The Big New Yorker Book of Cats Quotes

“Dillinger is an epicure, serenely removed from such soft and bourgeois considerations as loyalty and disloyalty, and her only anxiety in life is to better herself aesthetically.”
― The New Yorker, The Big New Yorker Book of Cats

“You know how it is—you start with one tiger, then you get another and another, then a few are born and a few die, and you start to lose track of details like exactly how many tigers you actually have.”
― The New Yorker, The Big New Yorker Book of Cats

“I’m sorry about the smell—that’s sort of a litter-box issue. It’s tough to have eight cats in a studio apartment, but I think while you’re spending the night here—the first of many, many passion-filled nights you’ll undoubtedly wish to spend here—you’ll find that it’s well worth the smell to have the selfless companionship of these seventeen reeking, dander-encrusted animals. I said “eight” before when I meant to say “seventeen.” That’s the number of cats that I have.”
― The New Yorker, The Big New Yorker Book of Cats

“And when you take a house cat and put it in a situation in which there is only one choice, that of responding in a linear way to human expectations, the cat won’t eat if eating entails the performance of a kind of “pleasing” that is a violation of the cat’s nature, a distortion of the cat’s duties on the planet.”
― The New Yorker, The Big New Yorker Book of Cats

“The median number of animals is thirty-nine, but many hoarders have more than a hundred. Hoarders, according to the consortium,”
― The New Yorker, The Big New Yorker Book of Cats

“A study published by the Hoarding of Animals Research Consortium says that more than two-thirds of hoarders are females, and most often they hoard cats, although dogs, birds, farm animals, and, in one case, beavers, are hoarded as well.”
― The New Yorker, The Big New Yorker Book of Cats

“Tiger Ladies are somewhat rare, but there are Cat Ladies and Bird Men all over the country, and often they end up in headlines like “201 CATS PULLED FROM HOME” and “PETS SAVED FROM HORROR HOME” and “CAT LOVER’S NEIGHBORS TIRED OF FELINE FIASCO.”
― The New Yorker, The Big New Yorker Book of Cats

“Next to Archangels, our most expensive cats are Abyssinians, which start at a hundred and seventy-five dollars.”
― The New Yorker, The Big New Yorker Book of Cats

“Cats have gained a bad reputation in some quarters because they’ve been pampered and have become neurotic.”
― The New Yorker, The Big New Yorker Book of Cats

“If a dog has a personality, it’s the personality of a human being you wouldn’t want to know.”
― The New Yorker, The Big New Yorker Book of Cats

“A dog has to ingratiate himself with people or he’d starve to death.”
― The New Yorker, The Big New Yorker Book of Cats

“there are seven hundred thousand more cats than dogs in the United States”
― The New Yorker, The Big New Yorker Book of Cats

“Replacing the dogs would have cost, at most, a few hundred dollars, but Brock sued for three hundred thousand dollars. “Pets don’t depreciate; they appreciate,” his attorney, Geordie Duckler, argued in court. “That’s very different from what you can say about a purse or a car.” The trial judge agreed.”
― The New Yorker, The Big New Yorker Book of Cats

“Then, gradually, women began to enter vet schools. By 1975, they represented half of all students; by 2000, nearly three-quarters—and most of them wanted to treat pets.”
― The New Yorker, The Big New Yorker Book of Cats

“Tiger meat was like pork, he said, but leaner, lighter. “Want to try some?” he asked, and everybody laughed.”
― The New Yorker, The Big New Yorker Book of Cats

“If you’re going to save tigers, you have to have stiffer penalties or provide a better life,” Zinoviev said. “If people could make a decent living, they would not shoot tigers.”
― The New Yorker, The Big New Yorker Book of Cats

“Life is very different now,” he said. “It’s not just the economy. People are all living for the moment, and looking out only for themselves. Our life is out of control—it’s chaos.” This refrain is heard repeatedly in the new Russia.”
― The New Yorker, The Big New Yorker Book of Cats

“She maintains only one cat of her own, a deaf, toothless antique named Tibby-Wibby Simpson Ross,”
― The New Yorker, The Big New Yorker Book of Cats

“Nevertheless, the judge, influenced by the deceptive meekness in Miss Ross’s manner, ruled that she was entitled to an apology.”
― The New Yorker, The Big New Yorker Book of Cats

“had no moral right before God or man to close its doors to sick or suffering animals.”
― The New Yorker, The Big New Yorker Book of Cats

“Miss Ross has room in her heart for the entire animal kingdom, she focusses principally on cats because she thinks they are victims of prejudice and bigotry.”
― The New Yorker, The Big New Yorker Book of Cats

“With his hand on the doorknob, Tengo turned around one last time and was shocked to see a single tear escaping his father’s eye. It shone a dull silver color under the ceiling’s fluorescent light. The tear crept slowly down his cheek and fell onto his lap.”
― The New Yorker, The Big New Yorker Book of Cats

“And, since birds are a main predator of forest insects, their dwindling is already affecting the health of our forests.”
― The New Yorker, The Big New Yorker Book of Cats

“A dog has a million friends to a cat’s one,” she says. “Why, even snakes are sometimes praised!”
― The New Yorker, The Big New Yorker Book of Cats

“Also, he had short black sideburns with streaks of gray in them, a boxer’s build, a Ph.D. in English literature from Harvard, and no wife or girlfriend. These qualities made Douglas a font of intrigue for the all-female population of St. Agnes—both the lay faculty and the students—but in truth Douglas led a sedentary life. He loved books, he was a passionate, solitary filmgoer, and he got his hair cut every four weeks by Chiapas, whose father ran a barbershop down the block.”
― The New Yorker, The Big New Yorker Book of Cats

“Cats, on the other hand, have character and independence. They are realists, and they understand perfectly their position in domestic life, which is decorative and nothing else.”
― The New Yorker, The Big New Yorker Book of Cats

“the average dog today is a sorry creature, functioning adequately neither as a guest in the house nor a servant.”
― The New Yorker, The Big New Yorker Book of Cats

“Only women like cats, he said, and added disparagingly that this seemed to him “a very significant tip-off on the makeup of the two sexes.”
― The New Yorker, The Big New Yorker Book of Cats

“The young missionary smiled at me, but how can you eat a smile?”
― The New Yorker, The Big New Yorker Book of Cats

“I was once informed, in my salad days, that no woman should go to bed with a man who doesn’t like cats—a maxim that I have pondered ever since, mostly at night, and one that poets, past and present, do nothing to discredit.”
― The New Yorker, The Big New Yorker Book of Cats