“
If you are a monster, stand up.
If you are a monster, a trickster, a fiend,
If you’ve built a steam-powered wishing machine
If you have a secret, a dark past, a scheme,
If you kidnap maidens or dabble in dreams
Come stand by me.
If you have been broken, stand up.
If you have been broken, abandoned, alone
If you have been starving, a creature of bone
If you live in a tower, a dungeon, a throne
If you weep for wanting, to be held, to be known,
Come stand by me.
If you are a savage, stand up.
If you are a witch, a dark queen, a black knight,
If you are a mummer, a pixie, a sprite,
If you are a pirate, a tomcat, a wright,
If you swear by the moon and you fight the hard fight,
Come stand by me.
If you are a devil, stand up.
If you are a villain, a madman, a beast,
If you are a strowler, a prowler, a priest,
If you are a dragon come sit at our feast,
For we all have stripes, and we all have horns,
We all have scales, tails, manes, claws and thorns
And here in the dark is where new worlds are born.
Come stand by me.
”
”
Catherynne M. Valente
“
I'll be damned if I act like a mouse, you overgrown tomcat.
”
”
J.C. Daniels (Blade Song (Colbana Files, #1))
“
The world shrieks and sinks talons into our hearts. This we call memory.
”
”
Tim O'Brien (Tomcat in Love)
“
Words, too, have genuine substance -- mass and weight and specific gravity.
”
”
Tim O'Brien (Tomcat in Love)
“
(The tree bend over. Suddenly, a hiss and a meow sounded an instant before two cats darted off across the backyard.)
Look, Lanie, it’s Mr. Tomcat come to save me from my celibacy. Oh, help me, Moon Mistress. Whatever am I to do with the attentions of such an unwanted suitor! Help me quick, before he kills me with my allergies. (Grace)
”
”
Sherrilyn Kenyon (Fantasy Lover (Hunter Legends, #1))
“
My sister was just another girl doomed by politics and ancestral texts that say a girl’s destiny is to be wholesome, obedient, and quietly attractive, but invisible when need be. Nailed to the cross of her own gender, a girl finds herself between the mother and the prehistoric rib, where there’s little space to be anything other than a daughter who lives alongside sons but is not equal to them. These boys who can howl like tomcats in heat, pawing their way through a feast of flesh, never to be called a slut or a whore like my sister was.
”
”
Tiffany McDaniel (Betty)
“
Have we reached the point where my intervention will not get me shouted at for being a meddling tomcat who doesn't respect the boundaries of others?" Tybalt stepped out of the shadows behind the Candela, tightening his hand around her throat. "I ask to be polite, you realize. There's no way I'm walking away.
”
”
Seanan McGuire
“
Each of us, I suppose needs his illusions. Life after death. A maker of planets. A woman to love, a man to hate. Something sacred. But what a waste.
”
”
Tim O'Brien (Tomcat in Love)
“
Wer kann es sagen, wer nur ahnen, wie weit das Geistesvermögen der Tiere geht!
”
”
E.T.A. Hoffmann (The Life and Opinions of the Tomcat Murr)
“
His eyes were as green and curious as the eyes of a tomcat who is old enough to be wise but not old enough to have lost that refined sense of cruelty which passes for fun in feline circles.
”
”
Stephen King (The Waste Lands (The Dark Tower, #3))
“
That the Beast was a person, Bryony did not even question, but then, she believed on some level that Fumblefoot was a person, and Blackie the goat, and the neighbor’s large and grumpy tomcat. It was not that she was sentimental about animals. Chickens, for example, were not people. You looked into a chicken’s eyes and you saw the back of their skulls.
”
”
T. Kingfisher (Bryony and Roses)
“
What entity aboard this ship exhibits all the personality traits of a cold-blooded killing machine, combined with the monstrous, overweening vanity and laziness of a convalescent war god lounging in their personal Valhalla while their minions prepare their armor? There's only one answer.
The Persian tomcat sits underneath the alien horror, washing itself without concern.
”
”
Charles Stross (The Jennifer Morgue (Laundry Files, #2))
“
Can a word stop your heart as surely as arsenic?
”
”
Tim O'Brien (Tomcat in Love)
“
Dogs are dim creatures, do not speak to me of their good sense--have you ever heard of a team of tomcats hauling a sled across the frozen wastes?
”
”
John Banville (The Infinities)
“
Mrs. Kooshof's intolerance for complexity, for the looping circuitry of a well-told tale, symptomizes an epidemic disease of our modern world. (I see it daily among my students. The short attention span, the appetite limited to linearity. Too much Melrose Place.)
”
”
Tim O'Brien (Tomcat in Love)
“
And then there was the young male walk. At least women swung only their hips. Young men swung everything, from the shoulders down. You have to try to occupy a lot of space. It makes you look bigger, like a tomcat fluffing his tail. The boys tried to walk big in self-defense against all those other big boys out there. I’m bad, I’m fierce, I’m cool, I’d like a pint of shandy and me mam wants me home by nine.
”
”
Terry Pratchett
“
With the confidence and peace of mind native to true genius, I lay my life story before the world, so that the reader may learn how to educate himself to be a great tomcat, may recognize the full extent of my excellence, may love, value, honour and admire me- and worship me a little.
Should anyone be audacious enough to think of casting doubt on the sterling worth of this remarkable book, let him reflect that he is dealing with a tomcat possessed of intellect, understanding, and sharp claws.
”
”
E.T.A. Hoffmann (The Life and Opinions of the Tomcat Murr)
“
Where has he gone, my meadow mouse,
My thumb of a child that nuzzled in my palm? --
To run under the hawk's wing,
Under the eye of the great owl watching from the elm-tree,
To live by courtesy of the shrike, the snake, the tom-cat.
(from "The Meadow Mouse")
”
”
Theodore Roethke
“
The days seemed to stretch out toward infinity, blank and humid, without purpose, and at night I was kept awake by the endless drone of mosquitoes and helicopters. (Why wars must be contested under such conditions I shall never understand. Is not death sufficient?)
”
”
Tim O'Brien (Tomcat in Love)
“
What is love, for God's sake, if not the most distilled obsession?
”
”
Tim O'Brien (Tomcat in Love)
“
But this, too, was a performance.
”
”
Tim O'Brien (Tomcat in Love: A Novel)
“
Je mehr Kultur, desto weniger Freiheit, das ist ein wahres Wort.
”
”
E.T.A. Hoffmann (The Life and Opinions of the Tomcat Murr)
“
I am forever astonished at the longevity of childhood. How it never ends. How we are what we were. How turtles and engines and stolen kisses leave their jet trail across our gaping lives.
”
”
Tim O'Brien (Tomcat in Love)
“
And then there was the young-male walk to master. At least women swung only their hips. Young men swung everything, from the shoulders down. You have to try to occupy a lot of space, she thought. It makes you look bigger, like a tomcat fluffing his tail. She’d seen it a lot in the inn. The boys tried to walk big in self-defense against all those other big boys out there. I’m bad, I’m fierce, I’m cool, I’d like a pint of shandy and me mam wants me home by nine… Let
”
”
Terry Pratchett (Monstrous Regiment (Discworld, #31))
“
What’s Ephebe like?” said Ptraci.
“I’ve never been there. Apparently it’s ruled by a Tyrant.”
