Orange Cat Quotes

Everyone thinks I named my cat Mango because of his orange eyes, but that's not the case. I named him Mango because the sounds of his purrs and his wheezes and his meows are all various shades of yellow-orange.

The wind outside nested in each tree, prowled the sidewalks in invisible treads like unseen cats. Tom Skelton shivered. Anyone could see that the wind was a special wind this night, and the darkness took on a special feel because it was All Hallows' Eve. Everything seemed cut from soft black velvet or gold or orange velvet. Smoke panted up out of a thousand chimneys like the plumes of funeral parades. From kitchen windows drifted two pumpkin smells: gourds being cut, pies being baked.

There's blood, a taste I remember. It tastes of orange popsicles, penny gumballs, red licorice, gnawed hair, dirty ice.

Everyone who tells a story tells it differently, just to remind us that everybody sees it differently. Some people say there are true things to be found, some people say all kinds of things can be proved. I don't believe them. The only thing for certain is how complicated it all is, like string full of knots. It's all there but hard to find the beginning and impossible to fathom the end. The best you can do is admire the cat's cradle, and maybe knot it up a bit more.

In my head, the sky is blue, the grass is green and cats are orange.

My eyes widened at the ball of orange fluff squeezing out from under the counter, blinking and stretching. I looked again, not believing. “It’s a cat,” I said, winning the Pulitzer prize for incredible intellect.

People watch my unique style of play, and they want to know my top three golf influences. That's easy. John Daly, practicing daily, and an orange and white cat surrounded by yellow ducklings.

A cat wriggled in Zehun’s arms: the orange tabby Jienji, who, like all of Zehun’s cats, was named after a notorious Shuos assassin. Even someone who liked cats as much as Zehun did was unlikely to run out of names anytime soon.

I used to jog but it's bad for the knees. Too much beta carotene turns you orange, too much calcium gives you kidney stones. Health kills.

I don’t give a glance to what’s still on the walls, I hate those neo-expressionist dirty greens and putrid oranges, post this, post that. Everything is post these days, as if we’re all just a footnote to something earlier that was real enough to have a name of its own.

I used to jog but it’s bad for the knees. Too much beta carotene turns you orange, too much calcium gives you kidney stones. Health kills.

I like reading the Sunday papers in bed. I like orange ribbons tied around the cat's neck. I like sleeping up against a body that I know well.

There was no Disney World then, just rows of orange trees. Millions of them. Stretching for miles And somewhere near the middle was the Citrus Tower, which the tourists climbed to see even more orange trees. Every month an eighty-year-old couple became lost in the groves, driving up and down identical rows for days until they were spotted by helicopter or another tourist on top of the Citrus Tower. They had lived on nothing but oranges and come out of the trees drilled on vitamin C and checked into the honeymoon suite at the nearest bed-and-breakfast. "The Miami Seaquarium put in a monorail and rockets started going off at Cape Canaveral, making us feel like we were on the frontier of the future. Disney bought up everything north of Lake Okeechobee, preparing to shove the future down our throats sideways. "Things evolved rapidly! Missile silos in Cuba. Bales on the beach. Alligators are almost extinct and then they aren't. Juntas hanging shingles in Boca Raton. Richard Nixon and Bebe Rebozo skinny-dipping off Key Biscayne. We atone for atrocities against the INdians by playing Bingo. Shark fetuses in formaldehyde jars, roadside gecko farms, tourists waddling around waffle houses like flocks of flightless birds. And before we know it, we have The New Florida, underplanned, overbuilt and ripe for a killer hurricane that'll knock that giant geodesic dome at Epcot down the trunpike like a golf ball, a solid one-wood by Buckminster Fuller. "I am the native and this is my home. Faded pastels, and Spanish tiles constantly slipping off roofs, shattering on the sidewalk. Dogs with mange and skateboard punks with mange roaming through yards, knocking over garbage cans. Lunatics wandering the streets at night, talking about spaceships. Bail bondsmen wake me up at three A.M. looking for the last tenant. Next door, a mail-order bride is clubbed by a smelly ma in a mechanic's shirt. Cats violently mate under my windows and rats break-dance in the drop ceiling. And I'm lying in bed with a broken air conditioner, sweating and sipping lemonade through a straw. And I'm thinking, geez, this used to be a great state. "You wanna come to Florida? You get a discount on theme-park tickets and find out you just bough a time share. Or maybe you end up at Cape Canaveral, sitting in a field for a week as a space shuttle launch is canceled six times. And suddenly vacation is over, you have to catch a plane, and you see the shuttle take off on TV at the airport. But you keep coming back, year after year, and one day you find you're eighty years old driving through an orange grove.

My father is standing at the sink wearing a too-tight long-sleeved red T-Shirt, a pair of too-high jeans and sporting the type of orange glow that belongs only on Chernobyl victims. Plus his hair looks like an oil spill. 'Hey you,' he says, washing what looks to be some carrots under the sink. Are they carrots or are they parsnips reflecting the sheen of my father's tangerine skin? Hard to tell. 'You've fake tanned yourself again,' I say - it's a statement, not a question. 'Too much?' he says, innocently. 'I just didn't want to be one of those pasty office workers and I thought it wouldn't hurt to back up last week's application with another hit.' 'Dad, you look-' 'Sun kissed?' 'Radioactive. And what the hell happened to your hands?' - Cat

There were fat cats and skinny cats. The long-tailed and the bobbed. The daring young leapers, and the old windowsill sleepers. Balls of waddling fluff, smooth-coated prowlers, and hairless ones that looked fragile and wise. The tiger-striped, the ring-tailed, and the ones with matching coloured socks and mittens. There were tabbies and calicos. Manx and Persians. Siamese and Bombay. Ragdolls and Birmans. Maine Coons and Russian Blues. There were Snowshoes and Somalis, Tonkinese and Turkish, and many, many more. Brown and beige and orange and grey and black and white and silver cats, each with gleaming eyes of emerald, or sapphire, or amber. A rainbow of precious stones.

But history is a string full of knots, the best you can do is admire it, and maybe knot it up a bit more. History is a hammock for swinging and a game for playing. A cat’s cradle.

The rapid nightfall of mid-December had quite beset the little village as they approached it on soft feet over a first thin fall of powdery snow. Little was visible but squares of a dusky orange-red on either side of the street, where the firelight or lamplight of each cottage overflowed through the casements into the dark world without. Most of the low latticed windows were innocent of blinds, and to the lookers-in from outside, the inmates, gathered round the tea-table, absorbed in handiwork, or talking with laughter and gesture, had each that happy grace which is the last thing the skilled actor shall capture--the natural grace which goes with perfect unconsciousness of observation. Moving at will from one theatre to another, the two spectators, so far from home themselves, had something of wistfulness in their eyes as they watched a cat being stroked, a sleepy child picked up and huddled off to bed, or a tired man stretch and knock out his pipe on the end of a smouldering log.

Of course that is not the whole story, but that is the way with stories; we make them what we will. It’s a way of explaining the universe while leaving the universe unexplained, it’s a way of keeping it all alive, not boxing it into time. Everyone who tells a story tells it differently, just to remind us that everybody sees it differently. Some people say there are true things to be found, some people say all kinds of things can be proved. I don’t believe them. The only thing for certain is how complicated it all is, like string full of knots. It’s all there but hard to find the beginning and impossible to fathom the end. The best you can do is admire the cat’s cradle, and maybe knot it up a bit more. History should be a hammock for swinging and a game for playing, the way cats play. Claw it, chew it, rearrange it and at bedtime it’s still a ball of string full of knots. Nobody should mind. Some people make a lot of money out of it. Publishers do well, children, when bright, can come top. It’s an all-purpose rainy day pursuit, this reducing of stories called history.

I looked along the aisle and saw her, and it was as if I saw her for the first time. Everything changed. The ancient featureless interior of me spangled orange, mint, cat-blue. I looked back to the window immediately, my face damp, my breath caught. And worried I would never have the courage to look at her again.

and you were sort of hypnotized by your boot or shoe or a finger-nail as it might be,and at the same time you were sort of picked up by the old scruff and shook like you might be a cat.you got shook and shook till there was nothing left.you lost your name and your body and your self and you just didn’t care,and you waited until your boot or finger-nail got yellow,then yellower and yellower all the time.then the lights started cracking like atomics and the boot or finger-nail or,as it might be,a bit of dirt on your trouser-bottom turned into a big big big mesto,bigger than the whole world,and you were just going to get introduced to old Bog or God when it was all over.you came back to here and now whimpering sort of,with your rot all squaring up for a boohoohoo.now that’s very nice but very cowardly.you were not put on this earth just to get in touch with God.that sort of thing could sap all the strength and the goodness out of a chelloveck.

On the wicker chair the cat lazily raised its head. Meeting my gaze, it got up, padded across the floor and jumped onto my lap. I got rid of the orange peel, which the cat hated. “You can lie here for a bit,” I said, stroking it. “You can. But not all night, you know. I’m going to bed soon.” It began to purr as it curled up on me. Its head sank slowly, resting on one paw, and its eyes, which first had closed with pleasure, were closed in sleep within seconds. “It’s all right for some,” I said.

