My Beloved Monster Quotes

“or staring in return, at least not for too long, as staring is used by both hunter and hunted during predatory behavior.”
― Caleb Carr, My Beloved Monster: Masha, the Half-wild Rescue Cat Who Rescued Me

“Smiling at this thought, I leaned down to put my face near hers, but not so near that she couldn’t see me (at very close range—closer than, say, six or eight inches—cats’ eyes lose some of their focus).”
― Caleb Carr, My Beloved Monster: Masha, the Half-wild Rescue Cat Who Rescued Me

“they found sixty-odd cats struggling to survive in what was supposed to be their home.”
― Caleb Carr, My Beloved Monster: Masha, the Half-wild Rescue Cat Who Rescued Me

“And God created Cat to be a companion to Adam; and Cat would not obey Adam; and when Adam gazed into Cat’s eyes, he was reminded that he was not the Supreme Being; and Adam learned humility; and God was pleased.”
― Caleb Carr, My Beloved Monster: Masha, the Half-wild Rescue Cat Who Rescued Me

“They entered our lives opportunistically, because our food attracted their prey (primarily rodents and birds) and because they enjoyed rooting through our garbage for edible bits.”
― Caleb Carr, My Beloved Monster: Masha, the Half-wild Rescue Cat Who Rescued Me

“Cats, conversely, trust conditionally from the start, said condition being that their impression of you—which they take whether you want them to or not, which is beyond human falsification, and which must be periodically renewed—is positive.”
― Caleb Carr, My Beloved Monster: Masha, the Half-wild Rescue Cat Who Rescued Me

“cats’ eyes are not at their best in bright light. Their vision truly comes alive at middle to long distances, and especially, of course, in the near-dark (they are technically crepuscular, or most active in the hours just before complete sunset and dawn), all of which contributes to their sometimes “crazed” nighttime activities”
― Caleb Carr, My Beloved Monster: Masha, the Half-wild Rescue Cat Who Rescued Me

“Such awful places and the people who create them out of some delusional sense of caring are not uncommon (more’s the human shame), but this case had been extreme by any standards:”
― Caleb Carr, My Beloved Monster: Masha, the Half-wild Rescue Cat Who Rescued Me

“I’d finally gotten ready, even anxious, to adopt another cat, and it’d taken long months of mourning for me to reach that point: my last companion, Suki, had, after four years of unexpected but very close cohabitation, been claimed by the cruelly short life expectancy (just four to five years) of indoor-outdoor felines, especially those in wildernesses as remote as the one we inhabited. In fact, before encountering me and deciding that I was a human she could trust, Suki had lived on her own for two years and raised at least one litter of kittens in the wild, and so had beaten the odds admirably; but her disappearance had nonetheless been a terrible blow,”
― Caleb Carr, My Beloved Monster: Masha, the Half-wild Rescue Cat Who Rescued Me

“I can only say that the experience of being a person alone with a cat for so long and in such wild country depends to some extent on the person, but far, far more on the individual cat. And in Masha was embodied a very rare animal indeed: a cat who expanded the limits of courage, caring, and sacrifice. Think that’s beyond a cat? Think again.”
― Caleb Carr, My Beloved Monster: Masha, the Half-wild Rescue Cat Who Rescued Me

“Yes, she was a cat; but if you are tempted, even for an instant, to use any such phrase as “just a cat,” I can only hope that you will read on, and discover how that “mere” cat not only ruled her untamed world, but brought life-affirming purpose to my own.”
― Caleb Carr, My Beloved Monster: Masha, the Half-wild Rescue Cat Who Rescued Me

“And ultimately what mattered most was not the maladies and the hurts but the fact that we were there for each other, always and at every possible moment, during and after them.”
― Caleb Carr, My Beloved Monster: Masha, the Half-wild Rescue Cat Who Rescued Me

“they don’t generally like being stared”
― Caleb Carr, My Beloved Monster: Masha, the Half-wild Rescue Cat Who Rescued Me

“Whatever the case, such attempts were becoming steadily more unnecessary, though I wasn’t about to stop her: minute by minute she became more insistent, her tactics eventually expanding to include several soft, affectionate bites that were not really painful, just her acknowledgment that our fascination was mutual and that we had business to transact. Then she would hide from sight briefly, peer out to fix my location, almost smiling (she had a slight overbite that caused her muzzle to exaggerate the perpetual “cat’s grin” that nearly every feline possesses), and shoot over to do the same from another spot. Or she would puff out her chest, white at its center, as she sat up straight and turned to glance back at me, then quickly look away again.”
― Caleb Carr, My Beloved Monster: Masha, the Half-wild Rescue Cat Who Rescued Me

