Quotes & Sayings About Cats And Birds

He likes you," Miss Dove said, sounding surprised.
"Yes," Harry answered with an unhappy sigh. He had long ago accepted the fact that cats adored him. The reason, of course, was because both God and cats had the same perverse sense of humor. When the animal buried its claws in his thigh and began to knead with happy abandon, he set his jaw and bore it. "Mr. Pigeon? Rather fitting for you to choose that name, Miss Dove. Both birds, you know. — Laura Lee Guhrke

The Americas were a great laboratory of evolutionary experimentation, a place where animals and plants unknown in Africa and Asia had evolved and thrived. But no longer. Within 2,000 years of the Sapiens' arrival, most of these unique species were gone. According to current estimates, within that short interval, North America lost thirty-four out of its forty-seven genera of large mammals. South America lost fifty out of sixty. The sabre-tooth cats, after flourishing for more than 30 million years, disappeared, and so did the giant ground sloths, the oversized lions, native American horses, native American camels, the giant rodents and the mammoths. Thousands of species of smaller mammals, reptiles, birds and even insects and parasites also became extinct (when the mammoths died out, all species of mammoth ticks followed them to oblivion). — Yuval Noah Harari

Most people look at cats and think what a life - all we do is lie around in the sun, never having to lift a finger. But cats' lives aren't that idyllic. Cats are powerless, weak little creatures that injure easily. We don't have shells like turtles, nor wings like birds. We can't burrow into the ground like moles or change colors like a chameleon. The world has no idea how many cats are injured every day, how many of us meet a miserable end. I happen to be lucky enough to live with the Tanabes in a warm and friendly family, the children treat me well, and I've got everything I need. But even my life isn't always easy. When it comes to strays, though, they have a very tough time of it. — Haruki Murakami

In the early years of the Uprising, we survived on one meal a day of horse meat and soup, but by the end we ate only dried peas, dogs, cats and birds. — Diane Ackerman

When his father asked why A wasn't apple or B wasn't bird or C wasn't cat, young Ambrose explained that things didn't always have to be the way you'd expect. Everybody does apples and birds and cats, he said, and it's boring to do what everybody else does. — C.S. Richardson

The house-cat is a four-legged quadruped, the legs as usual being at the corners. It is what is sometimes called a tame animal, though it feeds on mice and birds of prey. Its colours are striped, it does not bark, but breathes through its nose instead of its mouth. Cats also mow, which you all have heard. Cats have nine liveses, but which is seldom wanted in this country, coz' of Christianity. Cats eat meat and most anythink speshuelly where you can't afford. That is all about cats.
(From a schoolboy's essay, 1903.) — Helen Exley

Hawaii once had a rat problem. Then, somebody hit upon a brilliant solution. import mongooses from India. Mongooses would kill the rats. It worked. Mongooses did kill the rats. Mongooses also killed chickens, young pigs, birds, cats, dogs, and small children. There have been reports of mongooses attacking motorbikes, power lawn mowers, golf carts, and James Michener. in Hawaii now, there are as many mongooses as there once were rats. Hawaii had traded its rat problem for a mongoose problem. Hawaii was determined nothing like that would ever happen again.
How could Leigh-Cheri draw for Gulietta the appropriate analogy between Hawaii's rodents and society at large? Society had a crime problem. It hired cops to attack crime. Now society has a cop problem. — Tom Robbins

From birds she learned how to sing; from cats she learned a form of dangerous independence. — Salman Rushdie

Women are still cats and birds. Or at the best, cows. — Friedrich Nietzsche

Isn't man an amazing animal? He kills wildlife - birds, kangaroos, deer, all kinds of cats, coyotes, beavers, groundhogs, mice, foxes, and dingoes - by the millions in order to protect his domestic animals and their feed. Then he kills domestic animals by the billions and eats them. This in turn kills man by the million, because eating all those animals leads to degenerative - and fatal - health conditions like heart disease, kidney disease, and cancer. So then man tortures and kills millions more animals to look for cures for these diseases. Elsewhere, millions of other human beings are being killed by hunger and malnutrition because food they could eat is being used to fatten domestic animals. Meanwhile, some people are dying of sad laughter at the absurdity of man, who kills so easily and so violently, and once a year sends out a card praying for 'Peace on Earth. — C. David Coats