“I hope we don’t meet him, then”
Teppic shook his head. “It’s not like that,” he said. “They have a new Tyrant every five years and they do something to him first.” He hesitated. “I think they ee-lect him.”
“Is that something like they do to tomcats and bulls and things?”
“Er.”
“You know. To make them stop fighting and be more peaceful.”
Teppic winced. “To be honest, I’m not sure,” he said. “But I don’t think so. They’ve got something they do it with, I think it’s called a mocracy, and it means everyone in the whole country can say who the new Tyrant is. One man, one—” He paused. The political history lesson seemed a very long while ago, and had introduced concepts never heard of in Djelibeybi or in Ankh-Morpork, for that matter. He had a stab at it anyway. “One man, one vet.”
“That’s for the eelecting, then?”
He shrugged. It might be, for all he knew. “The point is, though, that everyone can do it. They’re very proud of it. Everyone has—” he hesitated again, certain now that things were amiss—“the vet. Except for women, of course. And children. And criminals. And slaves. And stupid people. And people of foreign extractions. And people disapproved of for, er, various reasons. And lost of other people. But everyone apart from them. It’s a very enlightened civilization.
”
”
Terry Pratchett (Pyramids (Discworld, #7))
“
Everybody warns about bad influences, but it’s these things already inside you that are going to take you down. The restlessness in your gut, like tomcats gone stupid with their blood feuds, prowling around in the moon-dead dark. The hopeless wishes that won’t quit stalking you: some perfect words you think you could say to somebody to make them see you, and love you, and stay. Or could say to your mirror, same reason. Some people never want like that, no reaching for the bottle, the needle, the dangerous pretty face, all the wrong stars. What words can I write here for those eyes to see and believe? For the lucky, it’s simple. Like the song says, this little light of mine. Don’t let Satan blow it out. Look farther down the pipe, see what’s coming. Ignore the damn tomcats. Quit the dope.
”
”
Barbara Kingsolver (Demon Copperhead)
“
Every dark cloud may well have its silver lining, but I have come to learn that every silver lining has its dark consequences.
”
”
Tim O'Brien (Tomcat in Love: A Novel)
“
Clarence was with me as concerned the revolution, but in a modified way. His idea was a republic, without privileged orders, but with a hereditary royal family at the head of it instead of an elective chief magistrate. He believed that no nation that had ever known the joy of worshiping a royal family could ever be robbed of it and not fade away and die of melancholy. I urged that kings were dangerous. He said, then have cats. He was sure that a royal family of cats would answer every purpose. They would be as useful as any other royal family, they would know as much, they would have the same virtues and the same treacheries, the same disposition to get up shindies with other royal cats, they would be laughably vain and absurd and never know it, they would be wholly inexpensive; finally, they would have as sound a divine right as any other royal house, and “Tom VII, or Tom XI, or Tom XIV by the grace of God King,” would sound as well as it would when applied to the ordinary royal tomcat with tights on.
”
”
Mark Twain (A Connecticut Yankee In King Arthur's Court)
“
When I came into his presence, he was seated, and in his lap was a fat yellow cat. He told me that one of the captains had brought the beast to him, from an island beyond the sunrise. 'Have you ever seen her like?' he asked of me.
And to him I said, 'Each night in the alleys of Braavos I see a thousand like him,' and the Sealord laughed, and that day I was named the first sword."
Arya screwed up her face. "I don't understand."
Syrio clicked his teeth together. "The cat was an ordinary cat, no more. The others expected a fabulous beast, so that is what they saw. How large it was, they said. It was no larger than any other cat, only fat from indolence, for the Sealord fed it from his own table. What curious small ears, they said. Its ears had been chewed away in kitten fights. And it was plainly a tomcat, yet the Sealord said 'her', and that is what the others saw. Are you hearing?"
Arya thought about it. "You saw what was there."
"Just so. Opening your eyes is all that is needing. the heart lies and the head plays tricks with us, but the eyes see true. Look with your eyes. Hear with your ears. Taste with your mouth. Smell with your nose. Feel with your skin. Then comes the thinking, afterward, and in that way knowing the truth."
"Just so," said Arya, grinning.
”
”
George R.R. Martin (A Game of Thrones (A Song of Ice and Fire, #1))
“
The Red Keep was full of cats: lazy old cats dozing in the sun, cold-eyed mousers twitching their tails, quick little kittens with claws like needles, ladies’ cats all combed and trusting, ragged shadows prowling the midden heaps. One by one Arya had chased them down and snatched them up and brought them proudly to Syrio Forel … all but this one, this one-eared black devil of a tomcat. “That’s the real king of this castle right there,” one of the gold cloaks had told her. “Older than sin and twice as mean. One time, the king was feasting the queen’s father, and that black bastard hopped up on the table and snatched a roast quail right out of Lord Tywin’s fingers. Robert laughed so hard he like to burst. You stay away from that one, child.”
He had run her halfway across the castle; twice around the Tower of the Hand, across the inner bailey, through the stables, down the serpentine steps, past the small kitchen and the pig yard and the barracks of the gold cloaks, along the base of the river wall and up more steps and back and forth over Traitor’s Walk, and then down again and through a gate and around a well and in and out of strange buildings until Arya didn’t know where she was.
Now at last she had him. High walls pressed close on either side, and ahead was a blank windowless mass of stone. Quiet as a shadow, she repeated, sliding forward, light as a feather.
When she was three steps away from him, the tomcat bolted. Left, then right, he went; and right, then left, went Arya, cutting off his escape. He hissed again and tried to dart between her legs. Quick as a snake, she thought.
”
”
George R.R. Martin (A Game of Thrones (A Song of Ice and Fire, #1))
“
My sole fond memory from this period is of a rubbery little Appalachian number by the name of June. Acrobatic tongue. Tooth decay. Illiterate in everything but love.
”
”
Tim O'Brien (Tomcat in Love)
“
Benjamin Franklin was a real tomcat, no woman was safe from his lightening bolt
”
”
Stephen Tootle
“
They are bought by some rascal of a cook whom a Frenchman has taught how to skin a tomcat and then serve it up as hare.
”
”
Nikolai Gogol (Dead Souls)
“
On November 15, Will Rogers neatly and characteristically summed up the American attitude toward the prospect of a second French-German conflict with a simple, homespun image. The United States, he said, ought to “just let those two old tomcats whose tails are tied together over the fence alone and try to cure the scratches we got the last time we tried to untie ’em.
”
”
Daniel James Brown (The Boys in the Boat: Nine Americans and Their Epic Quest for Gold at the 1936 Berlin Olympics)
“
no, I thought, only what it makes you do, clawing at the trees, splintering the bark like a tomcat, the blind and violent need of it, a joy, but who would not want to be relieved of it. I pity
”
”
Peter Carey (A Long Way from Home)
“
Tale of the Fishwife and its Sad Fate’, purportedly translated literally from the German: It is a bleak day. Hear the rain, how he pours, and the hail, how he rattles; and see the snow, how he drifts along, and of the mud, how deep he is! Ah the poor fishwife, it is stuck fast in the mire; it has dropped its basket of fishes; and its hands have been cut by the scales as it seized some of the falling creatures; and one scale has even got into its eye. And it cannot get her out. It opens its mouth to cry for help; but if any sound comes out of him, alas he is drowned by the raging of the storm. And now a tomcat has got one of the fishes and she will surely escape with him. No, she bites off a fin, she holds her in her mouth – will she swallow her? No, the fishwife’s brave mother-dog deserts his puppies and rescues the fin – which he eats, himself, as his reward …
”
”
Guy Deutscher (The Unfolding Of Language: The Evolution of Mankind`s greatest Invention)
“
Everybody warns about bad influences, but it’s these things already inside you that are going to take you down. The restlessness in your gut, like tomcats gone stupid with their blood feuds, prowling around in the moon-dead dark.
