"Kitten" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of belief) satisfactorily off with the old love, I naturally became as playful as a kitten or gay as a grig. For the most superficial observer, and with the half of a naked optic, could easily discern the immeasurable superiority of Miss WEE-WEE to JESSIMINA in all the refinements and delicacies of a real ...
— Baboo Jabberjee, B.A. • F. Anstey
... phrase, Elinor "suffered him", enjoying her freedom from care like a sleepy kitten; shutting the door on the past and keeping it shut until the night when their through sleeper was coupled to the Western Pacific Flyer at A.& T. Junction. But late that evening, when she was rummaging in her hand-bag ...
— The Grafters • Francis Lynde
... delightful humor in The Cat and the Mouse in Partnership, where the Cat has the face to play upon the credulity of the poor housekeeper Mouse, who always "stayed at home and did not go out into the daytime." Returning home from his ventures abroad he named the first kitten Top-Off, the second one Half-Out, and the third one All-Out; while instead of having attended the christening of each, as he pretended, he secretly had been visiting the jar of fat he had placed ...
— A Study of Fairy Tales • Laura F. Kready
... Newton's cat and kitten has often made you smile; but it is no smile of admiration: such absence of mind is simply ridiculous. If, indeed, you should refer to its cause you may by reflection ascertain that the concentration of thought ...
— The Young Lady's Mentor - A Guide to the Formation of Character. In a Series of Letters to Her Unknown Friends • A Lady
... and dignified; Clinker is a worthy son of Bramble, with abundant good humour, and a pleasing vein of Wesleyan Methodism. But the grotesque spelling, rural vanity, and naivete of Winifred Jenkins, with her affection for her kitten, make her the most delightful of this wandering company. After beholding the humours and partaking of the waters of Bath, they follow Smollett's own Scottish tour, and each character gives his picture of the country which Smollett had left at its lowest ebb of industry and comfort, ...
— Adventures among Books • Andrew Lang
... one thing in this place that's as ferocious as a kitten and he pulls his ray gun like an ...
— The Revolt on Venus • Carey Rockwell
... him grimly. But she reached out and put a cautious finger tip to the less lively end of 113-A. After a moment she said, "Hey!" She moved the finger lightly along the thing's surface. It had a velvety, smooth, warm feeling, rather like a kitten. "You know," she said surprised, "it feels sort of nice! It ...
— Legacy • James H Schmitz
... of the Chapdelaine infancy had been gathered in the new home that the sisters went over there to pass the night, and took puss and her offspring along. But not a wink did either of them sleep the night through, and the first living creature they espied the next morning was Marie Madeleine, with a kitten in her teeth, ...
— The Flower of the Chapdelaines • George W. Cable
... have walked a hundred feet under ordinary circumstances, but that scream brought me here on the run. Now that the excitement is over I feel weak as a kitten," Charley answered. ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... mean that, Kitten," drawled the indifferent Bobbie, who had agreed to help pack, although she much preferred "firing things in trunks" and utilizing packing time out of doors. "You would never have known the fun we have had here, if you hadn't ...
— Jane Allen: Junior • Edith Bancroft
... neglected you," he presently said. "You were thrust upon me like a stray kitten, which one does not want but cannot well reject. Your mother has not supplied me with money for your education, although she has regularly ...
— Mary Louise in the Country • L. Frank Baum (AKA Edith Van Dyne)
... up and down the bank, cutting capers in a most astonishing manner and lowing and bellowing in testimony of her delight in the music. She would leap, skip, roll on the grass, paw up the earth, like an angry bull, and chase off like a playful kitten, always with a low plaintive bellow as a final farewell. These friends often rowed up the river just to see if the musical cow was there, and she always greeted them in ...
— The Human Side of Animals • Royal Dixon
... you're nicey to them," said Olly; who was just then very much in love with a white kitten, and thought there were no ...
— Milly and Olly • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... towards him, bearing on its forehead a cross of light, and he recognised the sphinx of Silsile. The monster seized him between its teeth, without hurting him, and carried him in its mouth, as a cat carries a kitten. Paphnutius was thus conveyed across many countries, crossing rivers and traversing mountains, and came at last to a desert place, covered with scowling rocks and hot cinders. The ground was rent in many places, and ...
— Thais • Anatole France
... when you wrote the last letter, you were full of amorous thoughts. You ought to be ashamed of yourself, for making yourself out so good looking when you are so old. Your flirting is like a big shaggy dog playing with a little kitten. If you were only as nice and sleek as I am, I might understand it; but when I get to be a burgomaster I will shame you with the Luginsland [Editor's note: this was a Nuremberg prison], as you do the pious Zamener and me. I will have you shut up there ...