Grief, he thought, would have an ending, but it was a black cat that ran across life, through good conversations and orange firelight and endless drills. It sat on his shoulders and made his knees creek when he stood up. It balanced in the crook of his arm as he cleaned his rifle. And he could not banish it; it was loyal as a dog.

Sullivan may have a heart of coal, but I bet he looks really good in orange. And stripes. Rawr,” she said, curling her fingers like a cat.

He rages because the people don’t deserve their country and proved it by electing a racist orange glob of hair coughed up by the Russian cat.

GRIGSBY: Ship’s cat. Orange and obnoxious.

GRIGSBY: Ship’s cat. Orange and insouciant.

A wiry orange cat darted out and ran down the front steps. “She’ll come back,” he said, unalarmed.

I thought orange was a more electable color, so I dyed my whole cat orange, and renamed him Abe Lincoln. I licked his fur clean in celebration of his victory.

The road looked as if no one had traveled on it in months. "It's not much farther," the grandmother said and just as she said it, a horrible thought came to her. The thought was so embarrassing that she turned red in the face and her eyes dilated and her feet jumped up, upsetting her valise in the corner. The instant the valise moved, the newspaper top she had over the basket under it rose with a snarl and Pitty Sing, the cat, sprang onto Bailey's shoulder. The children were thrown to the floor and their mother, clutching the baby, was thrown out the door onto the ground; the old lady was thrown into the front seat. The car turned over once and landed right-side-up in a gulch off the side of the road. Bailey remained in the driver's seat with the cat gray-striped with a broad white face and an orange nose clinging to his neck like a caterpillar. As soon as the children saw they could move their arms and legs, they scrambled out of the car, shouting, "We've had an ACCIDENT!" The grandmother was curled up under the dashboard, hoping she was injured so that Bailey's wrath would not come down on her all at once. The horrible thought she had had before the accident was that the house she had remembered so vividly was not in Georgia but in Tennessee.

Spottedleaf isn’t with StarClan anymore.” Grief thickened her mew. “But she gave Firestar a life for love.” A sob shook Sandstorm’s shoulders. Bluestar went on. “I gave him a life for nobility, though he was born with more nobility than any warrior I ever knew.” Her blue eyes glazed with sorrow. “I knew that Firestar would save the Clan many moons ago. As fire, and then as the fourth cat in the oldest prophecy, he succeeded. He leaves ThunderClan in the paws of a new leader.” She looked at Brambleclaw. “If you have half the courage and loyalty of Firestar, you will be a fine leader for ThunderClan.” As she spoke the StarClan cats drew closer around Firestar’s body. Touching pelts, they gazed down. A shadow stirred over the orange shape.

I often remember that dusty, ruined flat in old Beirut. And I know that a little part of me will stay there forever, laying out those treasures on the windowsill and playing at cat’s cradle with my friend.

And Throgmorten’s arched ginger body came flying out of the creepers like a furry orange boomerang and landed slap in the basket. Christopher was deeply impressed – so impressed that he was a bit slow getting the lid down. Throgmorten came pouring over the edge of the basket again in an instant ginger stream. The Goddess seized him and crammed him back, whereupon a large number of flailing ginger legs – at least seven, to Christopher’s bemused eyes – clawed hold of her bracelets and her robe and her legs under the robe, and tore pieces off them. Christopher waited and aimed for an instant when one of Throgmorten’s heads – he seemed to have at least three, each with more fangs than seemed possible – came into range. Then he banged the basket lid on it, hard. Throgmorten, for the blink of an eye, became an ordinary dazed cat instead of a fighting devil.

The three ways to make napalm: One, you can mix equal parts of gasoline and frozen orange juice concentrate. Two, you can mix equal parts of gasoline and diet cola. Three, you can dissolve crumbled cat litter in gasoline until the mixture is thick.

Doc was collecting marine animals in the Great Tide Pool on the tip of the Peninsula. It is a fabulous place: when the tide is in, a wave-churned basin, creamy with foam, whipped by the combers that roll in from the whistling buoy on the reef. But when the tide goes out the little water world becomes quiet and lovely. The sea is very clear and the bottom becomes fantastic with hurrying, fighting, feeding, breeding animals. Crabs rush from frond to frond of the waving algae. Starfish squat over mussels and limpets, attach their million little suckers and then slowly lift with incredible power until the prey is broken from the rock. And then the starfish stomach comes out and envelops its food. Orange and speckled and fluted nudibranchs slide gracefully over the rocks, their skirts waving like the dresses of Spanish dancers. And black eels poke their heads out of crevices and wait for prey. The snapping shrimps with their trigger claws pop loudly. The lovely, colored world is glassed over. Hermit crabs like frantic children scamper on the bottom sand. And now one, finding an empty snail shell he likes better than his own, creeps out, exposing his soft body to the enemy for a moment, and then pops into the new shell. A wave breaks over the barrier, and churns the glassy water for a moment and mixes bubbles into the pool, and then it clears and is tranquil and lovely and murderous again. Here a crab tears a leg from his brother. The anemones expand like soft and brilliant flowers, inviting any tired and perplexed animal to lie for a moment in their arms, and when some small crab or little tide-pool Johnnie accepts the green and purple invitation, the petals whip in, the stinging cells shoot tiny narcotic needles into the prey and it grows weak and perhaps sleepy while the searing caustic digestive acids melt its body down. Then the creeping murderer, the octopus, steals out, slowly, softly, moving like a gray mist, pretending now to be a bit of weed, now a rock, now a lump of decaying meat while its evil goat eyes watch coldly. It oozes and flows toward a feeding crab, and as it comes close its yellow eyes burn and its body turns rosy with the pulsing color of anticipation and rage. Then suddenly it runs lightly on the tips of its arms, as ferociously as a charging cat. It leaps savagely on the crab, there is a puff of black fluid, and the struggling mass is obscured in the sepia cloud while the octopus murders the crab. On the exposed rocks out of water, the barnacles bubble behind their closed doors and the limpets dry out. And down to the rocks come the black flies to eat anything they can find. The sharp smell of iodine from the algae, and the lime smell of calcareous bodies and the smell of powerful protean, smell of sperm and ova fill the air. On the exposed rocks the starfish emit semen and eggs from between their rays. The smells of life and richness, of death and digestion, of decay and birth, burden the air. And salt spray blows in from the barrier where the ocean waits for its rising-tide strength to permit it back into the Great Tide Pool again. And on the reef the whistling buoy bellows like a sad and patient bull.

The taste of fresh orange juice. A fig. the sight of a flower. The sound of music. A slab of sunlight on floorboards. Cats and dogs and goats and lizards and dolphins. Harrison Ford’s face. Imagine if you were from a planet with none of those things. Imagine how full of wonder everything would seem. How unjaded we would be by everything in front of us. How a picture of a sunset would never seem corny again. How a simple walk in an orchard would be utopia. How a cool breeze on a hot day would be a lottery win. How each and every bird song would be a symphony.

Three ways to make napalm: One, you can mix equal parts of gasoline and frozen orange juice concentrate,' the space monkey in the basement reads. 'Two, you can mix equal parts of gasoline and diet cola. Three, you can dissolve crumbled cat litter in gasoline until the mixture is thick.

Mel lets us in the house, and we aren't two steps inside before Mary Magdalene, our tubby little orange cat, is running a purring streak around Jared's legs. He touches her nose lightly with his finger. "I see you," he whispers, and Mary Mags does an ecstatic lopsided spin to the floor, like a falling propeller.

… but not a single one of them is more or less remarkable or ridiculous than everything already here. The taste of fresh orange juice. A fig. the sight of a flower. The sound of music. A slab of sunlight on floorboards. Cats and dogs and goats and lizards and dolphins. Harrison Ford’s face. Imagine if you were from a planet with none of those things. Imagine how full of wonder everything would seem. How unjaded we would be by everything in front of us. How a picture of a sunset would never seem corny again. How a simple walk in an orchard would be utopia. How a cool breeze on a hot day would be a lottery win. How each and every bird song would be a symphony.

And then there was the expansive garden that ran the length of the rear of the house- lush with color and fragrances that seemed to burst from every branch and bloom. Whoever had designed it possessed a keen eye for beauty, each plant chosen with obvious care and an affinity for nature. She'd even acquired a new cat from its depths, a stray orange tom she found wandering among the hydrangea bushes one morning. An offered dish of milk and he'd been her bosom beau ever since. She'd decided to call him Ranunculus because Buttercup was far too feminine a name for such a large and impressive male. She gazed at him now where he slept in the sunshine, basking like a small potentate in the heat of the day.

The silence between us was so profound I thought part of it must me my fault. So I said, "Isn't it awful about the Rosenbergs?" The Rosenbergs were to be electrocuted late that night. "Yes!" Hilda said, and at last I felt I had touched a human string in the cat's cradle of her heart. It was only as the two of us waited for the others in that tomb-like morning gloom of the conference room that Hilda amplified that Yes of hers. "It's awful such people should be alive." She yawned then, and her pale orange mouth opened on a large darkness. Fascinated, I stared at the blind cave behind her face until the two lips met and moved and the dybbuk spoke out of its hiding place, "I'm so glad they're going to die.