”
”
Barbara Kingsolver (Demon Copperhead)
“
I told my version – faithful and invented, accurate and misremembered, shuffled in time. I told myself as hero like any shipwreck story. It was a shipwreck, and me thrown on the coastline of humankind, and finding it not altogether human, and rarely kind.
And I suppose that the saddest thing for me, thinking about the cover version that is Oranges, is that I wrote a story I could live with. The other one was too painful. I could not survive it.
I am often asked, in a tick-box kind of way, what is 'true' and what is not 'true' in Oranges. Did I work in a funeral parlour? Did I drive an ice-cream van? Did we have a Gospel Tent? Did Mrs. Winterson build her own CB radio? Did she really stun tomcats with a catapult?
I can't answer these questions. I can say that there is a character in Oranges called Testifying Elsie who looks after the little Jeanette and acts as a soft wall against the hurt(ling) force of Mother.
I wrote her in because I couldn't bear to leave her out. I wrote her in because I really wished it had been that way. When you are a solitary child you find an imaginary friend.
There was no Elsie. There was no one like Elsie. Things were much lonelier than that.
”
”
Jeanette Winterson (Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?)
“
Not in the slightest,” Horace said. He was grinning now but he did remember that there was a time when he had been distinctly unsure of himself in the presence of Rangers—first with Gilan and Will in Celtica, then later in company with Halt as they crossed Gallica. Odd to think that now they were his closest friends. “I’ve learned since then. Halt’s really a pussycat,” he added. Will and Gilan both snorted in an unsuccessful attempt to conceal their laughter. Halt’s eyebrow rose fractionally as he regarded the grinning young man. “A pussycat,” he repeated. Svengal had been watching this exchange with interest. Now he joined in with a loud guffaw. “More like a battered old tomcat, I’d have thought,” he said. Halt’s withering gaze swung to the big Skandian, who remained resolutely unwithered. “Everyone’s a comedian all of a sudden,” Halt said. “I think I’ll go to bed.” He exited the room with what little dignity remained to him.
”
”
John Flanagan (Erak's Ransom (Ranger's Aprentice, #7))
“
No complaints. The kid is back in the saddle,” Jackson said, sitting down. “You should have been up in the Tomcat with me last week. Oh, man, I’m finally back in the groove. I was hassling with a guy in an A-4 playing aggressor, and I ruined his day. It was so fine.” He grinned like a lion surveying a herd of crippled antelope. “I’m ready!” “When
”
”
Tom Clancy (Patriot Games (Jack Ryan, #1))
“
Ah, but who will bell the cat?” “I am not sure what you mean.” “It is a country saying. A council of mice met to decide what to do about the tomcat who was on the loose. They agreed the best plan was to attach a bell to his neck so they could hear him coming and hide. It was a fine plan—but it needed a mouse brave enough to risk his life jumping on the cat.
”
”
Margaret George (The Confessions of Young Nero)
“
I heard water evaporating. I heard the tick of my own biology.
”
”
Tim O'Brien (Tomcat in Love)
M.L. Maki (Fighting Her Father's War: The Fighting Tomcats)
M.L. Maki (Fighting Her Father's War: The Fighting Tomcats)
“
We have good news and bad news. The good news is that the dismal vision of human sexuality reflected in the standard narrative is mistaken. Men have not evolved to be deceitful cads, nor have millions of years shaped women into lying, two-timing gold-diggers. But the bad news is that the amoral agencies of evolution have created in us a species with a secret it just can’t keep. Homo sapiens evolved to be shamelessly, undeniably, inescapably sexual. Lusty libertines. Rakes, rogues, and roués. Tomcats and sex kittens. Horndogs. Bitches in heat.1 True, some of us manage to rise above this aspect of our nature (or to sink below it). But these preconscious impulses remain our biological baseline, our reference point, the zero in our own personal number system. Our evolved tendencies are considered “normal” by the body each of us occupies. Willpower fortified with plenty of guilt, fear, shame, and mutilation of body and soul may provide some control over these urges and impulses. Sometimes. Occasionally. Once in a blue moon. But even when controlled, they refuse to be ignored. As German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer pointed out, Mensch kann tun was er will; er kann aber nicht wollen was er will. (One can choose what to do, but not what to want.) Acknowledged or not, these evolved yearnings persist and clamor for our attention. And there are costs involved in denying one’s evolved sexual nature, costs paid by individuals, couples, families, and societies every day and every night. They are paid in what E. O. Wilson called “the less tangible currency of human happiness that must be spent to circumvent our natural predispositions.”2 Whether or not our society’s investment in sexual repression is a net gain or loss is a question for another time. For now, we’ll just suggest that trying to rise above nature is always a risky, exhausting endeavor, often resulting in spectacular collapse. Any attempt to understand who we are, how we got to be this way, and what to do about it must begin by facing up to our evolved human sexual predispositions. Why do so many forces resist our sustained fulfillment? Why is conventional marriage so much damned work? How has the incessant, grinding campaign of socio-scientific insistence upon the naturalness of sexual monogamy combined with a couple thousand years of fire and brimstone failed to rid even the priests, preachers, politicians, and professors of their prohibited desires? To see ourselves as we are, we must begin by acknowledging that of all Earth’s creatures, none is as urgently, creatively, and constantly sexual as Homo sapiens.
”
”
Christopher Ryan (Sex at Dawn: How We Mate, Why We Stray, and What It Means for Modern Relationships)
“
Pluto was a well-known fixture in Bad Münstereifel, at least among those who lived in the old part of town. A large, foul-tempered, and unsterilized inky-black tomcat, he had once made it onto the front page of the local free paper (admittedly during a quiet week as regards other news) after a resident of the town accused him of making an unprovoked attack on her pet dachshund.
”
”
Helen Grant (The Vanishing of Katharina Linden)
“
Give up", groaned Mauricio, "or else you are a dead duck!"
"You give up first," coughed Jacob, "or else I'll snip your tail off!'
And then both let go at the same time and sat facing each other, all out of breath. With tears in his eyes the little cat tried to straighten out his tail, which no longer looked elegant in the least but had been bent into a zigzag, while the melancholy raven eyed the feathers scattered on the floor, feathers he couldn't really spare. But as is often the case after such bickering, both felt relatively peaceful and ready for reconciliation. Jacob thought he should not have been so rude to the small, fat tomcat, and Maurizio wondered if he might have done something wrong with the poor, unfortunate raven. "Forgive me, please," he mewed. "I'm sorry, too," rasped Jacob.
”
”
Michael Ende (The Night of Wishes)
“
Summer Between Terms"
The day's so calm and muggy I sweat tears,
the summer's cloudcap and the summer's heat...
surely good writers write all possible wrong--
are we so conscience-dark and cataract-blind,
we only blame in others what they blame in us?
(The sentence writes we, when charity wants I...)
It takes such painful mellowing to use error...
