A Quote by Sylvia Townsend Warner

Slowly, with a look of intense concentration, he got up and advanced on me ... put out a front paw, and stroked my cheek as I used to stoke his chops. A human caress from a cat. I felt very meagre and ill-educated that I could not purr.
If you want to freak your cat out, stare at your cat. If you want to reassure your cat, stare at your cat, then very deliberately and very slowly blink. Like that. The cat will also deliberately, slowly blink back at you, and I almost guarantee that she will start to purr. That's a feline reassurance.
I used to have a cat, an old fighting tom, who would jump through the open window by my bed in the middle of the night and land on my chest. I'd half-awaken. He'd stick his skull under my nose and purr, stinking of urine and blood. Some nights he kneaded my bare chest with his front paws, powerfully, arching his back, as if sharpening his claws, or pummeling a mother for milk. And some mornings I'd wake in daylight to find my body covered with paw prints in blood; I looked as though I'd been painted with roses.
His thumb stroked my cheek. My eyes half-closed. When he spoke next, it was very softly, his voice an almost-physical caress against my whole body. My flesh tightened like a harpstring. I swallowed hard against the wave of liquid heat. "How can I possibly be jealous when I know you spent your time grieving for me, Dante?
We had a cat in college named Chloe, and it was the most evil, awful cat in the world... When we left, we used to close the door, and its paw would come underneath and try to paw us.
If she had touched me," he said very softly, "I would have been hers and not my own, not ever again. I wanted her to touch me but I could not let her. No cat will. We let human beings caress us because it is pleasant enough and calms them - but not her. The price is more than a cat can pay.
A computer and a cat are somewhat alike - they both purr, and like to be stroked, and spend a lot of the day motionless. They also have secrets they don't necessarily share.
My cat, Ethel, is an indoor cat but somehow she's sneakin' out at night. 'Cause the other morning I found a stamp on her paw... I wouldn't have noticed myself, but I just bought this new black light and she passed right under it and I said, 'Hey, what's that on you paw?
A cat has to be in a very bad mood if a human cannot coax him to purr.
I turned around slowly, and looked up at him. He stiffened and sucked in a shallow breath. After a moment, he touched my cheek. "Such naked pain," he whispered. I turned my face into his palm and closed my eyes. His fingers threaded into my hair, cupped my head, and brushed the brand. It heated at his touch. His hand tightened at the base of my skull and squeezed, and he raised me slowly to my tiptoes. I opened my eyes and it was my turn to inhale sharply. Not human. Oh, no, not this man. "Never show it to me again." His face was cold, hard, his voice colder.
I love my family and I had a very wonderful, magical childhood. But New Jersey was actually a very cold place. There was such an intense concentration of wealth, and such a low concentration of any actual human happiness.
He was breathing, which is always a good sign. As gently as I could I picked him up, placed him on the towel, wrapped it around him, and put him in my car. I drove to the emergency clinic, the cat purring on the seat beside me. “What’s his name?” the young man at the front desk asked as my towel and cat were whisked to a back room. “Uh…John Tomkins,” I said. “That’s different,” the receptionist said, writing it down. “He was a pirate,” I said. “I mean Tomkins. I don’t know about the cat. (...)
My nan used to look after me in the summer holidays and she had a cat with one eye. It used to walk into walls and tables. I used to think it was hilarious. It was a slapstick cat.
When I moved to London I couldn't afford to rent anywhere. So I housesat for a friend of my mum and dad's - and had to look after her sickly cat. That was the only way I could survive on a meagre intern wage.
After my day at the Uni winded up, I used to go and perform gigs - I used to look forward to playing in front of an audience. It was when people came to me and gave me positive feedback that I got the confidence to pursue this as a dream.
The cops picked me up for attempted murder. I can still see the detectives, licking their chops. Thought they had me. Two weeks later, the cat came out of a coma and told the truth. I was innocent.
My engineer dad is where my technical acumen comes from. I remember him taking me to the factories to see how what works. Often he used to open up his motorbike to fix things and I saw how the wheels worked. His car used to be open for dissection very regularly. All this taught me and inspired me to look beyond what I could see on the skin.
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