She looks at my father, the human jaffa. 'Hey Dr Davis. You're looking...' 'Orange,' I say matter-of-factly. I turn and look at her, 'Trust me, you don't wanna know.' - Cat

The ragged cat drags its belly across where the grass is short and the stones are sharp, under the lilacs that have no flowers. The flower smell is gone and the white falls off the trees. Seeds, Lark says, little seeds with parachutes to fly them, Termite, all in your hair, and she runs her fingers through his hair, saying how long and how pretty. He wants the grass long and strong, sounding whispers when it moves, but the mower cuts it. The mower cuts and cuts like a yowling knife. He hears the mower cutting and smells the grass pouring out all over the ground, the green stain so sharp and wet it spills and spills. The mower cuts everything away and Nick Tucci follows the mower, cutting and cutting while the orange cat growls low to move its soft parts across the chipped sharp stones. Deep under the lilacs where no one sees, the orange cat waits for the roar to stop.

For a moment I felt a vicious hatred for him and his quiet ways, his mundane stroll through the summer, his ordinariness, the banality of everything he had become. He should have been a hero or a seer. He should have told me some incredible story that I could carry with me forever. After all, he had been the one who had run along the beach parallel to a porpoise, who filled his pockets full of pebbles, who could lift the stray orange cat in his fingers.

The Garden by Moonlight" A black cat among roses, Phlox, lilac-misted under a first-quarter moon, The sweet smells of heliotrope and night-scented stock. The garden is very still, It is dazed with moonlight, Contented with perfume, Dreaming the opium dreams of its folded poppies. Firefly lights open and vanish High as the tip buds of the golden glow Low as the sweet alyssum flowers at my feet. Moon-shimmer on leaves and trellises, Moon-spikes shafting through the snow ball bush. Only the little faces of the ladies’ delight are alert and staring, Only the cat, padding between the roses, Shakes a branch and breaks the chequered pattern As water is broken by the falling of a leaf. Then you come, And you are quiet like the garden, And white like the alyssum flowers, And beautiful as the silent sparks of the fireflies. Ah, Beloved, do you see those orange lilies? They knew my mother, But who belonging to me will they know When I am gone.

Go away,” she said voicelessly. Aureliano, smiled, picked her up by the waist with both hands like a pot of begonias, and dropped her on her back on the bed. With a brutal tug he pulled off her bathrobe before she had time to resist and he loomed over an abyss of newly washed nudity whose skin color, lines of fuzz, and hidden moles had all been imagined in the shadows of the other rooms. Amaranta Úrsula defended herself sincerely with the astuteness of a wise woman, weaseling her slippery, flexible, and fragrant weasel’s body as she tried to knee him in the kidneys and scorpion his face with her nails, but without either of them giving a gasp that might not have been taken for that”“breathing of a person watching the meager April sunset through the open window. It was a fierce fight, a battle to the death, but it seemed to be without violence because it consisted of distorted attacks and ghostly evasions, slow, cautious, solemn, so that during it all there was time for the petunias to bloom and for Gaston to forget about his aviator’s dream in the next room, as if they were two enemy lovers seeking reconciliation at the bottom of an aquarium. In the heat of that savage and ceremonious struggle, Amaranta Úrsula understood that her meticulous silence was so irrational that it could awaken the suspicions of her nearby husband much more than the sound of warfare that they were trying to avoid. Then she began to laugh with her lips tight together, without giving up the fight, but defending herself with false bites and deweaseling her body little by little until they both were conscious of being adversaries and accomplices at the same time and the affray degenerated into a conventional gambol and the attacks became”“caresses. Suddenly, almost playfully, like one more bit of mischief, Amaranta Úrsula dropped her defense, and when she tried to recover, frightened by what she herself had made possible, it was too late. A great commotion immobilized her in her center of gravity, planted her in her place, and her defensive will was demolished by the irresistible anxiety to discover what the orange whistles and the invisible globes on the other side of death were like. She barely had time to reach out her hand and grope for the towel to put a gag between her teeth so that she would not let out the cat howls that were already tearing at her insides.

Humans have struggled with this challenge before, with grim results. There are only a few climbable routes to climb to the top of Mount Everest’s 29,029-foot peak. If you die at that altitude (which almost three hundred people have done), it is dangerous for the living to attempt to bring your body down for burial or cremation. Today, dead bodies litter the climbing paths, and each year new climbers have to step over the puffy orange snowsuits and skeletonized faces of fellow climbers.

On the sofa, a huge orange tabby cat regarded me with characteristic feline apathy before hopping down and stalking to the door. “This is Francis.” Lucas opened the door and the tom wandered lazily outside, stopping on the landing to clean a paw. I laughed, moving to the center of the room. “Francis? He looks more like a… Max. Or maybe a King.” He shut and locked the door, his ghost smile turning his mouth up on one side. “Trust me, he’s superior enough without a macho name to back it up

Orange fluff ball, Rocky is an 18-pound marvel of love, so fluffy, he looks like he’s 26 pounds. He scares the local dogs just by sitting and staring at them. Rocky’s there for me when I get home, purrs when he wants to, leads me to the food bowl when he needs to, licks me in an attempt to heal my wounds, loves cellophane, red ribbons, left over chicken. Rocky, my best friend, is my orange fluff ball, and I wish I could share him with the world. -- Scott C. Holstad, Northern Stars Magazine (2004)

Julius explained that the palace rooms where they stood were called Wunderkammers, or wonder rooms. Souvenirs of nature, of travels across continents and seas; jewels and skulls. A show of wealth, intellect, power. The first room had rose-colored glass walls, with rubies and garnets and bloodred drapes of damask. Bowls of blush quartz; semiprecious stone roses running the spectrum of red down to pink, a hard, glittering garden. The vaulted ceiling, a feature of all the ten rooms Julius and Cymbeline visited, was a trompe l'oeil of a rosy sky at down, golden light edging the morning clouds. The next room was of sapphire and sea and sky; lapis lazuli, turquoise and gold and silver. A silver mermaid lounged on the edge of a lapis lazuli bowl fashioned in the shape of an ocean. Venus stood aloft on the waves draped in pearls. There were gold fish and diamond fish and faceted sterling silver starfish. Silvered mirrors edged in silvered mirror. There were opals and aquamarines and tanzanite and amethyst. Seaweed bloomed in shades of blue-green marble. The ceiling was a dome of endless, pale blue. A jungle room of mica and marble followed, with its rain forest of cats made from tiger's-eye, yellow topaz birds, tortoiseshell giraffes with stubby horns of spun gold. Carved clouds of smoky quartz hovered over a herd of obsidian and ivory zebras. Javelinas of spotted pony hide charged tiny, life-sized dik-diks with velvet hides, and dazzling diamond antlers mingled with miniature stuffed sable minks. Agate columns painted a medley of dark greens were strung with faceted ropes of green gold. A room of ivory: bone, teeth, skulls, and velvet. A room crowded with columns all sheathed in mirrors, reflecting world maps and globes and atlases inlaid with silver, platinum, and white gold; the rubies and diamonds that were sometimes set to mark the location of a city or a town of conquest resembled blood and tears. A room dominated by a fireplace large enough to hold several people, upholstered in velvets and silks the colors of flame. Snakes of gold with orange sapphire and yellow topaz eyes coiled around the room's columns. Statues of smiling black men in turbans offering trays of every gem imaginable-emerald, sapphire, ruby, topaz, diamond-stood at the entrance to a room upholstered in pistachio velvet, accented with malachite, called the Green Vault. Peridot wood nymphs attended to a Diana carved from a single pure crystal of quartz studded with tiny tourmalines. Jade tables, and jade lanterns. The royal jewels, blinding in their sparkling excess: crowns, tiaras, coronets, diadems, heavy ceremonial necklaces, rings, and bracelets that could span a forearm, surrounding the world's largest and most perfect green diamond. Above it all was a night sky of painted stars, with inlaid cut crystal set in a serious of constellations.

You could viddy it all right, all of it, very clear—tables, the stereo, the lights, the sharps and the malchicks—but it was like some veshch that used to be there but was not there not no more. And you were sort of hypnotized by your boot or shoe or a finger-nail as it might be, and at the same time you were sort of picked up by the old scruff and shook like it might be a cat. You got shook and shook till there was nothing left. You lost your name and your body and your self and you just didn’t care, and you waited till your boot or your finger-nail got yellow, then yellower and yellower all the time.