— Memoirs of Journeys to Venice and the Low Countries - [This is our volunteer's translation of the title] • Albrecht Durer
... up before the fifteen minutes had passed. She was beautiful, black as a coal; and kind as a kitten, said her driver. My friend thought her head was rather big. "Why, yes, she's a pony-horse; that's what I ...
— Buying a Horse • William Dean Howells
... a kitten, by any means, so I went up to my shark friends and struck one of them for enough to carry me up to Broken Bow and back. He was a big winner and came right up with the twenty. They wanted to let me in the game again on 'tick,' but then I had sense enough to know that I'd had ...
— Tales of the Road • Charles N. Crewdson
... new one," said the youngest kitten, so pertly that Mrs. Buff boxed her ears at once—but she laughed too. Did you ever hear a cat laugh? People say that cats often ...
— Pussy and Doggy Tales • Edith Nesbit
... cat you might know it!" exclaimed Mrs. Bobbsey with a laugh." I guess they're all right. They can't have gone far. Probably they are on the other side of the street, looking at some bedraggled kitten." But a look up and down the street did not show Flossie and Freddie. By this time the auto was all ready to ...
— Bobbsey Twins in Washington • Laura Lee Hope
... has trifled with art and rifled A kitten of mine, ah me! That catgut slim was marauded from him: 'Tis the string ...
— Shapes of Clay • Ambrose Bierce
... we come back from the beach Freddie will have a regular menagerie," said Bert, with a laugh. "He had a kitten first, now he has a kitten and a duck, and next he'll have a kitten, a ...
— The Bobbsey Twins at the Seashore • Laura Lee Hope
... down the desire as something unnatural, and disrespectful to dear mamma, but of course if Primrose suggested it it was all right. Her face brightened visibly, and as to Daisy, she sat down and began to play with the kitten on the spot. ...
— The Palace Beautiful - A Story for Girls • L. T. Meade
... to each other, or the three Bohemian Marys in their long plush coats and caps, comporting themselves with a dignity that only made their eventful histories the more piquant. If he went to the hotel to see a traveling man on business, there was Tiny, arching her shoulders at him like a kitten. If he went into the laundry to get his collars, there were the four Danish girls, smiling up from their ironing-boards, with their white throats and their ...
— My Antonia • Willa Sibert Cather
... boy," broke in Amy eagerly from the corner, where she was playing with her kitten. "His name was Bertie Ross. He brought up the parcels, and we asked him in to get warm. He had no mittens, and his hands were almost frozen. And, oh, Papa, just think!—he said he never had any Christmas or ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1905 to 1906 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... bird here, which I never met with in the North, is the gnatcatcher, called by Audubon the blue-gray flycatching warbler. In form and manner it seems almost a duplicate of the catbird on a small scale. It mews like a young kitten, erects its tail, flirts, droops its wings, goes through a variety of motions when disturbed by your presence, and in many ways recalls its dusky prototype. Its color above is a light gray-blue, gradually fading till it becomes ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... lovely day of autumn the chase began. And the red deer and the red fox started from their covers; and the small rabbits stopped their kitten-play on the steep warrens of the Downs, and fled into their burrows; and birds whirred up in screaming coveys, and the kestrel hovered high and motionless on the watch. There was game in plenty, and many men were tempted and forgot the prize they sought. The hunt separated, ...
— Martin Pippin in the Apple Orchard • Eleanor Farjeon
... the close of an afternoon, a few days following the adventure of Henry Burns and Harvey in the mill. It revealed a girl, little, sturdy and of well-knit figure, though in whose childish face there was an underlying trace of shrewdness unusual in one so young; like a little wild creature, or a kitten that has found itself ...
— The Rival Campers Ashore - The Mystery of the Mill • Ruel Perley Smith
... Annie'?" he asked Cherry on one occasion. "You must have fed him a speed-ball, for I never saw a guy gear up so fast. Why, he was the darndest crape-hanger I ever met till you got him gingered up; he didn't have no more spirit than a sick kitten. Of course, he ain't what you'd call genial and expansive yet, but he's developed a remarkable burst of speed, and seems ...
— The Silver Horde • Rex Beach
... There you are!" said Mr. Henderson, lifting the boy in his arms, as easily as if he were a kitten, and putting him on ...
— The Young Acrobat of the Great North American Circus • Horatio Alger Jr.
... for Felix had pushed a slip of paper over to Alice, on which she read—"'Forget-me-not, ladybird, linnet, kitten." I don't think I ever saw a linnet. Isn't it ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... she added, "I kept wishing I could meet you, just to see your horrified face when you saw me sitting on my little sofa, with boxes and bundles all round me, a bird-cage on one side, a fishing basket, with a kitten's head popping in and out of the hole, on the other side, and jolly old Mr. Brown, in his blue frock, perched on a keg of apples in front. It was a lovely bright day, and I enjoyed the ride immensely, for we had all sorts ...
