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More "Kitten" Quotes from Famous Books



... trailing back into the wings, and the shrieking and thumping and whistling out in front just went on—and on—and on—and on. Um! I just listened and loved it—every thump of it. And I stood there like a demure little kitten; or more like Mag Monahan after she'd had a good licking, and was good and quiet. And I never so much as budged till ...
— In the Bishop's Carriage • Miriam Michelson

... way, I have a new inmate in my house—a kitten. He was evidently lost during the emigration. Amelie says he is three months old. He arrived at her door crying with hunger the other morning. Amelie loves beasties better than humans. She took him in and fed him. But as she has six cats already, she seemed to think that it was my duty ...
— On the Edge of the War Zone - From the Battle of the Marne to the Entrance of the Stars and Stripes • Mildred Aldrich

... it's because he has not yet learned that you are my uncle," replied the Captain, suppressing a smile. "It's strange what dislikes he takes to certain persons when one considers that he's as gentle as a kitten when children are around; but I'll try to teach him to distinguish members of the family ...
— When Dreams Come True • Ritter Brown

... assessors, come down to 'doom' every acquaintance he met—that, I have sometimes begun to sneeze on the spot, and gone home with a violent cold dating from that instant. I don't doubt he would cut his kitten's tail off if he caught her playing with it. Please tell me who taught her to ...
— The Secret of a Happy Home (1896) • Marion Harland

... up in a parcel for her, and she left the shop. Very shortly after this everyone went home, and all was still in the dolls' department; and then suddenly there was a gentle little sniff, just as if a very wee kitten were crying, and a little movement from the shelf where the baby-doll had lain. Then a tiny little ...
— The Children's Book of London • Geraldine Edith Mitton

... the assurance that the rat was perfectly tame, and would not even bite a kitten, Lorne put him into the pocket of his jacket, and told the owner to make haste, but just at that moment the masters came out of "Chambers" and ascended the staircase, so Lorne was obliged to go into ...
— The Youth's Companion - Volume LII, Number 11, Thursday, March 13, 1879 • Various

... Nick was amazed to see how one so cruel could be so kind, and how so good a little maid could love so bad a man; for she twined her arms about his neck, and then lay back with her head upon his shoulder, purring like a kitten in ...
— Master Skylark • John Bennett

... from primordial motives—lust and hate and hunger and fear, and from all the tragic greatness of uncontrollable fate and we, we've got nothing to replace them. We are comic—comic! Ours is the stage of comedy in life's history, half lit and blinded,—and we fumble. As absurd as a kitten with its poor little head in a bag. There's your soul of man! Mewing. We're all at it, the poets, the teachers. How can anyone hope to escape? Why should I escape? What am I that I should expect to be anything but a thwarted lover, ...
— The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells

... said Mr. Bumble, slowly, and marking the time with his teaspoon, 'I mean to say this, ma'am; that any cat, or kitten, that could live with you, ma'am, and not be fond of its home, ...
— Oliver Twist • Charles Dickens

... and novelty to us all. We all worshipped the elder, and the little one was like a new discovery and toy to us, who had never been used to such a presence. She was not a commonplace child; but even if she had been, she would have been as charming a study as a kitten; and she had all the four of us at her feet, though her mother was constantly protesting against our spoiling her, and really kept up so much wholesome discipline that the little maid never exceeded the bounds of being charming to us. After that explanation there ...
— Chantry House • Charlotte M. Yonge

... is a dandy. It is exactly the one I would have picked out could I have had my choice. You see, I've never owned a line watch. I guess it was just as well, too, for I never appreciated watchmaking until Mr. McPhearson told me what a really good watch meant. Now I'd as soon starve a kitten as ...
— Christopher and the Clockmakers • Sara Ware Bassett

... it, that ungrateful woman yearned after an occupant for the old wooden cradle, and treasured up the bits of baby things that had belonged to Tom and Bill, and nursed up any young thing that came to hand and wanted care, bringing up a motherless blind kitten with assiduous care and patience, as if the supply of that commodity was not always largely in excess of the demand, and lavishing more care on a sick lamb or a superfluous young pig than most ...
— Zoe • Evelyn Whitaker

... broom in the other; an old corn-colored silk handkerchief knotted over her hair,—her hair is black, and the effect was good,—and her little brown calico aprong-string literally tied to the baby, who was shrieking at the end of his tether because he could just not reach the kitten and throw her into the fire. On Alison's lap, between a pile of shirts and two piles of magazines, lay a freshly opened letter. I noticed that she put it into her pocket before she dropped her dusters and stood up to lift her face for my kiss. She forgot about the apron-strings, and the baby tipped ...
— Men, Women, and Ghosts • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps

