“Keep your whiskers crisp and clean.Do not let the mice grow lean.Do not let yourself grow fatLike a common kitchen cat.Have you set the kittens free?Do they sometimes ask for me?Is our catnip growing tall?Did you patch the garden wall?Clouds are gentle walls that hideGardens on the other side.Tell the tabby cats I takeAll my meals with William Blake,Lunch at noon tea at four,Served in splendor on the shoreAt the tinkling of a bell.Tell them I am sleeping well.Tell them I have come so far,Brought by Blake's celestial cat,Buffeted by wind and rain,I may not get home again.Take this message to my friends.Say the King of Catnip sendsTo the cat who winds his clocksA thousand sunsets in a box,To the cat who brings the iceThe shadows of a dozen mice(serve them with assorted dipsand eat them like potato chips),And to the cat who guards his doorA net for catching stars, and more(if patience he abide):Catnip from the other side.”

“You would wind up as a cat, I told her. They don't need anyone else. I need you, she replied.Well, I said. Maybe I'll come back as catnip.”

“What have you done to my cat?" Magnus demanded... "You drank his blood, didn't you? You said you weren't hungry!"Simon was indignant. "I did not drink his blood. He's fine!" He poked the Chairman in the stomach. The cat yawned. "Second, you asked me if I was hungry when you were ordering pizza, so I said no, because I can't eat pizza. I was being polite.""That doesn't get you the right to eat my cat.""Your cat is fine!" Simon reached to pick up the tabby, who jumped indignantly to his feet and stalked off the table. "See?""Whatever.”

“We live in an age when the mice are hunting the cats...nobody knows who are the mice and who the cats.”

“And there are my cats, engaged in a ritual that goes back thousands of years, tranquilly licking themselves after the meal. Practical animals, they prefer to have others provide the food ... some of them do. There must have been a split between the cats who accepted domestication and those who did not.”

“What amazed me as much as anything were the fat calm tabby cats of London some of whom slept peacefully right in the doorway of butcher shops as people stepped over them carefully, right there in the sawdust sun but a nose away from the roaring traffic of trams and buses and cars. England must be the land of cats, they abide peacefully all over the back fences of St John's Wood. Edlerly ladies feed them lovingly just like Ma feeds my cats. In Tangiers or Mexico City you hardly ever see a cat, if so late at night, because the poor often catch them and eat them. I felt London was blessed by its kind regard for cats. If Paris is a woman who was penetrated by the Nazi invasion, London is man who was never penetrated but only smoked his pipe, dranks his stout or half n half, and blessed his cat on his purring head.”