— An Old-fashioned Girl • Louisa May Alcott
... to render us unfit for the exercise of the useful and domestic virtues which depend greatly upon our not exalting our feelings above the temper of well-ordered and well-educated society."[16] He phrased the same matter differently when he said: "'I'd rather be a kitten and cry, Mew!' than write the best poetry in the world on condition of laying aside common-sense in the ordinary transactions and business of the world."[17] "He thought," said Lockhart, "that to spend some fair portion ...
— Sir Walter Scott as a Critic of Literature • Margaret Ball
... interrupted Euergetes, "to have learned from your unphilosophical favorite to express your indignation with extraordinary frankness; to-day however I am, as I have said, as gentle as a kitten—" ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... real romantic. That's the third deceased kitten I've seen to-night. They haven't only a two-foot tide in the Adriatic, and it stands ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 102, Jan. 2, 1892 • Various
... proud, Wee Peter trotted off to tell his chum, Nigger, the black kitten, all about his little joke. "What do you ...
— Wee Peter Pug - The Story of a Bit of Mischief and What Came of It • Ernest Aris
... Etheling was speaking quietly: "As the Lord of Baddeby says, King Edmund, it was I who stayed the boy's hand, and it was I also who fetched him into camp. I found him after the battle, bleeding his life out in the bushes, and I brought him in my arms, like a kitten, and dropped him down by my fire. Waking in the night and missing him, I traced him hither. As I have had all to do with him in the past, so, if you will grant that I may keep him, will I take his future upon me. ...
— The Ward of King Canute • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
... uncle Nathan, taking the youth's hand between both his plump palms, and smoothing it caressingly as he would have quieted a kitten, for he felt all the chill that was in her voice. Where else should our sister's child ...
— The Old Homestead • Ann S. Stephens
... uneasily, "as far as I can learn the man jumped out of the rowing boat as the launch came up on him. He tried to swim for it. He evidently knew how to swim, too;—but he was weak as a kitten. The detectives played him. When he was thoroughly ...
— The Spoilers of the Valley • Robert Watson
... her on to the bed, into which she rolled like a kitten, kissed her, and went back ...
— Five Nights • Victoria Cross
... ranchers shot at surveying parties and individual farmers or homeowners fought against having their particular piece of property covered with salt. The original plan had contemplated straight lines; eventually the band twisted and turned like a typewriter ribbon plagued by a kitten, avoiding not only natural obstacles, but the domains of those with ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... was then about eight years old, was sitting upon a stone outside of the gate, by the roadside, in a sort of corner that was formed between the wall and a great tree which was growing there. Malleville was employed in telling her kitten a story. ...
— Stuyvesant - A Franconia Story • Jacob Abbott
... names," she sighed, changing her position beneath the lace with the swift suppleness of a kitten. "And what luck hunting?" she asked, as she loosened the ribbon ...
— The Lady of Big Shanty • Frank Berkeley Smith
... mode. Alas for prose!— My vagrant fancies only rambled Back to the red-walled Rectory close, Where first my graceless boyhood gambolled, Climbed on the dial, teased the fish, And chased the kitten round the beeches, Till widening instincts made me wish For ...
— The Bed-Book of Happiness • Harold Begbie
... "A kitten." The train was carrying them on again, without any intruder to cut off the thread of their talk, except the guard, who put his head in at the window, and beamed a smile on Inna, as her caretaker; then ...
— The Heiress of Wyvern Court • Emilie Searchfield
... startled when she burst out with it. She could stand Miss Bogle and the dreadful dulness and loneliness of Rock Terrace no longer, she declared, not to speak of what might happen to her in the way of being turned into a kitten or a mouse or something, if the witch got really ...
— Peterkin • Mary Louisa Molesworth
... a-bed, fling it into the second story window of the house across the way; but let the kitten carefully down in a work-basket. Then draw out the bureau drawers, and empty their contents out of the back window; telling somebody below to upset the slop-barrel and rain-water hogshead at the same time. Of course, you will attend to the mirror. The further ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... over them. There were only five in the bed now, for Mary had taken up one and packed it in paper to carry with her. A big tear hopped down her nose and splashed into the middle of the yellow pansy, her favorite of all. It turned up its bright kitten-face just the same. None of them minded Mary's going away. Flowers are sometimes ...
— Nine Little Goslings • Susan Coolidge
... the poor kitten in my arms, she seems to feel being a prisoner so?" asked Faith, distressed for the pet she ...
— All Aboard - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry
... come back much later and put another pussy in from behind the portrait. I woke some time in the night, oh, hours after, because the moonlight was 'way across the room, and sitting in it, washing its face, was the prettiest little half-grown kitten. It was a perfect beauty, white with a plumy tail. I spoke to it very softly so as not to wake either of you, and it looked at me and purred but would not come. I watched it chase its tail for a little and then it jumped in a big chair and curled itself up to sleep. I suppose ...