I don’t like stories. I like moments. I like night better than day, moon better than sun, and here-and-now better than any sometime-later. I also like birds, mushrooms, the blues, peacock feathers, black cats, blue-eyed people, heraldry, astrology, criminal stories with lots of blood, and ancient epic poems where human heads can hold conversations with former friends and generally have a great time for years after they’ve been cut off. I like good food and good drink, sitting in a hot bath and lounging in a snowbank, wearing everything I own at once, and having everything I need close at hand. I like speed and that special ache in the pit of the stomach when you accelerate to the point of no return. I like to frighten and to be frightened, to amuse and to confound. I like writing on the walls so that no one can guess who did it, and drawing so that no one can guess what it is. I like doing my writing using a ladder or not using it, with a spray can or squeezing the paint from a tube. I like painting with a brush, with a sponge, and with my fingers. I like drawing the outline first and then filling it in completely, so that there’s no empty space left. I like letters as big as myself, but I like very small ones as well. I like directing those who read them here and there by means of arrows, to other places where I also wrote something, but I also like to leave false trails and false signs. I like to tell fortunes with runes, bones, beans, lentils, and I Ching. Hot climates I like in the books and movies; in real life, rain and wind. Generally rain is what I like most of all. Spring rain, summer rain, autumn rain. Any rain, anytime. I like rereading things I’ve read a hundred times over. I like the sound of the harmonica, provided I’m the one playing it. I like lots of pockets, and clothes so worn that they become a kind of second skin instead of something that can be taken off. I like guardian amulets, but specific ones, so that each is responsible for something separate, not the all-inclusive kind. I like drying nettles and garlic and then adding them to anything and everything. I like covering my fingers with rubber cement and then peeling it off in front of everybody. I like sunglasses. Masks, umbrellas, old carved furniture, copper basins, checkered tablecloths, walnut shells, walnuts themselves, wicker chairs, yellowed postcards, gramophones, beads, the faces on triceratopses, yellow dandelions that are orange in the middle, melting snowmen whose carrot noses have fallen off, secret passages, fire-evacuation-route placards; I like fretting when in line at the doctor’s office, and screaming all of a sudden so that everyone around feels bad, and putting my arm or leg on someone when asleep, and scratching mosquito bites, and predicting the weather, keeping small objects behind my ears, receiving letters, playing solitaire, smoking someone else’s cigarettes, and rummaging in old papers and photographs. I like finding something lost so long ago that I’ve forgotten why I needed it in the first place. I like being really loved and being everyone’s last hope, I like my own hands—they are beautiful, I like driving somewhere in the dark using a flashlight, and turning something into something completely different, gluing and attaching things to each other and then being amazed that it actually worked. I like preparing things both edible and not, mixing drinks, tastes, and scents, curing friends of the hiccups by scaring them. There’s an awful lot of stuff I like.

Chapter 28 Genghis Cat Gracing Whatever Shithole This Is, Washington, USA You can all relax now, because I am here. What did you think? I’d run for safety at the whim of a fucking parrot with under-eye bags like pinched scrotums? Did you suspect I—a ninja with feather-wand fastness and laser-pointer focus—had the spine of a banana slug? Then you are a shit-toned oink with the senses of a sniveling salamander. Then you don’t know Genghis Cat. I look around and can see that we are surrounded by The Bird Beasts, those crepe-faced, hair ball–brained fuck goblins. I intensely dislike these lumpy whatthefuckareyous who straddle between the Mediocre Servant and animal worlds, trying to be one thing and really not being, like imitation crabmeat in a sushi log that is really just fucking whitefish and WE ALL KNOW IT. “Would you like a little of the crabmeat, Genghis?” my Mediocre Servants seemed to ask with their blobfish lips and stupid faces. “THAT’S FUCKING WHITEFISH, YOU REGURGITATED MOLES!” I’d yowl, and then I’d steal the sushi log and run off and growl very much so they couldn’t have it back, and later I would pee on their night pillows for good measure. I cannot imagine their lives before me. We mustn’t think of those bleak dark ages. But the Beasts are dangerous. I have watched them morph and chew into a house. I have seen them with spider legs and second stomachs and camouflage skins. I have seen them tear the legs off a horse and steal flight from those with feathers. Orange and I have lost family to their fuckish appetites. But they are still fakish faking beasts and I’m fucking Genghis Cat. They are imitation crab and Genghis is filet mignon Fancy Feast, bitch. Probably I should come clean here and tell you that I’m immortal. I always suspected it but can confirm it now that I have surpassed the allocated nine lives. I’m somewhere around life 884, give or take seventy-eight. Some mousers have called me a god, but I insist on modesty. I also don’t deny it. I might be a god. It seems to fit. It feels right. A stealthy, striped god with an exotically spotted tummy—it seems certain, doesn’t it to you? I’m 186 percent sure at this point. Orange insists we stay away from the Beasts all the time, but I only let Orange think he’s in charge. Orange is incredibly sensitive, despite being the size of a Winnebago. He hand-raised each of my kittens and has terrible nightmares, and I have to knead my paws on him to calm him down. Orange and I have a deal. I will kill anything that comes to harm Orange and Orange will continue to be the reason I purr.

I Won’t Write Your Obituary You asked if you could call to say goodbye if you were ever really gonna kill yourself. Sure, but I won’t write your obituary. I’ll commission it from some dead-end journalist who will say things like: “At peace… Better place… Fought the good fight…” Maybe reference the loving embrace of Capital-G-God at least 4 times. Maybe quote Charles fucking Bukowski. And I won’t stop them because I won’t write your obituary. But if you call me, I will write you a new sky, one you can taste. I will write you a D-I-Y cloud maker so on days when you can’t do anything you can still make clouds in whatever shape you want them. I will write you letters, messages in bottles, in cages, in orange peels, in the distance between here and the moon, in forests and rivers and bird songs. I will write you songs. I can’t write music, but I’ll find Rihanna, and I’ll get her to write you music if it will make you want to dance a little longer. I will write you a body whose veins are electricity because outlets are easier to find than good shrinks, but we will find you a good shrink. I will write you 1-800-273-8255, that’s the suicide hotline; we can call it together. And yeah, you can call me, but I won’t tell you it’s okay, that I forgive you. I won’t say “goodbye” or “I love you” one last time. You won’t leave on good terms with me, Because I will not forgive you. I won’t read you your last rights, absolve you of sin, watch you sail away on a flaming viking ship, my hand glued to my forehead. I will not hold your hand steady around a gun. And after, I won’t come by to pick up the package of body parts you will have left specifically for me. I’ll get a call like “Ma’am, what would you have us do with them?” And I’ll say, “Burn them. Feed them to stray cats. Throw them at school children. Hurl them at the sea. I don’t care. I don’t want them.” I don’t want your heart. It’s not yours anymore, it’s just a heart now and I already have one. I don’t want your lungs, just deflated birthday party balloons that can’t breathe anymore. I don’t want a jar of your teeth as a memento. I don’t want your ripped off skin, a blanket to wrap myself in when I need to feel like your still here. You won’t be there. There’s no blood there, there’s no life there, there’s no you there. I want you. And I will write you so many fucking dead friend poems, that people will confuse my tongue with your tombstone and try to plant daisies in my throat before I ever write you an obituary while you’re still fucking here. So the answer to your question is “yes”. If you’re ever really gonna kill yourself, yes, please, call me.

Wiping his streaming eyes on his jacket sleeve, Hagrid swung himself onto the motorcycle and kicked the engine into life; with a roar it rose into the air and off into the night. “I shall see you soon, I expect, Professor McGonagall,” said Dumbledore, nodding to her. Professor McGonagall blew her nose in reply. Dumbledore turned and walked back down the street. On the corner he stopped and took out the silver Put-Outer. He clicked it once, and twelve balls of light sped back to their street lamps so that Privet Drive glowed suddenly orange and he could make out a tabby cat slinking around the corner at the other end of the street. He could just see the bundle of blankets on the step of number four. “Good luck, Harry,” he murmured. He turned on his heel and with a swish of his cloak, he was gone. A breeze ruffled the neat hedges of Privet Drive, which lay silent and tidy under the inky sky,

Somewhere in the city, an orange cat finished chewing on a marjoram plant next to his studio apartment's door and leapt purring onto the shoulder of his owner, home early from work. Somewhere in the city, a young Chinese pianist sat down at a rehearsal hall and let his fingers play the first opening notes of the Emperor Concerto, notes that would envelop the small girl in row D of the Philharmonic that night in a shimmering cloud. A boy in Staten Island touched his finger to the lower back of the girl who had been just a friend until then. A woman in Hell's Kitchen stood in her dark attic garret, her paintbrush in hand, and stepped back from the painting of chartreuse highway and forest-green sky that had taken her two years to complete. A clerk in a Brooklyn bodega tapped her crimson fingernail on a box of gripe water, reassuring the new mother holding a wailing baby, and the mother's grateful smile almost made both of them cry themselves.

The discourse has moved on, you know. It’s like fairy stories. In the old days, the princess always had to get the prince, or it wasn’t considered a happy ending. Then came the first wave of feminism, and that suddenly felt like a cop-out—no self-respecting princess would sell her soul by marrying a prince. (Chuck me another orange cream, will you?) It must’ve been a massive breath of fresh air after what went before. But, these days, fairy-tale endings come in all shapes and sizes. It’s okay for the princess to end up with the prince, it’s okay for her to end up with the footman, it’s okay for her to end up on her own. It’s also okay for her to end up with another princess, or with six cats, or to decide she wants to be a prince. None of those make her any more or less a feminist. It’s about finding out who you are and what you want, and then being true to it.” “Maybe. You know, we mightn’t always agree with each other, but I like the fact that you have opinions on things. At least you can be bothered.

The gray tomcat with the white priest’s collar enjoyed sharpening his claws on Franz Kafka’s Investigations of a Dog, a fable that analyzes the human world from a dog’s perspective. On the other hand, orange-white, long-eared Lindgren liked to lie near the books about Pippi Longstocking; she was a fine-looking cat who peered out from the back of the bookshelves and scrutinized each visitor. Lindgren and Kafka would sometimes do Perdu a favor by dropping off one of the upper shelves without warning onto a third-category customer, one of the greasy-fingered

Some people say there are true things to be found, some people say all kinds of things can be proved. I don't believe them. The only thing for certain is how complicated it all is, like string full of knots. It's all there but hard to find the beginning and impossible to fathom the end. The best you can do is admire the cat's cradle, and maybe knot it up a bit more. History should be a hammock for swinging and a game for playing, the way cats play. Claw it, chew it, rearrange it and at bedtime it's still a ball of string full of knots. Nobody should mind.