“Now this process was happening again, as the shash-ing sound that seemed to so delight the Siberian began to take on a definite form, one that fit both phonetically and with her cited heritage: Masha.”
― Caleb Carr, My Beloved Monster: Masha, the Half-wild Rescue Cat Who Rescued Me

“Most so-called domestic cats, though, have thinner tails than this gymnast’s: whatever Siberians were, I thought, they must have been a fairly recent addition to the domestic family.”
― Caleb Carr, My Beloved Monster: Masha, the Half-wild Rescue Cat Who Rescued Me

“During both predation and defense and ever since their earliest decision to live among us, it has helped them determine not only what potential prey and dangers are about, but which humans they will and will not trust or feel affinity toward.”
― Caleb Carr, My Beloved Monster: Masha, the Half-wild Rescue Cat Who Rescued Me

“when their mother kicks them out and on their own, which in the wild occurs at only four to five weeks.”
― Caleb Carr, My Beloved Monster: Masha, the Half-wild Rescue Cat Who Rescued Me

“that their mothers use to lift them when they are kittens (and that some humans, even some veterinary assistants, mistakenly believe they can grab to control and even lift a grown cat harmlessly, when in fact cats find it uncomfortable and cause, sometimes, for retaliation).”
― Caleb Carr, My Beloved Monster: Masha, the Half-wild Rescue Cat Who Rescued Me

“(If it seems odd that I don’t use the word “pet,” I can only say that I’ve always found it a diminutive behind which lurk a thousand forms of abuse.)”
― Caleb Carr, My Beloved Monster: Masha, the Half-wild Rescue Cat Who Rescued Me

“But cats understand several key things of which writers’ lives are made: stress, focus, and a lonely persistence in the face of emotional and/or physical torment. All of these are central elements of feline and writerly consciousness and experience; and it’s never surprised me that so many writers have chosen cats as companions.”
― Caleb Carr, My Beloved Monster: Masha, the Half-wild Rescue Cat Who Rescued Me

“but leaping onto the back of the couch so that she could get a more complete impression of me by placing those big forelegs and paws on my head as she chewed at a small clump of hair (a further chemical assessment performed by the Jacobson’s organ).”
― Caleb Carr, My Beloved Monster: Masha, the Half-wild Rescue Cat Who Rescued Me

“Conducted through not only the nose but also the Jacobson’s, or vomeronasal, organ in and above the palate (which they access by way of the Flehmen response, during which they open and breathe through their mouths in a distinct way that is almost like a snarl by isn’t one), this ability is chemically complex”
― Caleb Carr, My Beloved Monster: Masha, the Half-wild Rescue Cat Who Rescued Me

“Then I slowly closed my eyes and reopened them several times: the “slow blink” that cats take as a sign of friendship.”
― Caleb Carr, My Beloved Monster: Masha, the Half-wild Rescue Cat Who Rescued Me

“feline cubs and kittens have one of the steepest learning curves in Nature. From weaning through their earliest weeks they are forever studying and observing their surroundings, along with modeling their elders and experimenting when on their own.”
― Caleb Carr, My Beloved Monster: Masha, the Half-wild Rescue Cat Who Rescued Me

“Up close, her big, brave stare took on an air of searching insistence, which only made it more expressive. Indeed, it was one of the most communicative gazes I’d ever seen in a cat, a look facilitated by the structure of her face: the eyes were oriented fully forward, like a big cat’s rather than a domestic’s, and seemed to comprehend everything she was studying—especially me—only too well.”
― Caleb Carr, My Beloved Monster: Masha, the Half-wild Rescue Cat Who Rescued Me

“After all, when you live at the foot of a particularly severe mountain called Misery that is riddled with bear dens, coyote packs, bloodthirsty giant weasels called fishers, and various other predatory fauna, it’s all too easy to sense how “red in tooth and claw” Nature can really be—especially when the temperature hits thirty below and the snow starts coming in three-foot installments.”
― Caleb Carr, My Beloved Monster: Masha, the Half-wild Rescue Cat Who Rescued Me