— The Spanish Chest • Edna A. Brown
... a mother cat with a kitten" he muttered. "Damned if she wasn't kissin' the feller—an' him ...
— The Long Chance • Peter B. Kyne
... illustrate the two systems in a simple and homely way calculated to bring the idea within the grasp of the ignorant and unintelligent. We will suppose a case: take a lap-bred, house-fed, uneducated, inexperienced kitten; take a rugged old Tom that's scarred from stem to rudder-post with the memorials of strenuous experience, and is so cultured, so educated, so limitlessly erudite that one may say of him "all cat-knowledge is his province"; also, take a mouse. Lock the ...
— Is Shakespeare Dead? - from my Autobiography • Mark Twain
... masquerades in continued succession; and all in honor of, and to divert his royal highness, Prince Henry of Prussia, the famous brother of the present king. Yet his royal highness does not seem to be much diverted. He looks at them as an old cat looks at the gambols of a young kitten; or as one who has higher sport going on in his mind than the pastime of fiddling and dancing. He came here on pretense of a friendly visit to the empress; to have the happiness of waiting on so magnanimous ...
— The Empire of Russia • John S. C. Abbott
... Pigs, Cat Greeting Her Kitten, Barn-Yard of Hens and Roosters, Opera Singers with Guitar, Whistling with Guitar, Old Lady Singing with False Teeth, Cow and Calf, Harmonica with the Guitar, Arab Song, ...
— October Vagabonds • Richard Le Gallienne
... exhausted, having had nothing to eat for two days, except one rat, about the size of a kitten. Wilson was able to go forward; but his companions were very unwell, and began to wish ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 2 • David Collins
... representative of the hat which I hold in my hand. This visual experience I refer to its own appropriate touch thing, and not to another. If what looks like a beefsteak could really be a fork or a mountain or a kitten indifferently,—but I must not even finish the sentence, for the words "look like" and "could really be" lose all significance when we loosen the bond between appearances and the realities to ...
— An Introduction to Philosophy • George Stuart Fullerton
... necessary to be Bohemians in order to show it. The really big ones are always trying to be practical, like Sir Isaac Newton when he ordered a good-sized hole to be cut in his barn door for the cat, and a little one next it for the kitten. ...
— The Little City Of Hope - A Christmas Story • F. Marion Crawford
... the word passed around amongst them that she could be trusted to do them no harm. For the horse, whose soft nose Dorothy often gently stroked, told the cow of her kindness, and the cow told the dog, and the dog told the cat, and the cat told her black kitten, and the black kitten told the rabbit when one day they met ...
— Mother Goose in Prose • L. Frank Baum
... being made up of a succession of peaks. Her hair hung in a pigtail down her back, and grew in a deep point on her forehead; her finely-marked eyebrows were shaped like eaves, and her chin was for all the world like that of a playful kitten. Even the velvet trimming on her dress accentuated this peculiarity, as it zigzagged round the sleeves and neck. The hazel eyes were light and bright, and flitted from one figure to another with a suspicious twinkling; but nothing could have been more ...
— About Peggy Saville • Mrs. G. de Horne Vaizey
... we can't wish on the moon now; it's too late. And I don't want to wish, I'm so comfortable. Aren't you? Well, you needn't answer, then, and you needn't hold my hand." She had felt for a hand that avoided hers. With a sleepy, satisfied laugh, like a petted kitten purring, she settled herself again, with her head against an unresponsive shoulder, and pulled an unresponsive arm round ...
— The Wishing Moon • Louise Elizabeth Dutton
... "Adieu, my kitten. Love me always; be faithful; fidelity through thick and thin is one of the attributes of the Free Woman. Who is kissing ...
— Parisians in the Country - The Illustrious Gaudissart, and The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac
... get her out of that," said Mary briskly. "The tears, I mean, not the fondness. I'm very fond of you myself. Six years ago you were a charming kitten, and I used to enjoy being your 'visiting governess'—to say nothing of finding the guineas very handy while I was waiting to qualify. You're rather like a kitten still, one of those blue-eyed ones—Siamese, aren't ...
— The Secret of the Tower • Hope, Anthony
... know the man Shakespeare, you will find him usually in cap and bells. Jaques, Costard, Trinculo, Mercutio, are confessions, for into the mouths of these he puts his wisest maxims. Shakespeare dearly loved a fool, because he was one. He plays with truth as a kitten gambols with a ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great Philosophers, Volume 8 • Elbert Hubbard
... interposed the old man, vehemently. "Tom shall be a brigadier general if the war lasts one year more. I should feel like a whipped kitten if that ...
— The Soldier Boy; or, Tom Somers in the Army - A Story of the Great Rebellion • Oliver Optic
... themselves about Phemy, who was as playful and teasing as a pet kitten while they dressed her, but Steenie kept in the darkest corner, watching every thing, but offering no unneeded help. Without once looking or asking for him, never missing him in fact, Phemy climbed, with David's aid, into the gig beside the doctor, at once began talking to him, and never ...