Are you superstitious?’ This time I must have said it aloud, because he answers. ‘Black cats and rabbits’ feet?’ ‘That sort of thing,’ I say, and he leans in further to listen. ‘White cows and butterflies, field mice and hares. I saw a hare once in the library at Lyntons.’ Victor tenses, hopeful for a net that he can use to save me. A child’s net on a stick that he can thrust into the rushing water where I spin and turn in the eddies. He would scoop me out if he could. But there’s nothing now that will stop me flowing downstream with the current. Soon I’ll reach the falls and be swept over the brink, and that will be the end of me.

I had a cat named Ginger when I was a kid. He was orange. I named him when I was three, before I knew Ginger was a girl’s name, according to most of the world. Anyway, when I was around eight, a raccoon attacked fierce Ginger. He came walking up our driveway with part of his intestines hanging out, dragging on the concrete. My dad said he’d be fine. No one believed my dad. Ginger somehow managed to climb into the rafters of our garage. I was 99 percent sure he was going there to die, but he didn’t. He spent seven days licking his wounds until he healed himself. Cats are awesome! We had a lot of respect for Ginger after that, even though he was kind of an asshole

If you drink from the wells, and there are many, you might live forever, but there is no guarantee you will live forever as you are. You might mutate. The waters might not agree with you. They don’t tell you this. I came to this city to escape. This city is full of towers to climb and climb, and to climb faster and faster, marvelling at the design and dreaming of the view from the top. At the top there is a keen wind and everything is so far away it’s impossible to say what is what. There is no one to discuss it with. Cats can count on the fire brigade, and Rapunzel was lucky with her hair. Wouldn’t it be nice to sit on the ground again? I came to this city to escape. If the demons lie within they travel with you. Everyone thinks their own situation most tragic. I am no exception.

One red feather for celebration. No one yet has seen it but me. When Miss Dickinson says, “Hope is the thing with feathers,” I always think of something round—a ball from one of the games I will never play—stuck all around like a clove-orange sachet with red feathers. I have pictured it many times—Hope!—wondering how I would catch such a thing one-handed, if it did come floating down to me from the sky. Now I find it has fallen already, and a piece of it is here beside our latrine, one red plume. In celebration I stooped down to pick it up. Down in the damp grass I saw the red shaft of another one, and I reached for it. Following the trail I found first the red and then the gray: clusters of long wing feathers still attached to gristle and skin, splayed like fingers. Downy pale breast feathers in tufted mounds. Methuselah. At last it is Independence Day for Methuselan and the Congo. O Lord of the feathers, deliver me this day. After a lifetime caged away from flight and truth, comes freedom. After long seasons of slow preparation for an innocent death, the world is theirs at last. From the carnivores that would tear me, breast from wishbone. Set upon by the civet cat, the spy, the eye, the hunger of a superior need, Methuselah is free of his captivity at last. This is what he leaves to the world: gray and scarlet feathers strewn over the damp grass. Only this and nothing more, the tell-tale heart, tale of the carnivore. None of what he was taught in the house of the master. Only feathers, without the ball of Hope inside. Feathers at last at last and no words at all.

So now I was a beauty editor. In some ways, I looked the part of Condé Nast hotshot—or at least I tried to. I wore fab Dior slap bracelets and yellow plastic Marni dresses, and I carried a three-thousand-dollar black patent leather Lanvin tote that Jean had plunked down on my desk one afternoon. (“This is . . . too shiny for me,” she’d explained.) My highlights were by Marie Robinson at Sally Hershberger Salon in the Meatpacking District; I had a chic lavender pedicure—Versace Heat Nail Lacquer V2008—and I smelled obscure and expensive, like Susanne Lang Midnight Orchid and Colette Black Musk Oil. But look closer. I was five-four and ninety-seven pounds. The aforementioned Lanvin tote was full of orange plastic bottles from Rite Aid; if you looked at my hands digging for them, you’d see that my fingernails were dirty, and that the knuckle on my right hand was split from scraping against my front teeth. My chin was broken out from the vomiting. My self-tanner was uneven because I always applied it when I was strung out and exhausted—to conceal the exhaustion, you see—and my skin underneath the faux-glow was full-on Corpse Bride. A stylist had snipped out golf-ball-size knots that had formed at the back of my neck when I was blotto on tranquilizers for months and stopped combing my hair. My under-eye bags were big enough to send down the runway at Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week: I hadn’t slept in days. I hadn’t slept for more than a few hours at a time in months. And I hadn’t slept without pills in years. So even though I wrote articles about how to take care of yourself—your hair, your skin, your nails—I was falling apart.

From Sister by ROSAMUND LUPTON    The rain hammered down onto your coffin, pitter-patter; ‘Pitter-patter, pitter-patter, I hear raindrops’; I was five and singing it to you, just born. Your coffin reached the bottom of the monstrous hole. And a part of me went down into the muddy earth with you and lay down next to you and died with you. Then Mum stepped forwards and took a wooden spoon from her coat pocket. She loosened her fingers and it fell on top of your coffin. Your magic wand. And I threw the emails I sign ‘lol’. And the title of older sister. And the nickname Bee. Not grand or important to anyone else, I thought, this bond that we had. Small things. Tiny things. You knew that I didn’t make words out of my alphabetti spaghetti but I gave you my vowels so you could make more words out of yours. I knew that your favourite colour used to be purple but then became bright yellow; (‘Ochre’s the arty word, Bee’) and you knew mine was orange, until I discovered that taupe was more sophisticated and you teased me for that. You knew that my first whimsy china animal was a cat (you lent me 50p of your pocket money to buy it) and that I once took all my clothes out of my school trunk and hurled them around the room and that was the only time I had something close to a tantrum. I knew that when you were five you climbed into bed with me every night for a year. I threw everything we had together - the strong roots and stems and leaves and beautiful soft blossoms of sisterhood - into the earth with you. And I was left standing on the edge, so diminished by the loss, that I thought I could no longer be there. All I was allowed to keep for myself was missing you. Which is what? The tears that pricked the inside of my face, the emotion catching at the top of my throat, the cavity in my chest that was larger than I am. Was that all I had now? Nothing else from twenty-one years of loving you. Was the feeling that all is right with the world, my world, because you were its foundations, formed in childhood and with me grown into adulthood - was that to be replaced by nothing? The ghastliness of nothing. Because I was nobody’s sister now. I saw Dad had been given a handful of earth. But as he held out his hand above your coffin he couldn’t unprise his fingers. Instead, he put his hand into his pocket, letting the earth fall there and not onto you. He watched as Father Peter threw the first clod of earth instead and broke apart, splintering with the pain of it. I went to him and took his earth-stained hand in mine, the earth gritty between our soft palms. He looked at me with love. A selfish person can still love someone else, can’t they? Even when they’ve hurt them and let them down. I, of all people, should understand that. Mum was silent as they put earth over your coffin. An explosion in space makes no sound at all.

Chapter 1 Death on the Doorstep LIVY HINGE’S AUNT lay dying in the back yard, which Aunt Neala thought was darned inconvenient. “Nebula!” she called, hoping her weakened voice would reach the barn where that lazy cat was no doubt taking a nap. If Neala had the energy to get up and tap her foot she would. If only that wretched elf hadn’t attacked her, she’d have made her delivery by now. Instead she lay dying. She willed her heart to take its time spreading the poison. Her heart, being just as stubborn as its owner, ignored her and raced on. A cat with a swirling orange pattern on its back ran straight to Neala and nuzzled her face. “Nebula!” She was relieved the cat had overcome its tendency to do the exact opposite of whatever was most wanted of it. Reaching into her bag, Neala pulled out a delicate leaf made of silver. She fought to keep one eye cracked open to make sure the cat knew what to do. The cat took the leaf in its teeth and ran back toward the barn. It was important that Neala stay alive long enough for the cat to hide the leaf. The moment Neala gave up the ghost, the cat would vanish from this world and return to her master. Satisfied, Neala turned her aching head toward the farmhouse where her brother’s family was nestled securely inside. Smoke curled carelessly from the old chimney in blissful ignorance of the peril that lay just beyond the yard. The shimmershield Neala had created around the property was the only thing keeping her dear ones safe. A sheet hung limply from a branch of the tree that stood sentinel in the back of the house. It was Halloween and the sheet was meant to be a ghost, but without the wind it only managed to look like old laundry. Neala’s eyes followed the sturdy branch to Livy’s bedroom window. She knew what her failure to deliver the leaf meant. The elves would try again. This time, they would choose someone young enough to be at the peak of their day dreaming powers. A druid of the Hinge bloodline, about Livy’s age. Poor Livy, who had no idea what she was. Well, that would change soon enough. Neala could do nothing about that now. Her willful eyes finally closed. In the wake of her last breath a storm rose up, bringing with it frightful wind and lightning. The sheet tore free from the branch and flew away. The kitchen door banged open. Livy Hinge, who had been told to secure the barn against the storm, found her lifeless aunt at the edge of the yard. ☐☐☐ A year later, Livy still couldn’t think about Aunt Neala without feeling the memories bite at her, as though they only wanted to be left alone. Thankfully, Livy wasn’t concerned about her aunt at the moment. Right now, Rudus Brutemel was going to get what was coming to him. Hugh, Livy’s twin, sat next to her on the bus. His nose was buried in a spelling book. The bus lurched dangerously close to their stop. If they waited any longer, they’d miss their chance. She looked over her shoulder to make sure Rudus was watching. Opening her backpack, she made a show of removing a bologna sandwich with thick slices of soft homemade bread. Hugh studied the book like it was the last thing he might ever see. Livy nudged him. He tore his eyes from his book and delivered his lines as though he were reading them. “Hey, can I have some? I’m starving.” At least he could make his stomach growl on demand.

