"One must love a cat on its own terms."- Paul Gray

Cats are sacred to our people.  These pics taken by daughter Elise are of kitten Pavel, pronounced Pabel, who grew from  a tiny sleepy runt to a healthy, happy, busy kitty flying around the house like a little squirrel..

“Dogs come when they’re called; cats take a message and get back to you later.”  ~Mary Bly

“Although all cat games have their rules and rituals, these vary with the individual player.
The cat, of course, never breaks a rule. If it does not follow precedent, that simply means
it has created a new rule and it is up to you to learn it quickly if you want the game to continue.”   

(Sidney Denham)

“Kittens are born with their eyes shut.  They open them in about six days, take a look around, then close them again for the better part of their lives.”  ~Stephen Baker

“Cats seem to go on the principal that it never does any harm to ask for what you want.”   (Joseph Wood Krutch)

“Cats are love on four legs.”  (Richard Torregrossa)

“There is something about the presence of a cat… that seems to take the bite out of being alone.” ~Louis J. Camuti

“Of all God’s creatures there is only one that cannot be made the slave of the lash.  That one is the cat.  If man could be crossed with the cat, it would improve man, but it would deteriorate the cat.”  (Mark Twain)

“As every cat owner knows, nobody owns a cat.”  ~Ellen Perry Berkeley

“There is no more intrepid explorer than a kitten.”  (Champfleury)

“Cats can work out mathematically the exact place to sit that will cause most inconvenience.” ~Pam Brown

“After scolding one’s cat one looks into its face and is seized by the ugly suspicion that it understood every word.  And has filed it for reference.”  ~Charlotte Gray

“A cat can be trusted to purr when she is pleased, which is more than can be said for human beings.”  ~William Ralph Inge

“The reason cats climb is so that they can look down on almost every other animal – it’s also the reason they hate birds.”  ~K.C. Buffington

“A dog, I have always said, is prose; a cat is a poem.”  ~Jean Burden

“There has never been a cat
Who couldn’t calm me down
By walking slowly
Past my chair.”
~Rod McKuen

“Your cat will never threaten your popularity by barking at three in the morning.  He won’t attack the mailman or eat the drapes, although he may climb the drapes to see how the room looks from the ceiling.”

~Helen Powers

“A cat improves the garden wall in sunshine, and the hearth in foul weather.”  ~Judith Merkle Riley

“I wish I could write as mysterious as a cat.”  ~Edgar Allan Poe

“A world without cats…I dare not think of it.”(Anonymous)

“The cat is the only animal which accepts the comforts but rejects the bondage of domesticity.”  ~Georges Louis Leclerc de Buffon