“Like a domestic cat, purring on the sofa by day, but by night, a strutting queen, a natural killer, disdainful of her other life.”

“There is a particular disdain with which Siamese cats regard you. Anyone who has walked in on the Queen cleaning her teeth will be familiar with the feeling.”

“What cat? Oh! MY CAT. The cat… that is mine. Oh, she’s... ” I had said it was a she, right? “She’s fine. All meowing and purring and other cat things.”

“Friday is a purple-velvet-sofa day for some poor woman who's finally reclaimed her life. A purple velvet sofa is a gal's symbol of freedom.”

“And each night in bed I thought of her as the moon came through my window. I could have lowered my shade to make it darker and easier to sleep, but I never did. In that moonlit hour, I acquired a sense of the otherness of things. I liked the feeling the moonlight gave me, as if it wasn't the opposite of day, but its underside, its private side, when the fabulous purred on my snow-white sheet like some dark cat come in from the desert.”

“Her only gift was knowing people almost by instinct, she thought, walking on. If you put her in a room with someone, up went her back like a cat's; or she purred.”