She fell asleep within minutes, unaware that the rain that had been falling since evening had turned to sleet, or that the roads were becoming impassable. As she slept, she began to dream, but instead of a continuous scene, it consisted of images flashing through her mind, like looking at old pictures in an album. Cat was sitting at the kitchen table. Her mother was standing beside her, laughing as she set a birthday cake in front of her. There were four candles on her cake, and her daddy was taking a picture. “Smile,” he’d said. She looked up just as the flash went off. She was still blinking from the flash when the image shifted. It was cold. The blowing wind burned her skin. She was at a cemetery, staring down at a small, flat marker. Cat couldn’t read, but somehow she knew it bore hermother’s name. She could hear her father crying. It scared her worse than the fact that her mother had gone away. “Daddy…where did she go?” “Heaven.” “Is it far?” “Yes.” “Can we go, too?” She never heard his answer, because the image shifted again. This time, she was being led through a long series of hallways. The smell of orange oil from wood polish burned her nose. The sound of her footsteps echoed on the tiled floors. Yesterday she’d been in the hospital. She’d asked to go home. But someone had told her she couldn’t go home because there was no one left to take care of her. The horror of that knowledge had frightened her so much that she’d been afraid to ask what came next. She walked through an open door as a woman said her name. The woman took her by the hand, and they walked away. She couldn’t see the woman’s face. She never remembered the faces, and it didn’t matter, because they never stayed the same.

The kingdom of poetry" This is like light. This is light, Useful as light, as charming And enchanting… …Poetry is certainly More interesting, more valuable, and certainly more charming Than Niagara Falls, the Grand Canyon, the Atlantic Ocean And other much admired natural phenomena. It is useful as light, and as beautiful It is preposterous Precisely, making it possible to say One cannot carry a mountain, but a poem can be carried all over. It is monstrous. Pleasantly, for poetry can say, seriously or in play: “Poetry is better than hope, “For poetry is patience of hope, and all hope’s vivid pictures, “Poetry is better than excitement, it is far more delightful, “Poetry is superior to success, and victory, it endures in serene blessedness “Long after the most fabulous feat like fireworks has mounted and fallen. “Poetry is far more powerful and far more enchanting animal “Than any wood, jungle, ark, circus or zoo possesses.” For poetry magnifies and heighten reality: Poetry says of reality that if it is magnificent, it is also stupid: For poetry is, in a way, omnipotent; For reality is various and rich, powerful and vivid, but it is not enough Because it is disorderly and stupid or only at times, and erratically, intelligent: For without poetry, reality is speechless or incoherent: It is inchoate, like the pomp and the bombast of thunder: Its peroration verge upon the ceaseless oration of the ocean: For reality glows and glory, without poetry, Fake, like the red operas of sunset The blue rivers and the windows of morning. The arts of poetry makes it possible to say: Pandemonium. For poetry is gay and exact. It says: “The sunset resembles a bull-fight. “A sleeping arm feels like soda, fizzing.” Poetry resurrect the past from the sepulchre, like Lazarus. It transforms a lion into a sphinx and a girl. It gives a girl the splendor of Latin. It transforms the water into wine at each marriage in Cana of Galilee. For it is true that poetry invented the unicorn, the centaur and the phoenix. Hence it is true that poetry is an everlasting Ark. An omnibus containing, bearing and begetting all the mind’s animals. Whence it is that poetry gave and gives tongue to forgiveness Therefore a history of poetry would be a history of joy, and a history of the mystery of love For poetry provides spontaneously, abundantly and freely The petnames and the diminutives which love requires and without which the mystery of love cannot be mastered. For poetry is like light, and it is light. It shines over all, like the blue sky, with the same blue justice. For poetry is the sunlight of consciousness: It is also the soil of the fruits of knowledge In the orchards of being: It shows us the pleasures of the city. It lights up the structures of reality. It is a cause of knowledge and laughter: It sharpens the whistles of the witty: It is like morning and the flutes of morning, chanting and enchanted. It is the birth and the rebirth of the first morning forever. Poetry is quick as tigers, clever as cats, vivid as oranges, Nevertheless, it is deathless: it is evergreen and in blossom; long after the Pharaohs and the Caesars have fallen, It shines and endures more than diamonds, It is because poetry is the actuality of possibility, it is The reality of the imagination, The throat of exaltation, The processions of possessions, The motion of meaning and The meaning of morning and The mastery of meaning. The praise of poetry is like the clarity of the heights of the mountains. The heights of poetry are like the exaltation of the mountains. It is the consummation of consciousness in the country of the morning!

Nick and Tesla went looking for Uncle Newt. They found him in the same place he’d been the last time they’d looked for him: the master bathroom on the second floor. They’d dragged him out of the shower for help with the rocket—even Tesla, bold as she could be, knew better than to try her luck with a power drill—and he must’ve jumped right back in the second he could. It was understandable, actually. His hair had still been half orange. The bathroom had what looked like a submarine airlock instead of a normal door, and unlike before it was now closed up tightly. When Nick and Tesla pressed their ears to the metal, they could dimly hear the sound of running water and Uncle Newt crooning “Winter Wonderland.” Outside, it was sunny and seventy degrees. “Gone awaaaaaaay is the something! Here to staaaaaaaay is the something! We da-da-da daaaaaa, la-la-la la laaaaaaa! Something in a something booby baaaaaaaa!” “Uncle Newt!” Tesla yelled. “Uncle Newt!” Nick yelled. “Uncle Newt!” they yelled together. “In the meadow we can something-something!” Uncle Newt sang. “And da-something something la-la-laaaaaa! We’ll have something something with the something! Until the who-who ha-has jooby jaaaaaaaa!” “Great,” Nick sighed. “He’s ignoring us now.” “I guess I can’t blame him,” said Tesla. “His hair was still half orange the last time we pulled him out of there.” “Well, I’m starving. Can we go see if the cat left us some cake?” Tesla thought it over, weighing her hunger against the chance of eating cake a cat had licked. She was very, very hungry. “Good idea,” she said.

I was amazing,” Dwayne squealed triumphantly as he landed gracefully in the middle of the room. “I did the meld and they bubbled and turned a lovely bluish-orange-green and then BOOM! The sound was incredible. Absolutely fabulous—like fornicating cats and Madonna.

Ranunculus chose that moment to saunter inside, the big orange cat going straight across to Jack to rub against his trouser legs. Clearly unconcerned about any hair the feline might be leaving behind, Jack bent to stroke the cat's striped head and back. "I see the two of you have already met," she remarked, observing the friendly byplay. Soft purrs issued from the cat, his eyes closing with contentment as Jack scratched him under his chin. "Indeed," Jack said. "This big fellow introduced himself to me while you were sleeping. He's quite expert at hogging the sofa." His gaze moved to the cat. "Aren't you... Ranunculus, is it not?" "That's right," she confirmed. Obviously Jack had gleaned additional "interesting details" from the servants. He stroked the cat's head, his voice lowering. "At least she didn't call you Buttercup, old man." "You know what ranunculus means?" she said, surprised. His gaze swung up to meet hers. "I know a great deal more on that subject than you might imagine. Let's just say you... inspired me to learn.

Barack and I took Malia’s and Sasha’s hands and made our way across the still-dewy grass of the South Lawn. The animals were larger than I expected, languid and sinewy, their tails flicking as they monitored our approach. I’d never seen anything like it, four cats in a companionable line. The lion stirred slightly as we drew close. I saw the panther’s eyes tracking us, the tiger’s ears flattening just a little. Then, without warning, the cheetah shot out from the shade with blinding speed, rocketing right at us. I panicked, grabbing Sasha by the arm, sprinting with her back up the lawn toward the house, trusting that Barack and Malia were doing the same. Judging from the noise, I could tell that all the animals had leaped to their feet and were now coming after us. Lloyd stood in the doorway, looking unfazed. “I thought you said they were sedated!” I yelled. “Don’t worry, ma’am,” he called back. “We’ve got a contingency plan for exactly this scenario!” He stepped to one side as Secret Service agents swarmed past him through the door, carrying what looked to be guns loaded with tranquilizer darts. Just then, I felt Sasha slip out of my grasp. I turned back toward the lawn, horrified to see my family being chased by wild animals and the wild animals being chased by agents, who were firing their guns. “This is your plan?” I screamed. “Are you kidding me?” Just then, the cheetah let out a snarl and launched itself at Sasha, its claws extended, its body seeming to fly. An agent took a shot, missing the animal though scaring it enough that it veered off course and retreated back down the hill. I was relieved for a split second, but then I saw it—a white-and-orange tranquilizer dart lodged in Sasha’s right arm. I lurched upward in bed, heart hammering, my body soaked in sweat, only to find my husband curled in comfortable sleep beside me. I’d had a very bad dream.