I have stood too long on a chair or ladder,
branch-lightening forking through my thought and veins--
I cannot hang my heavy picture straight.
I can't see myself...in the cattery,
the tomcats doze till the litters are eatable,
then find their kittens and chew off their breakable heads.
They told us by harshness to win the stars.
Planes, trains, lorries simmer through the garden,
the reviewer sent by God to humble me
ransacking my bags of dust for silver spoons--
he and I go on typing to go on living.
There are ways to live on words in England--
reading for trainfare, my host ruined on wine,
my ear gone bad from clinging to the ropes.
I'd take a lower place, eat my toad hourly;
even big frauds wince at fraudulence,
and squirm from small incisions in the self--
they live on timetable with no time to tell.
I'm sorry, I run with the hares now, not the hounds.
I waste hours writing in and writing out a line,
as if listening to conscience were telling the truth
”
”
Robert Lowell
“
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
”
”
Nina George (The Little Paris Bookshop)
“
Sieh, Freund Murr, immer hast du geprahlt mit deiner Wissenschaft, mit deiner Bildung, immer hast du vornehm getan gegen mich, und nun sitzest du da, verlassen, trostlos, und all die großen Eigenschaften deines Geistes reichen nicht hin, dich zu belehren, wie du es anfangen musst, deinen Hunger zu stillen und nach Hause zurückzufinden zu deinem Meister!
”
”
E.T.A. Hoffmann (The Life and Opinions of the Tomcat Murr)
“
Can't we make a blusterer ourselves? asked Jón Hreggviðsson. Can't we scratch that damned sign with the ax-point onto the chopping block and get a beautiful, chubby woman in here tonight, right now-or preferably three? It was no easy matter to create such a sign, because in order to do so the two men required much greater access to the animal kingdom and the forces of nature than conditions in the dungeon permitted. The sign of the Blusterer is inscribed with a raven's gall on the rust-brown inner side of a bitch's skin, and afterward blood is sprinkled over the skin - blood from a black tomcat whose neck has been cut under a full moon by an unspoiled maiden. Where'd you find an unspoiled maiden to cut a black tomcat's neck asked Jón Hreggviðsson.
”
”
Halldór Laxness (Iceland's Bell)
“
The worldly-wise must be able to make everything done purely for themselves look as if it were done for the sake of others, who will then feel very much indebted to them and be willing to do as they wish. Many a man appears easy-going, modest and obliging, as if he lived entirely for others, and yet his mind is set on nothing but his precious self, to whom those others are useful without knowing it.
”
”
E.T.A. Hoffmann (The Life and Opinions of the Tomcat Murr)
“
Erlaube," fuhr Meister Abraham fort, "erlaube, mein Johannes, mit dem Just magst du mich kaum vergleichen. Er rettete einen Pudel, ein Tier, das jeder gern um sich duldet, von dem sogar angenehme Dienstleistungen zu erwarten, mittelst Apportieren, Handschuhe-, Tabaksbeutel- und Pfeife-Nachtragen usw., aber ich rettete einen Kater, ein Tier, vonr dem sich viele entsetzen, das allgemein als perfid, keiner sanften, wohlwollenden Gesinnung, keiner offenherzigen Freundschaft fähig ausgeschrieen wird, das niemals ganz und gar die feindliche Stellung gegen den Mensch aufgibt, ja, einen Kater rettete ich aus purer uneigennütziger Menschenliebe ... Es ist das gescheiteste, artigste, ja witzigste Tier der Art, das man sehen kann, dem es nur noch an der höhern Bildung fehlt, die du, mein lieber Johannes, ihm mit leichter Mühe beibringen wirst.
”
”
E.T.A. Hoffmann (The Life and Opinions of the Tomcat Murr)
“
And, ach! what a beautiful skeleton you will make! And very soon, too, because you do not smile on your madly loving Svengali. You burn his letters without reading them! You shall have a nice little mahogany glass case all to yourself in the museum of the École de Médecine, and Svengali shall come in his new fur-lined coat, smoking his big cigar of the Havana, and push the dirty carabins* out of the way, and look through the holes of your eyes into your stupid empty skull, and up the nostrils of your high, bony sounding-board of a nose without either a tip or a lip to it, and into the roof of your big mouth, with your thirty-two big English teeth, and between your big ribs into your big chest, where the big leather lungs used to be, and say, “Ach! what a pity she had no more music in her than a big tom-cat!” And then he will look all down your bones to your poor crumbling feet, and say, “Ach! what a fool she was not to answer Svengali’s letters!
”
”
George du Maurier (Trilby)
“
IT is not impossible that among the English readers of this book there may be one who in 1915 and 1916 was in one of those trenches that were woven like a web among the ruins of Monchy-au-Bois. In that case he had opposite him at that time the 73rd Hanoverian Fusiliers, who wear as their distinctive badge a brassard with ' Gibraltar ' inscribed on it in gold, in memory of the defence of that fortress under General Elliot; for this, besides Waterloo, has its place in the regiment's history.
At the time I refer to I was a nineteen-year-old lieutenant in command of a platoon, and my part of the line was easily recognizable from the English side by a row of tall shell-stripped trees that rose from the ruins of Monchy. My left flank was bounded by the sunken road leading to Berles-au-Bois, which was in the hands of the English ; my right was marked by a sap running out from our lines, one that helped us many a time to make our presence felt by means of bombs and rifle-grenades.
I daresay this reader remembers, too, the white tom-cat, lamed in one foot by a stray bullet, who had his headquarters in No-man's-land. He used often to pay me a visit at night in my dugout. This creature, the sole living being that was on visiting terms with both sides, always made on me an impression of extreme mystery. This charm of mystery which lay over all that belonged to the other side, to that danger zone full of unseen figures, is one of the strongest impressions that the war has left with me. At that time, before the battle of the Somme, which opened a new chapter in the history of the war, the struggle had not taken on that grim and mathematical aspect which cast over its landscapes a deeper and deeper gloom. There was more rest for the soldier than in the later years when he was thrown into one murderous battle after another ; and so it is that many of those days come back to my memory now with a light on them that is almost peaceful.
”
”
Ernst Jünger (Storm of Steel)
“
Mikä etu, mikä verraton taivaan lahja onkaan mielihyvän ilmaisemisen taito äänin ja elein. - Ensin hyräilin, sitten sain tuon jäljittelemättömän kyvyn heilautella häntääni mitä siroimmissa kiekuroissa, sitten ihmeellisen lahjan ilmaista yhdellä pikku sanalla iloa, surua, riemua ja ihastusta, kauhua ja epätoivoa, sanalla sanoen kaikkia tunteita ja intohimoja mitä moninaisimpine vivahteineen. Tämä pikku sana on miau. Mitä on ihmisen kieli verrattuna tähän kaikkein yksinkertaisimpaan ajatuksen ilmaisukeinoon!
”
”
E.T.A. Hoffmann (The Life and Opinions of the Tomcat Murr)
“
Well, I hope that I don't fall in love with you
Cause falling in love just makes me blue
Well, the music plays and you display your heart for me to see
I had a beer and now I hear you calling out for me
And I hope that I don't fall in love with you
Well, the room is crowded, people everywhere
And I wonder, should I offer you a chair?
