“Just so you know,’ I explained, remembering my own earlier arrogance, ‘if you’ve ever owned a cat and therefore think you know how to handle a puma, you don’t. It would be like playing with sharks because you once owned a goldfish.”

“Everything that comes to us is a blessing or a test. That’s all you need to know in this life…just the certainty that God’s got His eye on you, that He knows what you are made of, what you need to grow on. Why,questioning’s a sin, it’s pointless. He will show you your path in His own good time. And long as I remember that, I’m fine.”

“But after dealing with Roy for a while I just wanted to get through the time I’d signed on for, to prove to myself that I couldn’t be beaten by a girly-faced, chicken-boned, racist cat.”

“I hate... I hate when you die. It destroys me. I know i have no right to be so upset, because I'm not the one losing my life, but it breaks me apart inside. I'm not very good with words, and i dont know how to explain to you how i feel. I get lonely when you aren't with me. I miss you. And every time you die, a little piece of me dies with you.”

“So how could you ever eat another strawberry and not know that God loves you? I want you to think about that every time you eat a strawberry. Do you hear me?”

“I answered that I was sure, and he asked me again, and this time I understood his concern. ‘I’m not embarrassed!’ I said, or at least tried to say, before recalling that embarazada means something entirely different to ‘embarrassed’ and that I’d just wailed at the doctor that I wasn’t pregnant, something his medical training had presumably made evident to him.”

“The Lady Amalthea beckoned, and the cat wriggled all over, like a dog, but he would not come near... She was offering her open palm to the crook-eared cat, but he stayed where he was, shivering with the desire to go to her"...[later, Molly asked the cat] "Why were you afraid to let her touch you? I saw you. You were afraid of her.""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... The price is more than a cat can pay.”