuzzy hair. When the stink became unendurable old Mrs Henry, our cook, cleaned it out with buckets of water and Jeyes Fluid. When I hung on to the mangle for dear life I felt safe. Nothing could get at me in there, skinny as a skeleton.

Lord, I pray for the eyes of an eagle, the quickness of a hummingbird, the reflexes of a cat, the radar of a cave bat, the heart of a lion, and the balls of a helicopter pilot.”)

find. Henry said she lived right across the hall.” Chapter 14 “So, this is the scene of the crime,” Ida said as they pulled up in front of an old Victorian. From outward appearances, it was hard to imagine that something sinister had happened inside. It was nicely kept, with off-white siding and purple trim. “Looks like a birthday cake,” Ruth said as they walked up the steps toward the purple door. She opened the door to reveal a small entryway. A set of stairs loomed in front of them. Old-fashioned green flowered wallpaper papered the walls. The floor was hardwood, scuffed from years of wear. To the right was a solid oak door with the number Two on it. “According to the case files, Rosa and Henry lived at number two.” Nans gestured toward the door on the other side of the hall which had a number One. “So this one must be Mrs. Pettigrew.” Ruth was standing closest to the door, so she knocked. “Who is it?” A voice drifted out almost before the knock stopped echoing. Clearly, Mrs. Pettigrew kept a close eye on the place and had seen them come in. “It’s the Ladies’ Detective Agency.” Nans’s voice took on an official tone. “We have some questions on a case if you’d be so kind as to answer them.” Of course, Doris Pettigrew would be thrilled to answer questions. If she was truly the busybody that it sounded like she was, she wouldn’t be able to resist the lure of gossip and finding out exactly what case the ladies were referring to. Lexy heard a series of locks clicking and chains sliding, and then the door cracked and a rheumy blue eye appeared. “Do you have any credentials?” “Of course.” Nans shoved a business card at her. It was in a laminate case, so it resembled an official badge of some sort. Doris snatched the card and pulled it inside. It took her a few seconds, but Nans’s card must have passed muster because the door opened and Doris said, “Come in.” Ida went in first. “Oh, this is… unusual.” Lexy peered over Ida’s head. She couldn’t be sure exactly what Ida thought was unusual. There were so many things. It could have been the giant four-foot-tall dolls that stood around the edge of the room. Or it might have been the knitted afghans that covered every surface. Or maybe it was the stuffed animals that were sitting on the couch as if holding a conversation. Then again, it might have been the herd of cats that was sniffing around Ida’s ankles. Doris handed the card back to Nans. “I’m Doris Pettigrew, by the way.” They all introduced themselves, and Doris gestured toward the living room for them to sit. Ida gingerly plucked a large pink elephant off the sofa and put it on the floor then took its place. A black cat immediately jumped into her lap. The rest of the ladies followed her lead, moving dolls aside, disturbing stuffed animals, and pushing cats out of their laps. Lexy sat in the only chair not occupied by a stuffed animal. The smell of mothballs wafted up as the rough wool of the crocheted granny square pillow irritated her arm. Achoo! Helen sneezed and pushed the fluffy tail of a white Persian out of her face.

Chris Good evening, ladies . . . He steps into it. . . . and gentlemen and welcome to the Cornley Polytechnic Society’s spring production of The Murder at Haversham Manor. I would like to personally welcome you to what will be my directorial debut, and my first production as head of the drama society. We are particularly excited to present this play because, for the first time in the society’s history, we have managed to find a play that fits the company’s numbers perfectly. If we’re honest, a lack of numbers has hampered past productions, such as last year’s Chekov play; Two Sisters. Or last Christmas’s The Lion and the Wardrobe, and of course our summer musical, Cat. This will be the first time the society has been able to stage a play of this scale and we are thrilled. It’s no secret we usually have to contend with a small budget, as we had to in last year’s presentation of Roald Dahl’s classic, James and the Peach. Of course, during the run of that particular show the peach went off, and we were forced to present a hastily devised alternative entitled James! Where’s your Peach? Finally we’ve managed to stage a play as it should be, and cast it exceptionally well. I’m sure no one will forget the problems we’ve faced with casting before, such as 2010’s Christmas presentation of Snow White and the Tall, Broad Gentlemen, or indeed our previous year’s pantomime, another Disney classic: Ugly . . . and the Beast. But now, on with the main event, which I am confident will be our best show yet! So without any further ado, please put your hands together for Susie H.K. Brideswell’s thrilling whodunit – The Murder at Haversham Manor.

And you took the cat?” he says with a belly laugh. “You hate cats.”“I couldn't leave him there. And he thinks he's a dog, so he's not too bad.