— Heather and Snow • George MacDonald
... shaggy body as a sleeping box, and once he was observed to help that anxious tabby-mother with the toilet of her kittens by licking them carefully all over. At every lick of Rufus's huge prehensile tongue a kitten was lifted bodily into the air, only, however, to descend washed and unharmed to the ground. But out of doors, in the society of Flick, Rufus's whole nature seemed to change. He became a demon-exterminator of cats. Led on by his yelping ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 102, April 16, 1892 • Various
... nice as a fairy god-mother," said a gay voice, and Ruth turned suddenly to see standing in the doorway a plump, red-haired girl with a fuzzy black kitten ...
— Glenloch Girls • Grace M. Remick
... eulogies of the man. The poor mourned bitterly that he was gone, and even the newsboys were filled with regret over his taking away. In speaking of his parent, President Roosevelt once said: "I can remember seeing him going down Broadway, staid and respectable business man that he was, with a poor sick kitten in his coat pocket, which he had picked up in the street." Such a man could not but have a heart ...
— American Boy's Life of Theodore Roosevelt • Edward Stratemeyer
... so like a kitten, Persis, that you can't hardly help petting, that I put my arm around her. And I—" He cleared his throat, his eyes, fortunately for his resolution, fixed upon the floor. "Well, I might as well make ...
— Other People's Business - The Romantic Career of the Practical Miss Dale • Harriet L. Smith
... entered the room gingerly, and there, on the pillow of his bed, sprawled and whimpered a wee white kitten; not a jumpsome, frisky little beast, but a slug-like crawler with its eyes barely opened and its paws lacking strength or direction—a kitten that ought to have been in a basket with its mamma. Lone Sahib caught it by the scruff of its neck, handed it over to the sweeper ...
— Indian Tales • Rudyard Kipling
... at the window for some minutes after nurse's departure, then her quick eyes noticed a poor wretched little kitten mewing pitifully as she vainly tried to shelter herself from the violent blasts by crouching close ...
— Probable Sons • Amy Le Feuvre
... in his head. And the little William lies there, and for this I am to blame. We were schoolfellows in the Franciscan monastery, and were playing on that side of it where the Dussel flows between stone walls, and I said, 'William, fetch out the kitten that has just fallen in'—and merrily he went down on to the plank which lay across the brook, snatched the kitten out of the water, but fell in himself, and was dragged out dripping and dead. The kitten lived to a good old age. . . . Princes in that ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot
... sent word that I mustn't wear a bonnet, or think of such a thing; and she sent me down a fur mantle, made of white kitten-skins, I reckon, with little black tails dropping all over it—just the tips, which needn't have hurt the black kittens much, if it was all day to the white ones. So, when I come down, holding up my long skirts with one hand, and folding this fur across my innocent bosom, ...
— Phemie Frost's Experiences • Ann S. Stephens
... Doctor and Nurse. Many tiny beads—called pills—and several drops from a bottle out of the family medicine case had been thrust between the teeth of this unlucky creature, when the thought struck Helen that a living patient would be more fun than a doll. So she hunted up a half-grown kitten that belonged to her little ...
— Kristy's Rainy Day Picnic • Olive Thorne Miller
... the tom-cat standard of paternity, Dick Talbot-Lowry had a preference for one kitten more than another, that kitten ...
— Mount Music • E. Oe. Somerville and Martin Ross
... schooner was gambolling all around her anchor among the silver-tipped waves. Backing with a start of affected surprise at the sight of the strained cable, she pounced on it like a kitten, while the spray of her descent burst through the hawse-holes with the report of a gun. Shaking her head, she would say: "Well, I'm sorry I can't stay any longer with you. I'm going North," and would sidle off, halting suddenly ...
— "Captains Courageous" • Rudyard Kipling
... adding s to the singular, or, when euphony requires it, es; as, tree, trees; sun, suns; dish, dishes; box, boxes. Some retain the old plural form; as, ox, oxen; child, children; chick, chicken; kit, kitten. But habit has burst the barrier of old rules, and we now talk of chicks and chickens, kits and kittens. Oxen alone stands as a monument raised to the ...
— Lectures on Language - As Particularly Connected with English Grammar. • William S. Balch
... the cat is always the same; but what a number of mental conditions it expresses! I had a kitten whose gambols and liveliness entertained me greatly. I understood well, when it came up to me mewing, what the sound meant; sometimes the kitten wanted to come up and sleep in my lap; at other times ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 841, February 13, 1892 • Various
... what a joy that was to me, you who have whole shelves of books. But if you had been shut up for a long while in a great castle where there was no person who would speak to you, no book which you could read, not so much as a kitten or a fly to play with, and nothing to do, day after day, but wander about and admire curtains and statues, and a lady like a statue,—would you not be glad to find a book you could read, even Mother Goose? At first I hardly dared to open it, for I was afraid it might be in ...