Well, if you sit down with this old clown, I'll take that frown and break it
Before the evening's gone away, I think that we can make it
And I hope that I don't fall in love with you
Well, the night does funny things inside a man
These old tomcat feelings you don't understand
Well, I turn around to look at you, you light a cigarette
I wish I had the guts to bum one, but we've never met
And I hope that I don't fall in love with you
I can see that you are lonesome just like me
And it being late, you'd like some company
Well, I turn around to look at you, and you look back at me
The guy you're with he's up and split, the chair next to you is free
And I hope that you don't fall in love with me
Now it's closing time, the music's fading out
Last call for drinks, I'll have another stout
Well, I turn around to look at you, you're nowhere to be found
I search the place for your lost face, guess I'll have another round
And I think that I just fell in love with you
”
”
Tom Waits
“
How I Got That Name
Marilyn Chin
an essay on assimilation
I am Marilyn Mei Ling Chin
Oh, how I love the resoluteness
of that first person singular
followed by that stalwart indicative
of “be," without the uncertain i-n-g
of “becoming.” Of course,
the name had been changed
somewhere between Angel Island and the sea,
when my father the paperson
in the late 1950s
obsessed with a bombshell blond
transliterated “Mei Ling” to “Marilyn.”
And nobody dared question
his initial impulse—for we all know
lust drove men to greatness,
not goodness, not decency.
And there I was, a wayward pink baby,
named after some tragic white woman
swollen with gin and Nembutal.
My mother couldn’t pronounce the “r.”
She dubbed me “Numba one female offshoot”
for brevity: henceforth, she will live and die
in sublime ignorance, flanked
by loving children and the “kitchen deity.”
While my father dithers,
a tomcat in Hong Kong trash—
a gambler, a petty thug,
who bought a chain of chopsuey joints
in Piss River, Oregon,
with bootlegged Gucci cash.
Nobody dared question his integrity given
his nice, devout daughters
and his bright, industrious sons
as if filial piety were the standard
by which all earthly men are measured.
*
Oh, how trustworthy our daughters,
how thrifty our sons!
How we’ve managed to fool the experts
in education, statistic and demography—
We’re not very creative but not adverse to rote-learning.
Indeed, they can use us.
But the “Model Minority” is a tease.
We know you are watching now,
so we refuse to give you any!
Oh, bamboo shoots, bamboo shoots!
The further west we go, we’ll hit east;
the deeper down we dig, we’ll find China.
History has turned its stomach
on a black polluted beach—
where life doesn’t hinge
on that red, red wheelbarrow,
but whether or not our new lover
in the final episode of “Santa Barbara”
will lean over a scented candle
and call us a “bitch.”
Oh God, where have we gone wrong?
We have no inner resources!
*
Then, one redolent spring morning
the Great Patriarch Chin
peered down from his kiosk in heaven
and saw that his descendants were ugly.
One had a squarish head and a nose without a bridge
Another’s profile—long and knobbed as a gourd.
A third, the sad, brutish one
may never, never marry.
And I, his least favorite—
“not quite boiled, not quite cooked,"
a plump pomfret simmering in my juices—
too listless to fight for my people’s destiny.
“To kill without resistance is not slaughter”
says the proverb. So, I wait for imminent death.
The fact that this death is also metaphorical
is testament to my lethargy.
*
So here lies Marilyn Mei Ling Chin,
married once, twice to so-and-so, a Lee and a Wong,
granddaughter of Jack “the patriarch”
and the brooding Suilin Fong,
daughter of the virtuous Yuet Kuen Wong
and G.G. Chin the infamous,
sister of a dozen, cousin of a million,
survived by everbody and forgotten by all.
She was neither black nor white,
neither cherished nor vanquished,
just another squatter in her own bamboo grove
minding her poetry—
when one day heaven was unmerciful,
and a chasm opened where she stood.
Like the jowls of a mighty white whale,
or the jaws of a metaphysical Godzilla,
it swallowed her whole.
She did not flinch nor writhe,
nor fret about the afterlife,
but stayed! Solid as wood, happily
a little gnawed, tattered, mesmerized
by all that was lavished upon her
and all that was taken away!
”
”
Marilyn Chin
“
With the motto “do what you will,” Rabelais gave himself permission to do anything he damn well pleased with the language and the form of the novel; as a result, every author of an innovative novel mixing literary forms and genres in an extravagant style is indebted to Rabelais, directly or indirectly. Out of his codpiece came Aneau’s Alector, Nashe’s Unfortunate Traveller, López de Úbeda’s Justina, Cervantes’ Don Quixote, Béroalde de Verville’s Fantastic Tales, Sorel’s Francion, Burton’s Anatomy, Swift’s Tale of a Tub and Gulliver’s Travels, Fielding’s Tom Jones, Amory’s John Buncle, Sterne’s Tristram Shandy, the novels of Diderot and maybe Voltaire (a late convert), Smollett’s Adventures of an Atom, Hoffmann’s Tomcat Murr, Hugo’s Hunchback of Notre-Dame, Southey’s Doctor, Melville’s Moby-Dick, Flaubert’s Temptation of Saint Anthony and Bouvard and Pecuchet, Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Frederick Rolfe’s ornate novels, Bely’s Petersburg, Joyce’s Ulysses, Witkiewicz’s Polish jokes, Flann O’Brien’s Irish farces, Philip Wylie’s Finnley Wren, Patchen’s tender novels, Burroughs’s and Kerouac’s mad ones, Nabokov’s later works, Schmidt’s fiction, the novels of Durrell, Burgess (especially A Clockwork Orange and Earthly Powers), Gaddis and Pynchon, Barth, Coover, Sorrentino, Reed’s Mumbo Jumbo, Brossard’s later works, the masterpieces of Latin American magic realism (Paradiso, The Autumn of the Patriarch, Three Trapped Tigers, I the Supreme, Avalovara, Terra Nostra, Palinuro of Mexico), the fabulous creations of those gay Cubans Severo Sarduy and Reinaldo Arenas, Markson’s Springer’s Progress, Mano’s Take Five, Ríos’s Larva and otros libros, the novels of Paul West, Tom Robbins, Stanley Elkin, Alexander Theroux, W. M. Spackman, Alasdair Gray, Gaétan Soucy, and Rikki Ducornet (“Lady Rabelais,” as one critic called her), Mark Leyner’s hyperbolic novels, the writings of Magiser Gass, Greer Gilman’s folkloric fictions and Roger Boylan’s Celtic comedies, Vollmann’s voluminous volumes, Wallace’s brainy fictions, Siegel’s Love in a Dead Language, Danielewski’s novels, Jackson’s Half Life, Field’s Ululu, De La Pava’s Naked Singularity, and James McCourt’s ongoing Mawrdew Czgowchwz saga.
(p. 331)
”
”
Steven Moore (The Novel: An Alternative History: Beginnings to 1600)
“
One: A Book Is A Universe and the Universe is a Book. Inside a book, any Physiks or Magical Laws or Manners or Histories may hold sway. A book is its own universe and while in it, you must play by their rules. More or less. Some of the more modern novels are lenient on this point and have very few policemen to spare. This is why sometimes, when you finish a book, you feel strange and woozy, as though you have just woken up. Your body is getting used to the rules and your own universe again. And your own universe is just the biggest and longest and most complicated book ever written—except for all the other ones. This is also why books along the walls make a place feel different—all those universes, crammed into one spot! Things are bound to shift and warp and hatch schemes!
