The Aeronaut's Windlass (The Cinder Spires, #1)

by Jim Butcher

It is obvious. You should trust a wiser head than your own.” “You aren’t any older than I am,” she countered. “I am cat,” Rowl said smugly, “which means I have made better use of my time.”

“I know all of those words, and yet when strung together like that I have no idea what they mean.”

Rowl let out a quiet sound, an expression of pure emotion Bridget had heard only a few times in her life, when a cat was impressed but did not wish to acknowledge the fact.

“It’s a tradition,” Grimm said. “Were traditions rational, they’d be procedures.”