I am at your mercy.” Matthias cracked one of his whips. “Get up and get in the house.” “As you wish.” Rose wrinkled his nose, picked a banana peel off his lap, and stood in the last faint beams of sunset. “Whoa!” “Is he wearing a leather cat suit?” “Holy Mother!" “Dude!” The guys all quickly averted their eyes and raised their hands to further block any chance of catching a view. Anything to not see Rose in his painted-on leather one-piece that left absolutely nothing to the imagination. Their reactions were pure entertainment. “Stunning, right?” Rose spread his palms as far as the cuffs would allow. “Oh, I’m stunned.” Ayden looked ill. Rose looked down at himself with admiration. “Not many males can pull off this look.” “No male can pull off that look.” “Actually, his finely sculptured physique would be considered the perfect complement for this type of anatomically revealing attire which accentuates his—” “Bloody hell, Jayden, shut it!” “Dude, this is so not right.” “I feel like it’s looking at me.” “Feel like what’s looking at—? Oh. Oh! Ugh, now I feel like it’s looking at me too.” “How can it be looking at both of us?” “Are you serious?” “I’m gonna be sick.” “Someone please gouge out my eyes.” “He might as well be naked.” “Already did that,” Rose said dryly and gave me a suggestive wink. “Ask Aurora.” “What!” Now the crowd had eyes on me. I frantically shook my head. “No, no, no. It’s not what you think. He was in the water with most,” my hands circled over my abdomen, “stuff covered.” “Most?” Ayden almost shrieked. The orange-red flames on his arms flashed blue-white.

strawberry sunrise Though its name is somewhat evocative of a sweet elderly couple holding hands as they watch the sunrise, this drink is rather bold in its combination of prosecco, white wine, and tequila. In other words, this beautiful farm-to-table beverage has a bit of a sneaky bite. It’s best enjoyed, I’d say, with a lover, though it goes down just as easily with friends over brunch, during an at-home happy hour, or when alone on a Saturday afternoon with your cat/dog/pig/opossum. TIME: 5 MINUTES SERVES: 1 2 strawberries Ground pink peppercorns 1 ounce tequila 2 ounces sauvignon blanc 1 ounce Strawberry Syrup 1½ ounces Strawberry Mint Lemonade 1 ounce prosecco Splash of fresh orange juice Cut the stem out of each strawberry with a “V” cut, then slice each strawberry from top to bottom into ¼-inch-thick slices so that each slice resembles a heart. Take the prettiest slice and cut a small notch in its narrow end. Spread the pink peppercorns on a small plate. Dip one edge of the strawberry slice in the pink pepper until the edge is coated. Set aside, reserving the pink pepper. Fill a wineglass with ice and add the remaining strawberry slices. Add the tequila, sauvignon blanc, strawberry syrup, lemonade, prosecco, and orange juice to the glass. Sprinkle a pinch of pink pepper on top of the drink. Stir with a barspoon. Secure the notched strawberry garnish to the rim of the glass. Serve and enjoy.

The cat batted the thick, orange extension cord with his soft white paws; catching it in his teeth, gnawing, oblivious to the fact that Sheila planned to use it to hang herself. “Stop it!” Her voice cracked, her face grew hot.

If some fools believe in gods, demons, magic, black cats, and other nonsense, that’s not such a big deal. It’s even useful. Let them play. But if people like you begin to believe in these fantasies, then it’s an alarming symptom. There’s nothing more dangerous for a stable society than an intelligent, active idealist who fancies whatever he might.

Caroline Bankole, the cat with green eyes and bitter orange smell...

An orange cat scurried out from under the bed and proceeded to snake around my ankles, purring loudly. One eye rested shut, as if it were krazy-glued to a close, and her fur was mottled. Marianne scooped her up. "Sac à puces," (Fleabag), she said. "This stray is a devious one, always sneaking into the apartments. I don't know how she gets in. I'll have to warn Claude to stop feeding her tuna." I scratched under the cat's chin, staring into her good eye---a kaleidoscope of greens and yellows. "She's sweet," I said. "She's filthy," said Marianne, tucking the cat under her arm.

Kittypet blood is not the same as warrior blood. Why don’t you run home to your Twolegs now instead of looking after me? It’s humiliating, being fussed over by a lowborn cat like you!” Firepaw’s patience ran out. He snarled, “You’d still feel humiliated if I were warrior-born. You’d feel ashamed whether I was a precious she-cat from your own Clan or a wretched Twoleg that had picked you off the ground.” He lashed his tail from side to side. “It’s the fact that you need to rely on any cat that you find so humiliating!” Yellowfang stared at him, her orange eyes very wide. Firepaw carried on fiercely: “You’re just going to have to get used to being cared for until you are well enough to look after yourself, you spiteful old bone bag!

Being a kid in 1978 was pretty amazing. Not only were arcades on the rise, but Garfield, that lovable lasagna-eating orange cat, was in just about every newspaper across the country, Superman was in theaters for the first time, the Bee Gees were topping the music charts with songs from Saturday Night Fever, and The Incredible Hulk was the number one TV show in America. Like I said, it was a good time to be a kid.

That’s Jimmy, and that’s the cat, and that’s Patrick and me. And that’s you,” explains Parvaneh. When she says that last bit she points at a figure in the middle of the drawing. Everything else on the paper is drawn in black, but the figure in the middle is a veritable explosion of color. A riot of yellow and red and blue and green and orange and purple. “You’re the funniest thing she knows. That’s why she always draws you in color,” says Parvaneh.

I’d just gotten a cat,” Dmitri added sadly. “His name was Kapitan Whiskers, and he was orange. I got him the day before... before it happened.

“Chessie?” I ask. The rest of the hamster-size creature materializes, looking just as I remember: the face of a kitten, the wings of a hummingbird, and the body of an orange and gray raccoon. He flits to the dashboard and perches there, cleaning the oil and grease splotches from his fluffy fur with his tongue, like a squirrel taking a spit bath.

But now, after the news of Barthelme’s death, this simple fact of presence or absence, which I had begun to recognize in a small way already, now became the single most important supplemental piece of information I felt I could know about a writer: more important than his age when he wrote a particular work, or his nationality, his sex (forgive the pronoun), political leanings, even whether he did or did not have, in someone’s opinion, any talent. Is he alive or dead? — just tell me that. The intellectual surface we offer to the dead has undergone a subtle change of texture and chemistry; a thousand particulars of delight and fellow-feeling and forbearance begin reformulating themselves the moment they cross the bar. The living are always potentially thinking about and doing just what we are doing: being pulled through a touchless car wash, watching a pony chew a carrot, noticing that orange scaffolding has gone up around some prominent church. The conclusions they draw we know to be conclusions drawn from how things are now. Indeed, for me, as a beginning novelist, all other living writers form a control group for whom the world is a placebo. The dead can be helpful, needless to say, but we can only guess sloppily about how they would react to this emergent particle of time, which is all the time we have. And when we do guess, we are unfair to them. Even when, as with Barthelme, the dead have died unexpectedly and relatively young, we give them their moment of solemnity and then quickly begin patronizing them biographically, talking about how they “delighted in” x or “poked fun at” y — phrases that by their very singsong cuteness betray how alien and childlike the shades now are to us. Posthumously their motives become ludicrously simple, their delights primitive and unvarying: all their emotions wear stage makeup, and we almost never flip their books across the room out of impatience with something they’ve said. We can’t really understand them anymore. Readers of the living are always, whether they know it or not, to some degree seeing the work through the living writer’s own eyes; feeling for him when he flubs, folding into their reactions to his early work constant subauditional speculations as to whether the writer himself would at this moment wince or nod with approval at some passage in it. But the dead can’t suffer embarrassment by some admission or mistake they have made. We sense this imperviousness and adjust our sympathies accordingly. Yet in other ways the dead gain by death. The level of autobiographical fidelity in their work is somehow less important, or, rather, extreme fidelity does not seem to harm, as it does with the living, our appreciation for the work. The living are “just” writing about their own lives; the dead are writing about their irretrievable lives, wow wow wow. Egotism, monomania, the delusional traits of Blake or Smart or that guy who painted the electrically schizophrenic cats are all engaging qualities in the dead.