Two: Books Are People. Some are easy to get along with and some are shy, some are full of things to say and some are quiet, some are fanciful and some are plainspoken, some you will feel as though you've known forever the moment you open the cover, and some will take years to grow into. Just like people, you must be introduced properly and sit down together with a cup of something so that you can sniff at each other like tomcats but lately acquainted. Listen to their troubles and share their joys. They will have their tempers and you will have yours, and sometimes you will not understand a book, nor will it understand you—you can't love all books any more than you can love every stranger you meet. But you can love a lot of them. And the love of a book is a precious, subtle, strange thing, well worth earning, And just like people, you are never really done with a book—some part of it will stay with you, gently changing the way you see and speak and know.
Three: People Are Books. This has two meanings. The first is: Every person is a story. They have a beginning and a middle and an end (though some may have sequels and series).They have motifs and narrative tricks and plot twists and daring escapes and love lost and love won. The rules of books are the rules of life because a book must be written by a person alive, and an alive person will usually try to tell the truth about the world, even if they dress it up in spangles and feathers.
The other meaning is: When you read a book, it is not only a story. It is never only a story. Exciting plots may occur, characters suffer and triumph, yes, It is a story. But it is also a person speaking to you, directly to you. A person far away, perhaps in time, perhaps in space, perhaps both. A person who wanted to say something so loud that everyone could hear it. A book is a time-travelling teleportation machine. And there's millions and millions of them! When you read a book, you have a conversation with the person who wrote it. And that conversation is never quite the same twice. Every single reader has a different chat, because they are different people with different histories and ideas in their heads. Why, you cannot even have the same conversation with the same book twice! If you read a book as a child, and again as a Grown-Up, it will be something altogether other. New things will have happened to you, new folk will have come into your life and taught you wild and wonderful notions you never thought of before. You will not be the same person—and neither will the book. When you read, know that someone somewhere wrote those very words just for you, in hopes that you would find something there to take with you in your own travels through time and space.
”
”
Catherynne M. Valente (The Girl Who Fell Beneath Fairyland and Led the Revels There (Fairyland, #2))
“
I couldn’t get Anette messy and dirty. I couldn’t make her scream my name. Not unless I was also ready to wife her up, and I wasn’t sure about that. I couldn’t casually date her with the entire town watching – and they would watch – and chances were good I couldn’t casually fuck her either. She looked altogether too by-the-book for fuck buddies, and there was no room for a tomcat sheriff around here.
”
”
Kate Canterbary (Hard Pressed (Talbott’s Cove, #2))
“
His attacker disappeared from sight as Tatum bounded to his feet, his heart racing. He turned on the light and blinked. His ugly orange tomcat stared at him with disdain. “Damn it, Freckle!
”
”
Mike Omer (A Killer's Mind (Zoe Bentley Mystery, #1))
“
the Kaiser was as close to the “sick Tom-cat” mood as he thought the Russians were. More cosmopolitan and more timid than the archetype Prussian, he had never actually wanted a general war. He wanted greater power, greater prestige, above all more authority in the world’s affairs for Germany but he preferred to obtain them by frightening rather than by fighting other nations. He wanted the gladiator’s rewards without the battle, and whenever the prospect of battle came too close, as at Algeciras and Agadir, he shrank.
”
”
Barbara W. Tuchman (The Guns of August)
“
The United Nations Organization is such a symbolic Peace-Pigeon, whom a tomcat watches and controls regularly.
”
”
Ehsan Sehgal
“
Despite his elegant clothes—black coat and dark gray trousers—he reminded her of a tomcat, tall and large-boned, lacking the polish of aristocrats she was accustomed to. The spill of thick black hair over his forehead should have been slicked back with pomade, and the knot of his cravat was too loose, as if he had been tugging at it unconsciously. Bronson was handsome, although his features were blunted and his nose looked as though it had once been broken. He had a strong jaw, a wide mouth and laugh lines at the corners of his eyes that betrayed a ready sense of humor. She received a strange shock of awareness as she met his gaze. His eyes were a shade of brown so deep they appeared black, giving his alert stare a penetrating quality that made her distinctly uncomfortable. The devil must have eyes like that, audacious, knowing… sensuous.
”
”
Lisa Kleypas (Where Dreams Begin)
“
People threw their elderly relatives into the snow and granny flats became dining rooms, while they tied up miniature vegetables and sprayed raspberry vinegar like tomcats on the pull.
”
”
A.A. Gill (The Best of A.A. Gill)
“
Nothing more resembles a tomcat on a windowsill than a female cat.
”
”
Marie le Jars de Gournay
“
Life, the tomcat thought with uncommon sentiment, is not only challenging, wild sometimes, it can be tender, too. Warm and tender and good.
”
”
Shirley Rousseau Murphy (Cat Shining Bright (Joe Grey #20))
“
And then there was our Siamese cat, Sarah, who had been adopted as a kitten by our big tomcat, Diego, who would lick and clean her, let her knead his tummy as if she were nursing, and sleep with her. For about a decade they were best buddies, until Diego died of old age. Even though Sarah was younger and in perfect health, she stopped eating and died two months after Diego for no reason that the veterinarian could determine.
”
”
Frans de Waal (The Age of Empathy: Nature's Lessons for a Kinder Society)
“
Simple to develop—IDEs and other developer tools are focused on building a single application. Easy to make radical changes to the application—You can change the code and the database schema, build, and deploy. Straightforward to test—The developers wrote end-to-end tests that launched the application, invoked the REST API, and tested the UI with Selenium. Straightforward to deploy—All a developer had to do was copy the WAR file to a server that had Tomcat installed. Easy to scale—FTGO ran multiple instances of the application behind a load balancer.
”
”
Chris Richardson (Microservices Patterns: With examples in Java)
“
The tomcat started walking in a direction that would take Arlo father from his house.
”
”
Matthew Block (Seer (Shadow Guardians #1))
“
Mickey Mouse?” suggests Mohr, “It makes a sort of sense.” Through the laughter, Ren says, “I just can’t see debriefing Admiral Nimitz about the movements of the Mickey Mouse Patrol.
”
”
M.L. Maki (Fighting Her Father's War: The Fighting Tomcats)
“
St. Clair is never going to marry. I know that from working a year with him. Hell, I'd known it after working for him a week. He dated like a tomcat. Over the past couple of months I'd set him up on dates nearly every week.
”
”
Olivia Hayle (Say Yes to the Boss (New York Billionaires, #3))
“
And though he could woo and bed any woman he wanted, and had done so with the regularity of a tomcat, he underestimated the tenacity of a woman scorned.
”
”
Gregg Olsen (Starvation Heights: A True Story of Murder and Malice in the Woods of the Pacific Northwest)
“
Sure, she danced in short skirts and flirted, she kissed boys, went skinny-dipping, wore lipstick to bed, and let her bra strap show. But she was a heck of a lot more than the sum of all these things put together. Still, she was judged by them because she had dared to collide with the image of purity. My sister was just another girl doomed by politics and ancestral texts that say a girl’s destiny is to be wholesome, obedient, and quietly attractive, but invisible when need be. Nailed to the cross of her own gender, a girl finds herself between the mother and the prehistoric rib, where there’s little space to be anything other than a daughter who lives alongside sons but is not equal to them. These boys who can howl like tomcats in heat, pawing their way through a feast of flesh, never to be called a slut or a whore like my sister
”
”
Tiffany McDaniel (Betty)
“
Cats do seem to prefer us to talk to them in a high-pitched voice. Perhaps gruff male voices remind them of the rumbling growl of an angry tomcat.
