To Reign it's not granted to me,
I don't yield under no conditions:
I'm the Cat!

***

ODE TO CATS

There was something wrong with the animals:
their tails were too long and they had
unfortunate heads.
Then they started coming together,
little by little
fitting together to make a landscape,
developing birthmarks, grace, pep.
But the cat,
only the cat
turned out finished,
and proud:
born in a state of total completion,
it sticks to itself and knows
exactly what it wants.

(Pablo Neruda)

***

THE NAMING OF CATS

The Naming of Cats is a difficult matter,
It isn't just one of your holiday games;
You may think at first I'm as mad as a hatter
When I tell you, a cat must have THREE DIFFERENT NAMES.
First of all, there's the name that the family use daily,
Such as Peter, Augustus, Alonzo or James,
Such as Victor or Jonathan, George or Bill Bailey,
All of them sensible everyday names.
There are fancier names if you think they sound sweeter,
Some for the gentlemen, some for the dames:
Such as Plato, Admetus, Electra, Demeter,
But all of them sensible everyday names.
But I tell you, a cat needs a name that's particular,
A name that's peculiar, and more dignified,
Else how can he keep up his tail perpendicular,
Or spread out his whiskers, or cherish his pride?
Of names of this kind, I can give you a quorum,
Such as Munkustrap, Quaxo, or Coricopat,
Such as Bombalurina, or else Jellylorum,
Names that never belong to more than one cat.
But above and beyond there's still one name left over,
And that is the name that you never will guess;
The name that no human research can discover.
But THE CAT HIMSELF KNOWS, and will never confess.
When you notice a cat in profound meditation,
The reason, I tell you, is always the same:
His mind is engaged in a rapt contemplation
Of the thought, of the thought, of the thought of his name:
His ineffable effable
Effanineffable
Deep and inscrutable singular Name.

(T. S. Eliot)

***

THE CATS

Come, my beatiful cat, to my amorous core;
Retract your claws inside your paws
And let me plunge into your wise eyes once more
That are mingled of agate and metals
When my fingers caress at leisure
Your head and your back's elasticity
And when my hand's become drunk with pleasure
From your palpating electricity,
I see my woman in spirit. Her regard,
Like yours, amiable beast,
Profound and cold, cuts and cracks like a sword
And, from her head to her feet,
A delicate look, a dangerous perfume
Swims around her brown body's bloom.

(Charles Baudelaire)

***

"The most complete masterpiece of the nature."

(Leonardo Da Vinci)

***

"I want to have in my house:
a reasonable woman
a cat that touches upon the books
friends in each season
without which I could not live."

(Guillaume Apollinaire)

***

"Poets generally love cats,
because poets have no delusions about their own superiority"

(Marion Garretty)

***

"Most cats, when they are Out want to be In,
and vice versa, and often simultaneously"

(Dr. Louis J. Camuti)

***

"Any cat who misses a mouse
pretends it was aiming for the dead leaf"

(Charlotte Gray)

***

"If your cat falls out of a tree,
go indoors to laugh."

(Patricia Hitchcock)

***

"Kittens are wide-eyed, soft and sweet,
with needles in their jaws and feet."

(Pam Brown)

***

"One small cat changes coming home to an empty house
to coming home."

(Pam Brown)

***

"A cat who has taken umbrage is a terrible sight to see."

(Rosemary Nisbet)

***

"Cat can be very funny, and have the oddest ways of showing they're glad to see you.
Rudimace always peed in our shoes."

(W. H. Auden)

***

"Dogs come when they are called;
cats take a message and get back to you."

(Mary Bly)

***

"There are no ordinary cats."

(Colette)

***

"Places to look:
behind the books in the bookshelf,
any cupboard with a gap too small for any cat to squeeze through,
the top of anything sheer,
under anything too low for a cat to squash
under and inside the piano."

(Roseanne Ambrose-Brown)

***

"Cats like doors left open,
in case they change their minds."

(Rosemary Nisbet)

***

"A wanderer himself, he is full of reproaches inf I am gone beyond the expected time, yet plays with my anxieties when he is late, drifting slowly out of the darkness as if he cannot hear my calling."

(Samantha Armstrong)

***

"The trouble with sharin one's bed with cats is that they'd rather sleep on you than beside you."

(Pam Brown)

***

"A cat allows you to sleep on the bed.
On the edge."

(Jenny De Vries)

***

"People meeting for the first time suddenly relax if they find they both have cats.
And plunge into anecdote."

(Charlotte Gray)

***

"Nobody who is not prepared to spoil cats will get from them the reward they are able to give to those who do spoil them."

(Compton Mackenzie)

***

"There is nothing so lowering to one's self-esteem as the affectionate contempt of a beloved cat."

(Monica Edwards)

***

"Cats are kindly masters,
just so long as you remember your place."

(Paul Gray)

***

"A cat does not want all the world to love her,
only those she has chosen to love."

(Helen Thompson)

***

"If you are worthy of its affection,
a cat will be your friend,
but never your slave."

(Theophile Gautier)

***

"One must love a cat on its own terms."

(Peter Gray)

***

"Cat said:
<I'm not a friend, and I am not a Servant.
I am the Cat who walks by himself, and I wish to come into your Cave.>"

(Rudyard Kipling)
from the "Just-So Stories"