— The Magician's Show Box and Other Stories • Lydia Maria Child
... whom I bought the steer. We had a hearty welcome. Ailie much taken with their stove and its oven, and curious about Canadian ways of housekeeping. Ruth was given a kitten. ...
— The Narrative of Gordon Sellar Who Emigrated to Canada in 1825 • Gordon Sellar
... gained the respect of a number of half-grown cats that were around the house. I wished to make them familiar to each other, so there would be less danger of their killing him. So I would take them both on my knee, when the bird would soon notice the kitten's eyes, and, leveling his bill as carefully as a marksman levels his rifle, he would remain so a minute, when he would dart his tongue into the cat's eye. This was held by the cats to be very mysterious: being struck in the ...
— Locusts and Wild Honey • John Burroughs
... village, her seventeenth year not yet quite completed, and herself and her village as unknown as if they had been on the other side of the globe. She had picked up a friendless wanderer somewhere and brought it home—a small gray kitten in a forlorn and starving condition—and had fed it and comforted it and got its confidence and made it believe in her, and now it was curled up in her lap asleep, and she was knitting a coarse stocking and thinking—dreaming—about what, one may never know. And now—the ...
— Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc - Volume 1 (of 2) • Mark Twain
... breast and hurrying with it, either to entrust it to somebody or to wrap it up in the safety of pen and ink while it was so warm. And when he got home he came on Lydia, sitting on the front steps, singing to herself and cuddling a kitten in the curve of her arm. Lydia with no cares, either of the house or her dancing class or Jeff's future, but given up to the idleness of a summer afternoon, was one of the most pleasing sights ever put into the hollow of a lovely world. Jeffrey saw her, as he was to see everything now, through ...
— The Prisoner • Alice Brown
... not noble. A kitten jumping on to the table moves him, not because he sees in that gesture a symbol of human aspiration or of feminine instability, the spirit of youth or the pathos of the brute creation, nor yet because ...
— Since Cezanne • Clive Bell
... Ardalion in the corridor; 'Hi! apprentice! Come here!' A boy of six came up, grimed all over with soot like a kitten, with a shaved head, perfectly bald in places, in a torn, striped smock, and huge goloshes on his bare feet. 'You take the gentleman, you know where,' said Ardalion, addressing the 'apprentice,' and pointing to me. 'And you, sir, when you ...
— A Desperate Character and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... fond of animals—that was always one of his good traits—and he one day found a little stray white kitten somewhere about the place, and brought it into the room where I sat alone at work. He began grimly to play with it. Just then Janet opened the door. She gave a delighted exclamation, and, coming eagerly forward, smilingly held out her arms for the kitten. She was dressed for the evening, and the ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 5, May, 1891 • Various
... her shrinking, wilted young figure was swayed backward out of reach of the huge finger which the longshoreman was shaking before her eyes. Beside her, crouched down in his chair, was old Grandpa, peering out between the folds of his blanket like a frightened kitten. ...
— The Rich Little Poor Boy • Eleanor Gates
... Bedouin, who danced for a few moments like a playful kitten, Edith felt sure she was going alone, and abandoning herself to her delight she flew down the carriage road at a terrific speed, which startled even Victor, great as was his faith in his young lady's skill. But Edith had the utmost confidence in ...
— Darkness and Daylight • Mary J. Holmes
... a tense, vibratory tone. "Speak to me!"—and she glowered upon him. "I am no kitten, like Amy. I am no tame tabby, like Carolyn, sending out written invitations. Throw a few poor words ...
— Bertram Cope's Year • Henry Blake Fuller
... sake!" exclaimed Bungle, sitting up and looking interested. "A Pink Kitten? How absurd! ...
— The Patchwork Girl of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... anything but save your life. I wouldn't let a little thing like that trouble me if I were you. You've been doing something to that bull, or he'd never have used you like that. Why, Emperor is as gentle as a young kitten. He wouldn't hurt a fly unless the fly happened to bite him too hard. Phil, did you see that ...
— The Circus Boys Across The Continent • Edgar B. P. Darlington
... an inherent conviction that when the hole is big enough for the cat, no smaller one at the side is needed for the kitten. They don't really care for "Glimpses" of this, or "Gleanings" of that, or "Footsteps" to the other—but would rather stretch and pull, and get on tiptoe to reach the sweeter fruit above them, than confine themselves to the crabs which grow to ...
— A Mother's List of Books for Children • Gertrude Weld Arnold
... as the swinging slackened, she still took no notice of the child, who would have run, like a wild kitten, if she had gone after her. She called Desire, and plunged into a closet ...