Cats' paws are exceptionally sensitive, which explains why many cats don't like having their feet handled.
Cats become extravagantly demonstrative only when they are angry or afraid.
Purring seems to convey a general request: Please settle down next to me. The cat instinctively uses the purr to try to change the situation to its advantage. Each cat simply learns that purring under certain circumstances makes its life run more smoothly.
The most satisfying exchanges between cat and owner are often those that the cat chooses to initiate, rather than those in which the owner approaches the cat, which may regard such uninvited advances with suspicion.
Most cats are extraordinarily sensitive to human body language.
”
”
John Bradshaw
“
What matters about Frank is the sense of freedom he brought to his music: a good-natured contempt for conventional patterns of life combined with a genius for transforming all that was smug and polite into absurdity. The result was a music of staggering weirdness, dimly anchored by the fatalism of the blues and powered by the pure delight of what was soon to be called rock ’n’ roll. Frank wasn’t sexy, like the rockabilly singers who were to make Sam Phillips’s fortune; he was more like a dirty old man. He was ribald, and he had a flair. “I am,” he growled in one of his numbers, “a howling tomcat.
”
”
Greil Marcus (Mystery Train: Images of America in Rock 'n' Roll)
“
Everybody warns about bad influences, but it’s these things already inside you that are going to take you down. The restlessness in your gut, like tomcats gone stupid with their blood feuds, prowling around in the moon-dead dark. The hopeless wishes that won’t quit stalking you: some perfect words you think you could say to somebody to make them see you, and love you, and stay. Or could say to your mirror, same reason.
”
”
Barbara Kingsolver (Demon Copperhead)
“
Taking off from the USS Theodore Roosevelt on February 8, 2006, pilots Captain William G. Sizemore from VF-213, and Lieutenant Bill Frank from VF-31, flew the final F-14 combat mission.
”
”
Mike Guardia (Tomcat Fury: A Combat History of the F-14)
“
The F-14 Tomcat made its inaugural test flight on December 21, 1970—a mere twenty-two months after Grumman won the VFX contract.
”
”
Mike Guardia (Tomcat Fury: A Combat History of the F-14)
“
the Department of Defense set the Tomcat’s official retirement date for September 22, 2006.
”
”
Mike Guardia (Tomcat Fury: A Combat History of the F-14)
“
Will Rogers neatly and characteristically summed up the American attitude toward the prospect of a second French-German conflict with a simple, homespun image. The United States, he said, ought to “just let those two old tomcats whose tails are tied together over the fence alone and try to cure the scratches we got the last time we tried to untie ’em.
”
”
Daniel James Brown (The Boys in the Boat: Nine Americans and Their Epic Quest for Gold at the 1936 Berlin Olympics)
“
And everywhere you looked there were throngs of book characters, dressed in clothes from every era imaginable: a man in a toga surrounded by a gaggle of girls in dresses with enormous crinolines and ruffs, soldiers marching past them with laser guns, magicians in colorful hats, businesswomen in court shoes and trouser suits, orcs with grotesque misshapen faces. Fairies with dragonfly wings buzzed in and out of the crowd. A goose with a tiny boy riding on its back pecked at the instant happy endings, and was shooed away loudly by the fat lady.
Then I spotted a tomcat wearing a pair of riding boots and walking on its hind legs, and followed it through the crowd until it disappeared into a pub called the Inkpot. Not really fancying the "ink cocktail" being advertised on a board outside, I decided to keep walking.
”
”
Mechthild Gläser (The Book Jumper)
“
He walked with more confidence than a tomcat in a dark alley in Brooklyn, charmed everyone he met with only a smile, and oozed sex appeal like syrup dripping off a double stack of pancakes.
”
”
Catherine Bybee (Married by Monday (The Weekday Brides, #2))
“
You needn’t worry about me. I can take care of myself.” “I can see that. That’s why y’ve got the cap’n sniffin’ after you like a tomcat on the prowl.
”
”
Sabrina Jeffries (The Pirate Lord (Lord Trilogy, #1))
“
It is not a matter of me marrying either you or a gas pumper. It is a matter of marrying a man. I do not much care what he does, so long as he is a man. You are 21,” she said, “and under the law you are a man, and your height and weight is that of a man. In the bed you are a man,” and she smiled a little. “But you are losing your manhood faster then hell. Pretty soon in bed will be the only place you are a man. But that is not manhood. Dogs and bulls and tomcats do the same. Yes, you are losing your manhood and becoming simply an island in the empire of Moors.
”
”
Mark Harris (The Southpaw)
“
Tomcat,” he said. “Help Jon out of his clothing.” Jon’s heart hit a new peak rate as he watched Tom turn around and look at him intently. He was absolutely gorgeous, and terribly intimidating; the tattoos on his bronze skin outlined and enhanced Tom’s musculature, making him seem even more brawny than he was, while his green-blue eyes recalled the warm waters of the tropics. Though Tom was staring at him with open desire, there was also the hint of how completely astounded and still somewhat skeptical of the situation he was. Jon wanted to recapture those stolen moments during the storm, but with the captain present, how were they supposed to… “Tom?” repeated Baltsaros from the bed. Tom stepped forward as if pushed, and he grinned despite the tension in the room. Ducking his head, he reached for the front of Jon’s grey shirt and undid the laces holding the neck closed. When he saw the terrible scar on Jon’s chest, Tom’s eyes flicked up to his in concern; Jon just shook his head and smiled grimly. Later. Tom’s brows came down, and he suddenly leaned forward to capture Jon’s mouth with his own, urgent and protective. The bigger man’s hands came around him as he savaged Jon’s lips and yanked his shirt free of his pants; Tom released him only long enough to pull it over his head before pressing himself hard against Jon again. Jon was flooded with relief. He had not been wrong about Tom’s feelings for him.
”
”
Bey Deckard (Caged: Love and Treachery on the High Seas (Baal's Heart, #1))
“
It’s just a thing, said the captain reassuringly. You’re not a coward, but you are foolish at times, my tomcat. Why fear an object? An object has no power on its own. It’s a man who wields it, and when have you ever been afraid of a man?
”
”
Bey Deckard (Sacrificed: Heart Beyond the Spires (Baal's Heart, #2))
“
Crazy is better than afraid, no? laughed the captain. Come, you’re better than this. Be my fearless tomcat. I need you. Jon needs you.