Hey. Hey, stop that, now. Uncle Drake is a nice man." He held Maggie, patting her while Jenny and Christian looked at their sister like she was crazy.
Drake looked like he was facing down the worst thug imaginable.
"We're a little sensitive."
"About cookies or cops?"
"Cookies. Spiders. Dogs. Cats. Birds. Balloons. Semi trucks. Caterpillars ... — Sean Michael

If the trees and the plants are brothers, if the birds are my sisters, then cats are truly my kin. — Andrew Miller

In Nepal, the phenomenon is reversed. Time is a stick of incense that burns without being consumed. One day can seem like a week; a week, like months. Mornings stretch out and crack their spines with the yogic impassivity of house cats. Afternoons bulge with a succulent ripeness, like fat peaches. There is time enough to do everything - write a letter, eat breakfast, read the paper, visit a shrine or two, listen to the birds, bicycle downtown to change money, buy postcards, shop for Buddhas - and arrive home in time for lunch. — Jeff Greenwald

Bast crouched down and began making weird chittering noises. Uh-oh. She was imitating birds. I'd seen enough cats do this when they were stalking. Suddenly my own obituary flashed in my head: Carter Kane, 14, tragically died in Paris wen he was eaten by his sister's cat, Muffin. — Rick Riordan

Did St. Francis preach to the birds? Whatever for? If he really liked birds he would have done better to preach to the cats. — Rebecca West

Just as a snowflake
went on to feed a puddle that filled a stream and then the river, the
pumpkin patch is a gathering of molecules from my old goats, chickens,
and cats, feeding the underworld of dirt creatures. And somewhere, my
father's ashes mingle with birds, air, and sea. — Katherine Dunn

We would not have hurt the child, even if she is our natural enemy. Nor would we have hurt you, if it could be helped. Finn was killed by a male cat, and in exchange for that information, we also agreed to try to remove the female cats from your encampment before the true melee begins.
Melee?! Were these ninja birds? Green Berets with feathers? — Rachel Vincent

There was no way I could explain that it had all happened so fast, that I wasn't smiling away at the cats chewing the birds. It was that my happiness about the sweet peas and the finches hadn't had time to fade. As — Lucia Berlin

Cats kill far more birds than men. Why don't you have a slogan: 'Kill a cat and save a bird?' — Prince Philip

This sound, which like all music--indeed, like all pleasure--I had been numbly unresponsive to for months, pierced my heart like a dagger, and in a flood of swift recollection I thought of all the joys the house had known: the children who had rushed through its rooms, the festivals, the love and work, the honestly earned slumber, the voices and the nimble commotion, the perennial tribe of cats and dogs and birds, "laughter and ability and Sighing, And Frocks and Curls." All this I realized was more than I could ever abandon, even as what I had set out so deliberately to do was more than I could inflict on those memories, and upon those, so close to me, with whom the memories were bound. And just as powerfully I realized I could not commit this desecration on myself. — William Styron

He regarded Huginn as only slightly more dangerous than most pets, in that he understood why people had pets but harbored the paranoia they would one day eat their owners. True, it kept Eliot from even having a pet larger than his fist, but it also kept him from being kibble. — Thomm Quackenbush

No, child," Nona said. "We were victims of the faeries' pride and greed."
"Victims? Sorry, but most of you don't seem very victimish to me. What about hags, and fossegrims, and redcaps, and all the other sharp-toothed nasties" - I looked pointedly at the dragon - "in your group? I don't feel very bad for anything that's spent all those centuries preying on innocent people."
"It makes sense," Arianna said, her voice soft but thoughtful.
"What?"
"When you introduce an alien species into a new environment, it has to adapt or die out. And usually the way it adapts it by preying on the native species. Look at the dodo birds. They were fine until people came to their island with cats and dogs and pigs, then they became prey."
"You do realize you just compared our entire race to dodo birds."
She shrugged. "If they were never meant to be here in the first place, it's not their fault they had to become predators."
"Thank you, Animal Planet. — Kiersten White

