Peter Gethers > Quotes

“The thing that eventually strikes you about the death of someone you love is the permanence. When that hits, there is an overpowering sense of loneliness and aloneness. Those wounds do not remain raw, not forever, but they do remain.”
― Peter Gethers, The Cat Who'll Live Forever: The Final Adventures of Norton, the Perfect Cat, and His Imperfect Human

“People happily kill other people in the name of everything from a god to a country to an overly developed sense of annoyance when someone cuts across two lanes on a freeway without signaling. Cats will, on occasion, kill other cats but for the most part they are content to puff up their furr, yowl like banshees, and rip the occassional ear off - and all this is usually done for the sake of food or protecting their own territory (which may not be condonable but it is at least rational) .”
― Peter Gethers, A Cat Abroad

“Nancy took her tiny little baby and held him down toward Norton.
"Look Norton," she said, "This is a baby."
Norton looked up at Charlie, took him in, and sort of nodded as if assimilating the information.
There was a very long pause, and then I heard Nancy gulp.
"You've finally done it," she said to me.
"What?" I wanted to know.
"Most mothers would have said, 'Look, Charlie, this is a cat.'"
I started to laugh.
"Not with Norton," I said.”
― Peter Gethers, The Cat Who Went to Paris

“Families are delicate things. Who's to say why or how we end up the way we do or become who we are? Parents make mistakes. A child's job is to overcome those mistakes. We can blame our parents - and our own past - for only so long before it becomes an excuse and a crutch. That's my position on family dynamics and I'm sticking to it. Sometimes you just have to assume responsibility for your own life and grow up.”
― Peter Gethers, My Mother's Kitchen: Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner, and the Meaning of Life

“My dad was wise enough to see what no one else could see about my mother at the time, including my mother: she was restless. She was ready to evolve. It was time, at the age of fifty-three, for her to become a different person. My dad loved the person she'd been for her first fifty-three years. He was secure enough, comfortable enough in his own skin, and confident enough in my mother that he knew he would also love whoever she became for the rest of their time together. And that the new Judy would love him right back.”
― Peter Gethers, My Mother's Kitchen: Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner, and the Meaning of Life