”
”
Bey Deckard (Sacrificed: Heart Beyond the Spires (Baal's Heart, #2))
“
He can be a mystery. There’s more to Preacher than... You really care about him?” “I do.” “Then you be patient. He’ll come around. Paige, it’s obvious—he cares about you, too. You and Christopher. I’ve never seen him like this with anybody.” “Maybe he wants to be sure I’m not just—” Mike was shaking his head. “He wants to be sure of himself, Paige. Preacher’s real cautious. I think the man could be terrified of disappointing you. That’s my bet.” “He couldn’t possibly,” she said, and a tear fell again. Mike wiped it away. “You just have to trust me on this—he’s a bundle of nerves. He’s really good in a fight, really good in a war, and who’da guessed how good a cook he turned out to be, huh? But with women? Paige—he’s never been a hustler. I don’t know of any women. He’s never been that kind of guy. Just not a tomcat like some of the rest of us.” “That’s one of the things I love most,” she whispered. Mike smiled. “You give him some time, huh?” She nodded. She smiled weakly. Mike dropped a brotherly kiss on her forehead. “It’s going to be all right.” “You think so?” “Oh, yeah. Just hang in there. Don’t give up on him.” Mike thought, that lucky son of a bitch. This woman adored him. Wanted nothing so much as to make him happy all night long. “Go wash your face. I’m gonna get myself a beer.” He gave her shoulders a final squeeze, and as she turned away from him, Preacher was standing in the back door with his catch. Paige skittered past Preacher, keeping her head down so that he wouldn’t see her tears. Preacher scowled at Mike. “Need something?” he asked. “I need a beer before I walk over to Doc’s and let Mel torture me. Want me to get it myself?” “Help yourself,” he said, throwing his fish in the big sink. Jack
”
”
Robyn Carr (Shelter Mountain (Virgin River, #2))
“
A sound, too, began to throb in his ears, a sort of bubbling like the noise of a large pot galloping on the fire, mixed with a rumble as of a gigantic tom-cat purring.
”
”
J.R.R. Tolkien (The Hobbit)
“
Brie is back in town. She’s with Mike.” “Really?” Mel said, suddenly giving him her attention. She closed the laptop and put it aside. “I haven’t seen her. When I was leaving the bar, her Jeep was parked next to Mike’s car. She came to Mike. Not to us—to Mike.” She shrugged. “Well, that makes sense. He loves her.” “How do you know that?” Jack asked. “How could you not?” she asked. Jack sat back on the couch. “I thought he was just trying to get laid.” “That’s pretty irrelevant,” she said, laughing. “You’re all trying to get laid. Some of you actually love the women you’re trying to get close to.” “You act like we’re all just a bunch of bulls being led around by our dicks.” She laughed at him, gleefully for a woman who was annoyed to be pregnant, and moody to boot. “Do I? I wonder why?” “So you think this makes sense?” “Extraordinary sense. It even makes me nostalgic.” That caused him to smile devilishly. “Nostalgic enough to take me to bed?” “Tell me something—are you letting go of this weird control thing you have over Brie?” “Yeah,” he said, almost tiredly. “It’s not like I haven’t wanted her to have a full life. I thought she was going to have that with Brad, the shit. It was Mike who worried me—he’s been such a frickin’ tomcat.” He glanced at his wife’s disapproving expression. “Yeah, yeah, let’s not go over that again. We all made our rounds.” “I doubt he made any more rounds than you,” she said. “It was just the marriages that got under my skin,” he said. “So help me God, if he marries her and walks away from her, I am going to kill him.” “Looks to me like he’s totally sunk,” she said. “A complete goner.” “Fine,
”
”
Robyn Carr (Whispering Rock (Virgin River, #3))
“
I resent your insinuation that Fulton is a coward,” she said. “He’s a very fine man.” Suddenly, Steven stopped right in the middle of the trail. Emma, who had just built up a good head of steam, collided with him—hard. For a long moment, Steven held her to him without even using his arms. No, it was the look in his eyes that gripped her, that made her feel as if something warm was spilling over within her. “If he’s such a fine man,” he reasoned, his voice hardly more than a rasp, “how come you’re out here with me?” Emma was so flabbergasted by the question, and by the obvious answer, that she just stared up at Steven’s face. She felt like a field mouse looking into the eyes of a tomcat. “Well?” Steven prompted, his lips just a hair’s breadth from hers. Coming to her senses at the last second, Emma leaped backward, causing her handbag to thump painfully against her thigh. “I’m here with you because we have a bargain, Mr. Fairfax,” she blurted out. “You promised to leave Whitneyville forever, remember?” “If you still want me to,” Steven pointed out, and then he was forging his way through the wilds of that overgrown island again, dragging Emma after him. He
”
”
Linda Lael Miller (Emma And The Outlaw (Orphan Train, #2))
“
When he raised his head to look at her, she smiled at him. “Ye purred,” she said, “just like a big tomcat.” She laughed softly at the way he scowled at her despite the laughter brightening his eyes. “It wasnae a purr,” he said. “It was a verra monly growl.” Bridget
”
”
Hannah Howell (The Eternal Highlander (McNachton Vampires, #1))
“
Mine,” Tomcat whispered urgently, and Jace nodded. Agreed with a soft, “Yours,” that seemed to please him. There
”
”
S.E. Jakes (Bound by Danger (Men of Honor, #4))
“
[ELLA] Oh! You know what Wes?
[WESLEY] What?
[ELLA] That story your father used to tell about that eagle. You remember the whole thing?
[WESLEY] Yeah.
[ELLA] I remember he keeps coming back and swooping down on the shed roof and then flying off again. What else?
[WESLEY] I don't know.
[ELLA] You remember. What happens next?
[WESLEY] A cat comes.
[ELLA] That's right. A big tomcat comes. He jumps up on top of that roof to sniff around in all the entails or whatever it was.
[WESLEY] And that eagle comes down and picks up that cat in his talons and carries him screaming off into the sky.
[ELLA] And they fight. They fight like crazy in the middle of the sky. The cat's tearing his chest out, and the eagle's trying to drop him, but the cat won't let go because he knows if he falls he'll die.
[WESLEY] And the eagle's being torn apart in midair. The eagle's trying to free himself from the cat, and the cat won't let go.
[ELLA] And they come crashing down to earth. Both of them come crashing down. Like one whole thing.
”
”
Sam Shepard (Curse of the Starving Class)
“
I must come to my point: I would very much like to meet you. As a widower of two years, I have found the companionship available to me (my tomcat and my memories) to be inadequate. The cat is unreliable and cantankerous, the memories often the same.
It may be true that regardless of a man's age, there remains inside him a kernel of youth. As I have aged, my curiosity has not lessened, but has migrated from my brain to my heart. It is not such a bad thing.
(from the story Amorometer)
”
”
Kelly Luce (Three Scenarios In Which Hana Sasaki Grows A Tail)
“
doesn’t know we’re out here with our tomcat talk. We can go on. Now, look, since when did you think being good meant being happy?” “Since always.” “Since now learn otherwise. Sometimes the man who looks happiest in town, with the biggest smile, is the one carrying the biggest load of sin. There are smiles and smiles; learn to tell the dark variety from the light.
”
”
Anonymous
“
She had said a lot about his tomcatting reputation and the women in his checkered past; she had even called him a heartbreaker. But she was the true heartbreaker, with her sunlight hair and summer-green eyes, a golden woman who he never would have forgotten, even if she’d never come back into his life. Beckman had been obsessed with her, had gone mad when he lost her, and for the first time John thought he might understand. He wouldn’t have a life, either, if he lost Michelle.
”
”
Linda Howard (Heartbreaker (Rescues, #3))
“
It was getting dark outside now. The rushing sound of the traffic had died a little and the air from the open window, not yet cool from the night, had that tired end-of-the-day smell of dust, automobile exhaust, sunlight rising from hot walls and sidewalks, the remote smell of food in a thousand restaurants, and perhaps, drifting down from the residential hills above Hollywood—if you had a nose like a hunting dog—a touch of that peculiar tomcat smell that eucalyptus trees give off in warm weather.
”
”
Raymond Chandler (The High Window (Philip Marlowe, #3))