— Real Folks • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... sight, the fourth Fuzzy struggling under one arm and a little kitten, black with a white face, peeping over the crook of his other elbow. He was too stunned with disappointment to look at it ...
— Little Fuzzy • Henry Beam Piper
... this front side a door arranged so as to fall open when a wooden button inside is turned from a vertical to a horizontal position, we shall have means to observe such [learning by trial and error]. A kitten, three to six months old, if put in this box when hungry, a bit of fish being left outside, reacts as follows: It tries to squeeze through between the bars, claws at the bars, and at loose things in and out of the ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman
... ashamed if she'd a knowed how she wound up. She was the best rider of her time, everybody says so, but she cashed in by fallin' off a skate what didn't have no more ginger 'an a kitten. If you can beat that?" She gazed at him with her lips pressed tightly together, evidently expecting some startling expression ...
— Polly of the Circus • Margaret Mayo
... every house in Kittery its cat, but every house seems to have its half-dozen cats, large, little, old, and young; of divers colors, tending mostly to a dark tortoise-shell. With a whole ocean inviting to the tragic rite, I do not believe there is ever a kitten drowned in Kittery; the illimitable sea rather employs itself in supplying the fish to which "no cat's averse," but which the cats of Kittery demand to have cooked. They do not like raw fish; they say it plainly, and they prefer to have the ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... been roused in her, but I found her just the same as she was every day, wholly taken up with the clock and dinner, while he, on the contrary, appeared really in love, and tried to rouse his wife's spirits and affections by little endearments, and such caresses as one bestows on a kitten. He could think of ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume III (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... idea was absurd. She was so totally ignorant of the geography of the desert. She had had no more idea of where she was going than a blind kitten. He reminded ...
— There was a King in Egypt • Norma Lorimer
... when she saw her patient on her legs again, making friends with the last new kitten of the old cat, "you will not mind being left alone, will you? It is only for the ...
— Countess Kate • Charlotte M. Yonge
... army, and their world did not extend beyond it. There were three of them—Laura, the eldest, beautiful, intelligent, and accomplished, with a strong leaning toward Ritualism; Juna, innocent, childish, and kitten-like; and Louie, the universal favorite, absurd, whimsical, fantastic, a desperate tease, and as pretty and graceful as it is possible for any girl to be. An aunt did the maternal for them, kept house, chaperoned, duennaed, and generally overlooked ...
— The Lady of the Ice - A Novel • James De Mille
... commonplaces that had on a previous occasion excited her cousin's disdain. Opposite her sat her mother, Lady Fletcher, a perfect model of the well-bred English matron, while Opal Ledoux, in the daintiest and fluffiest of summer costumes, was curled up like a kitten in a corner of the window-seat, apparently engrossed in a book, but in reality watching ...
— One Day - A sequel to 'Three Weeks' • Anonymous
... The kitten sleeps upon the hearth; The crickets long have ceased their mirth; There's nothing stirring in the house Save one wee, hungry, nibbling mouse; ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 1 (of 4) • Various
... time enough. Let her enjoy life while she can. I am not in favor of making a young kitten behave like an old tabby; every creature in nature is joyful and frolicsome while it is young. She is as tall and as straight as any of her friends of the same age, and looks more healthy; she will ...
— Colonel Thorndyke's Secret • G. A. Henty
... "Yes, it might have tided him over," she said. "He wasn't handsome, nor impressive, of course, nor anything like that, but he always spoke so nicely to people on the street. I'm sure he never harmed even a kitten, poor soul!" ...
— Gentle Julia • Booth Tarkington
... door kind o' sudden, an' there my Katherine sat, As cozy as any kitten along with a friendly cat; An' Tom was dreadful near her—his arm on the back of her chair— And lookin' as happy and cheerful as if there was rain ...
— Farm Ballads • Will Carleton
... birds, cats were not allowed in the house; but from a friend in London I received a present of a white kitten—Williamina—and she and her numerous offspring had a happy home at "Gad's Hill." She became a favorite with all the household, and showed particular devotion to my father. I remember on one occasion when she had presented us with a family of kittens, ...
— My Father as I Recall Him • Mamie Dickens
... do not mean that way; I mean the way a kitten will pretend that a ball is another kitten, will lie on the floor with the ball between its paws, will kick it with its hind feet and paw at it with its forefeet and yet not really ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White
... at Lucy, and his expression suddenly changed. The flame beneath leapt to sight. He caught her arm, dragged her out of Dora's hold, and shook her as one might shake a kitten. ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... "The best of women," ran a saying of Batty Langton's, "if you watch 'em, are always practising; even the youngest, as a kitten plays with ...
— Lady Good-for-Nothing • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... He has a gay bit of gumption in him, has Ray. It'll be no kitten play to catch hold on him, and they know ...
— The Shadow of a Crime - A Cumbrian Romance • Hall Caine
... was in my room, and my two little girls, aged six and eight, were standing at the window watching a kitten in the garden, when suddenly the ...