We’ll fix it,” he said, tipping her chin up so he could see her eyes. “Your conservatory was going in on that side, and this will just speed up construction. Dare, get my crews over here to clear this mess. Nick, we’ll be needing the team for sure. Day and Phil can go through the outbuildings and find a suite of bedroom furniture, then pick out a room in the house that’s close enough to done we can move Ellen into it.” He braced a hand on either side of Ellen’s neck. “You are going to let me take care of this and no argument, please. God”—he hugged her to him—“if you’d been home, puttering at your embroidering, putting up jam…” She nodded, eyes teary, and let him hold her. “Ah, look there.” Val pointed to the base of the fallen tree. “Your greatest treasure is unscathed.” Marmalade sat on his fluffy orange backside, washing a front paw as if he hadn’t a care in the world. “I want…” Ellen stretched out a hand toward the cat, who pretended not to notice. “I’ll fetch him for you.” Val kissed her nose and made for the cat, who strolled back a few paces closer to what had been the bottom of the tree. Val reached for the beast then froze and looked more closely at the tree. He tucked the cat against his middle and stole another glance around at the surrounding trees before taking Marmalade back to Ellen. Val handed her the cat. “He says you have abandoned him shamelessly, and for your sins, you must allow him to accompany you up to the manor, where all his friends, the mice, are waiting to welcome him.” “Oh, Val.” Ellen managed a watery smile but leaned against him as she clutched her purring cat. “I’m so glad he’s unharmed. You’re a good kitty, Marmie. A very good, brave kitty.” “He’s also a very heavy kitty.” Val said, taking him from her grasp. “Let’s move him up to the manor, where I’m sure we can find him a dish of cream and you a cup of tea.

Bel Air (music) Fresh Prince". About how My life upside down backwards. I would like to take a moment. Sitting there I can tell you that I was a prince of a town called Bel Air. Born in West Philadelphia. I spent most of my court date. All is well for fun "Relaxin" Maxi. And every school to take some balls B-. When a few good ones. The problem started in my field. I had to struggle a little afraid of my mother. He said: "You went to live with her aunt and uncle in Bel Air.". I confess and diary But boxed me on my way. He kissed me and I gave him my card. I put my Walkman and said. "I can" I first layer is bad. Champagne glass of orange juice consumption. This is what people who live in Bel Air? Ah, this could be good But wait, I hear you're a prude, all middle class. This is a place where you just need to write a cool cat? I do not I do not know, but I do not understand. I hope you're ready for Prince of Bel-Air. Good landing, and I A police man at my name. However, any attempt to stop. I just moved here I grew up at a high speed, I lost. I whistled for a cab and asked him to come. Put the dice "live" and a mirror. If what I say in the cab are small. But I thought, "No, we must not forget.". -. "I'm home Bel Air". I went to the house about seven or eight. The taxi driver where I wanted to scream. "I do not smell it.". I looked at my kingdom. Eventually, I was able When he sat on the throne, Prince of Bel Air.

The next morning, after Debbie and the kids had left the house, Mike turned on the light and descended the stairs to check on the cat’s progress. On the left side of the enormous space in front of the stack of boxes, he saw a bloody pile of orange fur. The feline’s underbelly had been torn out, and both eyes were hollow sockets. Mike stood aghast in disbelief, dumbfounded by the grisly sight before him. What on earth had attacked George’s cat with such ferocity? It must have been a monster rat or some other larger animal. The mangled, half eaten remains, and particularly the black, empty eye sockets, filled his senses with fear and horror so severe, he bounded up the stairs two at a time. Reaching the landing, he quickly slammed the door and struggled to catch his breath. Moments later, he ran to the bathroom and vomited up everything he’d eaten for breakfast.

The next morning, after Debbie and the kids had left the house, Mike turned on the light and descended the stairs to check on the cat’s progress. On the left side of the enormous space in front of the stack of boxes, he saw a bloody pile of orange fur. The feline’s underbelly had been torn out, and both eyes were hollow sockets.

You never see positive portrayals of black cats on TV. Orange cats are used to sell cat food. And when an orange cat steals lasagna, it’s sweet and funny. Orange cats are cute little guys who wear boots. But black cats? We’re always demons and witches! That’s some racist BS.

Lawrence Cherston’s home was washed stone and white shutters. There was a circular rose garden surrounding a flagpole. A black pennant with a large orange P hung from it. Oh, boy. Cherston greeted her at the door with a two-hand shake. He had one of those fleshy, ruddy faces that make you think of fat cats and smoke-filled back rooms. He wore a blue blazer with a Princeton logo on the lapel and the same Princeton tie he’d had in his profile pictures. His khakis were freshly pressed, his tasseled loafers shined, and of course he wore no socks. He looked as though he’d started for school chapel this morning and aged twenty years on the walk. Stepping inside, Wendy pictured a closet with a dozen more matching blazers and khaki pants and absolutely nothing else. “Welcome

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.

Indeed, the tiny black, orange, and white cat was sitting on the roof of Starbucks, contentedly cleaning herself and looking like she didn’t have a care in the world.

Buku tidak bisa menggantikanmu menjalani hidupmu. Pembaca yang lupa berjalan dengan kakinya sendiri bisa diibaratkan sebuah ensiklopedia, kepalanya penuh dengan informasi yang sudah ketinggalan zaman. Kalau tidak ada orang lain yang membukanya, maka dia hanyalah barang antik tak berguna

Champagne Coast” - Blood Orange “Rebel (if I lie)” - Eli Rose “affection” - BETWEEN FRIENDS “Monster” - Shawn Mendes & Justin Bieber “that way” - Tate McRae “Bitter” - FLETCHER, Kito “Streets” - Doja Cat “Daddy Issues” - The Neighbourhood “Miss Summer” - ODIE “sex money feelings die” - Lykke

My breakfast partner was Hera, an orange-and-white cat who, after I had retreated to my childhood home after the divorce and layoff, had emerged from the backyard bushes and informed me through meowing that she lived with me now.

It wasn’t really much of a taxi. The car was a 1990s-era Caprice Classic, painted burgundy, with patches of orange rust on the trunk and a bumper that was attached to the rest of the car with duct tape. A big handwritten sign in the corner of the rear window said, “TAXI.” Next to the sign was an oversize photograph of a Roswell alien taped to the glass, along with bumper stickers about ghosts, cats, marijuana, and guns.

Stanley spent the journey desperately trying to avoid the cat, which was an extremely large orange animal with big yellow fangs and very bad breath.

Liberty was the only small cat in the circus. Walking across the stage on her hind legs, ears back, head held high; she would let the children shake her paw and stroke her lovely orange fur.

Dean Martin, and Sammy Davis Jr. The cool kids of the 1960s invited the old man who had been cool before they knew cool was cool to join them in a musical romp that nobody took particularly seriously. Crosby enjoys himself. He has nothing at stake, since he’s not the star who has to carry the film. He’s very casual, and appears to be ad-libbing all his lines in the old Road tradition with a touch of W. C. Fields’s colorful vocabulary thrown in: “You gentlemen find my raiment repulsive?” he asks Sinatra and Martin when they object to his character’s lack of chic flash in clothing. Crosby plays a clever con man who disguises himself as square, and his outfits reflect a conservative vibe in the eyes of the cats who are looking him over. The inquiry leads into a number, “Style,” in which Sinatra and Martin put Crosby behind closet doors for a series of humorous outfit changes, to try to spruce him up. Crosby comes out in a plaid suit with knickers and then in yellow pants and an orange-striped shirt. Martin and Sinatra keep on singing—and hoping—while Crosby models a fez. He finally emerges with a straw hat, a cane, and a boutonniere in his tuxedo lapel, looking like a dude. In his own low-key way, taking his spot in the center, right between the other two, Crosby joins in the song and begins to take musical charge. Sinatra is clearly digging Crosby, the older man he always wanted to emulate.*17 Both Sinatra and Martin are perfectly willing to let Crosby be the focus. He’s earned it. He’s the original that the other two wanted to become. He was there when Sinatra and Martin were still kids. He’s Bing Crosby! The three men begin to do a kind of old man’s strut, singing and dancing perfectly together (“…his hat got a little more shiny…”). The audience is looking at the three dominant male singers of the era from 1940 to 1977. They’re having fun, showing everyone exactly not only what makes a pro, not only what makes a star, but what makes a legend. Three great talents, singing and dancing about style, which they’ve all clearly got plenty of: Frank Sinatra, Bing Crosby, and Dean Martin in Robin and the 7 Hoods

I know people,” he said, shrugging. But under the shrug he almost smiled. There was still a good detective in there somewhere. Across the street from the restaurant, three big round people in shorts, showing white goose-fleshed legs in the gray cold, were taking pictures of a house covered with spray paint. It had the familiar X with cryptic numbers and letters in the hollows. Underneath was spray-painted in bright safety orange: OWNER HOME!! DO NOT TAKE CAT!! WE WILL SHOOT!! CAT RESCUERS GO FUCK YOURSELF!! GO HOME CAT PEOPLE!! GO HOME!!! CAT PEOPLE GO HOME!

Fireheart’s claws felt rooted to the Thunderpath as he stared at the cat who had cast a menacing shadow over his life for so long. There was no need for any pretense of shared Clan loyalty now. Tigerclaw was an outcast, the enemy of all cats who followed the warrior code. The fiery evening sun bled through the tips of the trees, its orange rays glowing on the dark pelt of the massive tabby. Across the silence of the deserted Thunderpath, Tigerclaw sneered at Fireheart. “Is chasing puny cats to their deaths the best you can do to defend your territory?” Fireheart’s mind cleared in a heartbeat, leaving his body pulsing with strength and cold fury. He stared straight into Tigerclaw’s eyes as the thundering of another monster stirred his ear fur. He held his ground as it whipped by him, another roaring at its heels. But Fireheart felt no fear. In the fleeting gap between the two monsters he focused on Tigerclaw and sprang.