[on going to Sunday school:] It looks like rain, and I hope it will rain cats and dogs and hammers and pitchforks and silver sugar spoons and hay ricks and paper-covered novels and picture frames and rag carpets and toothpicks and skating rinks and birds of paradise and roof gardens and burdocks and French grammars before Sunday school time. — Edna St. Vincent Millay

There are so many things to grieve ... All the dogs & cats & birds & snakes we have loved & lost, & old lovers, but what else? ... it took me forever to see that one of them was my own daughter, my baby, a young woman I thought of only as a girl, a child, & there she was, suddenly a woman, & I felt this ache gnaw at me as if I hadn't eaten in a year ... I stood there watching my daughter gesture & move & laugh with the grace of a grown-up, & I just started crying like a baby. It wasn't unlike the same type of sorrow we all feel when we realize something we once had that was very precious is not longer there. That it is forever lost, changed, deceased. Like a baby, gone, except in your memory ... My own daughter is now a woman. I get it. Another passage, another form of loss, another reason to grieve, another part of this life process. — Kris Radish

So talked a while with Sarr about his cats - the usual subject of conversation, especially because, now that summer's coming, they're bringing in dead things every night. Field mice, moles, shrews, birds, even a little garter snake. They don't eat them, just lay them out on the porch for the Poroths to see - sort of an offering, I guess. — H.P. Lovecraft

I am a huge animal lover. Growing up, my mother and I rescued countless animals - dogs, cats, birds, rabbits, even a turtle. I have been accused of caring more about animals than I do about people. — Amanda Schull

He was thirty-six years old, and six foot three. He spoke English to people and French to cats, and Latin to the birds. He had once nearly killed himself trying to read and ride a horse at the same time. — Katherine Rundell

There was once a country ruled by a king and queen who loved different things. The king loved cats and the queen loved birds. And just as cats and birds never get along, so it was that the king and queen never got along. And everyone in the country suffered as a result. In short, it was not a very pretty situation. — Kristin Kladstrup

I always see to the dogs first and leave the cats and the occasional birds and rabbits and hamsters for later. It isn't that I play favorites, it's just that dogs are needier than other pets. Leave a dog alone for very long and it'll start going a little nuts. Cats, on the other hand, try to give you the impression that they didn't even notice you were gone. Oh, were you out? they'll say, I didn't notice. Then they'll raise their tails to show you their little puckered anuses and walk away. — Blaize Clement

Redford had read somewhere that cats brought their owners dead birds, rodents, and their own toys because they were trying to teach the stupid humans how to hunt, like they did with their own kittens. From the amount of toys Knievel had brought to him, the cat thought he was absolutely useless. — Robin Saxon

She left the room, with her black-and-white kitty, Ruff, Elizabeth, Naiad and Persephone- a spotted gray-and-white shorthair- following on her heels in hopes of getting breakfast. As for her other two cats, she knew they must be out hunting rodents and birds rather than waiting to go down to the kitchens with everyone else.
Burr and old Henry, who had climbed with a stiff gait out of his basket, joined the furry entourage, tails wagging and tongues lolling as they descended the stairs. The Scotties were probably asleep in the nursery, happy to wait to see what tidbits the children would sneak them during their breakfast in another hour or two. — Tracy Anne Warren

THERE IS ONE MORE POINT to be made about animal minds and evolution. Evolution is not a progressive force. Although it was once thought that there was a scale of nature or a Great Chain of Being, with all the forms of life ascending in some orderly, preordained fashion - from jellyfish to fish to birds to dogs and cats to us - this is not the case. We are not the culmination of all these "lesser" beings; they are not lesser and we are not the pinnacle of evolution. — Virginia Morell