— Animal Ghosts - Or, Animal Hauntings and the Hereafter • Elliott O'Donnell
... The kitten's tone was airy, The butterfly would scoff; When there came along a fairy Who whisked his ...
— The Jingle Book • Carolyn Wells
... folded the blanket and restored the corner seat to its accustomed appearance of luxury. He looked about the room, picked up the gray kitten sleeping contentedly on the floor and settled it on the red cushion with anxious attention ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... about eight brought me her kitten and wanted to give it me. I explained to her that it would not be very comfortable tied with pink ribbons to my carrier. She gravely assented, sat on my knee, told me I was very dirty, and commanded me to kill heaps and heaps of Germans. She didn't ...
— Adventures of a Despatch Rider • W. H. L. Watson
... needed re-creation and that here she might find it. The radiant sky, the warm sun and the freedom of the coming day and of many coming desert days, filled her heart with an almost childish sensation. She felt younger than she had felt for years, and even foolishly innocent, like a puppy dog or a kitten. Her thick black hair, unbound, fell in a veil round her strong, active body, and she had the rare consciousness that behind that other more mysterious veil her soul was to-day a less unfit companion for its mate than it had been since ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens
... the back of his neck. If the squirrel proved to be a young one, they would put on a collar and little chain, that they had always ready, and keep him to train for a pet. Once Paul caught a gray squirrel kitten so small and young that he had to feed it on milk and crushed walnuts. He called it May. The tiny creature lived in his pocket and desk and shared his bed at night. It would sit on the off page of his book whilst he studied and comb ...
— The Story of Paul Boyton - Voyages on All the Great Rivers of the World • Paul Boyton
... Susannah was troubled by so strong a sense of emotion that she desired nothing so much as relief. It seemed to her that the emotion was not so much in herself as in the others, or like an influence in the room pressing upon them all. At length a kitten that had been lying by the hearth got up as if disturbed by the same influence, and, walking round the room, rubbed its fur against Ephraim's knee. She saw the start run through his whole nervous frame. Opening his eyes, he put down his hand and stroked it. Susannah ...
— The Mormon Prophet • Lily Dougall
... day when my husband was sitting at the receipt of customs, for he had obtained a modest appointment, I sat by a little desk, where my portfolio lay open. A pen was near, which I took up, and it began to write, wildly like "Planchette" upon her board, or like a kitten clutching a ball of yarn fearfully. But doing it again—I could not say why—my mind began upon a festival in my childhood, which my mother arranged for several poor old people at Thanksgiving. I finished ...
— The Morgesons • Elizabeth Stoddard
... as one in this congenial labor, then there was the brisk walk home to meet the children at a light lunch, and look after baby. She found the little fellow supremely contented with his new quarters, having made loving advances to a gray kitten who, though suspicious of his favors, was too meek to escape them; and Mrs. Hoffstott declared he had been "so goot as nefar vas!" The older children were voluble over their school, Morton talking most of the great, cheerful rooms, ...
— Sara, a Princess • Fannie E. Newberry
... turned out that in the midst of their games to-day, they had caught sight of her white coat in her dusky retreat. Though she would rather not have been found, Madam took the discovery calmly, and made no difficulty, even when Dennis softly put in his hand and drew out the black kitten. She knew the children well, and was quite sure they would do no harm, so she lay lazily blinking her green eyes, and even purred gently with pleasure ...
— Black, White and Gray - A Story of Three Homes • Amy Walton
... of all," said Emlyn, "we had to hide in the cellars when they fired at us—and broke all the windows, and a shot killed my poor dear little kitten because she wouldn't stay down with me. And we couldn't get any water, except by going out at night; young Master George was wounded at the well. And they only gave us a tiny bit of dry bread and salt meat every day, and it made little Ralph sick and he died. And at last there was ...
— Under the Storm - Steadfast's Charge • Charlotte M. Yonge
... had received a message to say that her eldest kitten was ill with chilblains on his feet and was in danger ...
— Pinocchio - The Tale of a Puppet • C. Collodi
... pause. Isabel walked over to one of the long mirrors and studied her own vigorously handsome image, then turned her head and regarded Flavia with the perfect complacency and mischievous malice of a young kitten. ...
— From the Car Behind • Eleanor M. Ingram
... They turned up their heads sidewise and blinked at the sky, all blue and calm and infinite, with white clouds sailing over it like swans on a limpid lake; and one stood up on his hind legs and reached up both paws, like a kitten, to pull down a cloud to play with. Then the wind stirred a feather near them, the white feather of a ptarmigan which they had eaten yesterday, and forgetting the big world and the sail and the cloud, the cubs took to playing with the feather, chasing and worrying and tumbling over ...
— Northern Trails, Book I. • William J. Long |