... will find that, though practically instantaneous, it comprises all the sensations you have ever felt on that subject throughout your life. It commenced, perhaps, when you were only a year old, and, sitting on your mother's knee, your hand was made to stroke a kitten, and you felt it was soft and it gave you pleasure. Later on, when you were older, you had it in your arms, and you felt the first intimation of that wonderful "[Greek: storge]," which manifests itself in most children in their love for dolls; you found it delightful to cuddle and that it purred. ...
— Science and the Infinite - or Through a Window in the Blank Wall • Sydney T. Klein

... a young man who was bitten By twenty-two cats and a kitten; Sighed he, "It is clear My finish is near; No matter; I'll ...
— A Nonsense Anthology • Collected by Carolyn Wells

... Why so it would haue done at the same season, if your Mothers Cat had but kitten'd, though your selfe had neuer ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare

... carefully at the tips of her fingers and at the top of the guitar ... then suddenly began singing in a voice unexpectedly strong and agreeable, but guttural and to the ears of Kuzma Vassilyevitch rather savage. "Oh, you pretty kitten," he thought. She sang a mournful song, utterly un-Russian and in a language quite unknown to Kuzma Vassilyevitch. He used to declare that the sounds "Kha, gha" kept recurring in it and at the end ...
— Knock, Knock, Knock and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev

... Kittery its cat, but every house seems to have its half-dozen cats, large, little, old, and young; of divers colors, tending mostly to a dark tortoise-shell. With a whole ocean inviting to the tragic rite, I do not believe there is ever a kitten drowned in Kittery; the illimitable sea rather employs itself in supplying the fish to which "no cat's averse," but which the cats of Kittery demand to have cooked. They do not like raw fish; they say it plainly, and they prefer to have the bones taken ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... remember him by. Archer chose a paper-knife, because he did not like to choose anything too good; Jacob chose the works of Byron in one volume; John, who was still too young to make a proper choice, chose Mr. Floyd's kitten, which his brothers thought an absurd choice, but Mr. Floyd upheld him when he said: "It has fur like you." Then Mr. Floyd spoke about the King's Navy (to which Archer was going); and about Rugby ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf

... tracks, saying, "What a B[oe]otian and Hyperborean you are! Is there anything more fragile than enjoyment? Is there anything more sensitive to injury than grace? Did you not know that? If you had not followed this poor girl, she would have cleared the barrier as gracefully as a kitten; now she is as much ashamed as though you had seen her in her petticoat." I looked once more in her direction; sure enough, she too was looking round, with a flushed face and stupid, anxious eyes. O these soulful eyes, eyes ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various

... white bull, not knowing whether to be frightened or to wish the same good luck for themselves. The gentle and innocent creature (for who could possibly doubt that he was so?) pranced round among the children as sportively as a kitten. Europa all the while looked down upon her brothers, nodding and laughing, but yet with a sort of stateliness in her rosy little face. As the bull wheeled about to take another gallop across the meadow, the child waved her hand, and ...
— Myths That Every Child Should Know - A Selection Of The Classic Myths Of All Times For Young People • Various

... of this railroad line; on is De Soto, always thrillingly historic; farther is Eudora (a word of Greek genesis, and meaning a good gift, though likely enough he who christened this village may have known as little of Greek as a kitten); on is Lawrence, named for a famous anti-slavery agitator and philanthropist of Massachusetts—for Lawrence is a New England colony, as is Manhattan, farther up the Kansas River, familiarly known as the "Kaw," which is the ...
— A Hero and Some Other Folks • William A. Quayle

... wouldn't you? And if you did, and I gave it to you, you would have won me for yourself, wouldn't you? Then why should you worry concerning how I might love you? That would be my affair, my personal responsibility. And I admit to you that I know no more than a kitten what I might ...
— Athalie • Robert W. Chambers

... yellow kitten purred on the hearth, While the kitchen clock, with its frame of oak, In the corner stood, like a sentinel, And challenged time with ...
— Ballads • Horatio Alger, Jr.

... hand of Dona Isabel in her own, as if to assure her that she was guiltless of any design against her former admirer. This was quite unnecessary, as the gentle Isabel, after bidding Brace, with a rap on the knuckles, to "go and play," contented herself with curling up like a kitten beside Miss Keene, and left that gentleman to wander somewhat aimlessly in ...
— The Crusade of the Excelsior • Bret Harte

... need, we certainly cannot taboo it as the extreme communists so dogmatically urge. "Pending ... an inquiry," writes Mr. Wallas, "my own provisional opinion is that, like a good many instincts of very early evolutionary origin, it can be satisfied by an avowed pretense; just as a kitten which is fed regularly on milk can be kept in good health if it is allowed to indulge its hunting instinct by playing with a bobbin, and a peaceful civil servant satisfies his instinct of combat and ...
— A Preface to Politics • Walter Lippmann

... hundred feet under ordinary circumstances, but that scream brought me here on the run. Now that the excitement is over I feel weak as a kitten," Charley answered. ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely

... consideration of this topic; but I shall confine myself to certain phenomena observable in the animal world, since the games of animals are, in this connexion, so much simpler than those of children. Play constitutes a major part of the activities of young animals; think, for instance, of a kitten playing with a hanging tassel or with a ball, of puppies chasing one another, and of young birds playing with fluttering wings. The games of young animals often exhibit the character of love-games, and are in that case sexually differentiated. Various authors, ...
— The Sexual Life of the Child • Albert Moll

... curled up like a kitten; his eyes were shut, and he was smiling, too. Every one was very quiet; only Rosita moved, reaching out a ...
— The Primrose Ring • Ruth Sawyer

... all in honor of, and to divert his royal highness, Prince Henry of Prussia, the famous brother of the present king. Yet his royal highness does not seem to be much diverted. He looks at them as an old cat looks at the gambols of a young kitten; or as one who has higher sport going on in his mind than the pastime of fiddling and dancing. He came here on pretense of a friendly visit to the empress; to have the happiness of waiting on so magnanimous a princess, and to see, with his own eyes, the progress of those immense improvements, ...
— The Empire of Russia • John S. C. Abbott

... getting!" was the reply. "I can't understand it. She used to be brave enough, and now she's as timid as a kitten." ...
— Under Padlock and Seal • Charles Harold Avery

... Mastermaid, but they had scarce gone to bed before the Mastermaid said she had forgotten to bring home the calf from the meadow, so she must get up and drive him into the stall. Then the Sheriff swore by all the powers that should never be, and, stout and fat as he was, up he jumped as nimbly as a kitten. ...
— Popular Tales from the Norse • Sir George Webbe Dasent

... kitten, but a venerable cat, who had belonged to Edith's elder sister, and was given to Edith, the day that sister married, as a very precious gift; and Edith loved that grey cat, loved her dearly. She always sat in the same place in that ...
— Emilie the Peacemaker • Mrs. Thomas Geldart

... did once—but I never did it again. I caught one, a kitten, and set off with a number of boys to kill it; but as we went along it began to play with my neck-tie and to purr! Our hearts were softened, so we let it go. Ah! Corrie, my boy, never go ...
— Gascoyne, the Sandal-Wood Trader • R.M. Ballantyne

... appear publicly in jerkin and galligaskins, to smoke tobacco in contempt of her sex, and to fight her enemies with a very fury of insolence. In stature she exceeded the limping clerk by a head, and she could pick him up with one hand, like a kitten. Yet he loved her, not for any grace of person, nor beauty of feature, nor even because her temperament was undaunted as his own. He loved her for that wisest of reasons, which is no reason at all, because he loved her. In his eyes she was the Queen, not of Misrule, but of Hearts. ...
— A Book of Scoundrels • Charles Whibley

... and came across the room to where he sat, looking down at him with the round, grey eyes that always reminded him of a kitten's. ...
— The Man Upstairs and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse

... Biddy! Biddy!" the creature walked up to him across the yard, stretched out her awkward neck, sniffed a little, and cropped from his hand the wisp of rowen hay he held, as composedly as if she were a tame kitten, and then followed him all round the yard for more, which I am sorry to say she did not get. Pat had only displayed her accomplishments to astonish me, and then shut her in her stall again. I afterward hunted out Biddy's history, and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 92, June, 1865 • Various

... his back at the time, in front of his hut, when Lippy prowled cautiously towards him, like a very small and sly kitten about to pounce on a very huge dog. She sprang, just as her mother caught sight of her, and was on his broad chest in a moment. The mother was, as we have said, transfixed with alarm. The human kitten seized Zeppa by the beard and laughed immoderately. Zeppa replied with ...
— The Madman and the Pirate • R.M. Ballantyne

... Snoop, the fat, black kitten, played a part in the story also. The Bobbsey twins were very fond of Snoop, and had kept him so many years that I suppose he ought to be called cat, ...
— The Bobbsey Twins at School • Laura Lee Hope

... an age when chivalrous respect to women had not yet given place to the licence of the Revival of Letters, practised irritation like a fine art. She was brimful of the superfluity of naughtiness, yet withal as innocent and playful as a kitten. ...
— The Black Douglas • S. R. Crockett

... hypocrisy about us. Consider—am not I the type of heroism, of magnanimity? Well, compelling me, the heroic, the magnanimous, now to stand here upon my hind-legs, and now to crouch quietly down, like a pet kitten over-fed with new milk,—any state roguery is passed off as the greatest piece of single-minded honesty upon the mere strength of my character—if I may so say it, upon my legendary reputation. Now, as for you, though you are ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various

... and not from plan, my father took some trouble in my education; which I suspect was productive of unforeseen effects. He played with me as a cat does with her kitten, and taught me all the tricks of which he was master. They were chiefly indeed of a bodily kind; such as holding me over his head erect on the palm of his hand; putting me into various postures; making me tumble in ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft

... ain't he, 'squire?" I replied that I thought he was, and asked him if it was usual for his horse to play such pranks. He said it was not "You see, 'squire, he feels his oats, and hain't been out of the stable for a month. Use him, and he's as kind as a kitten." With that he put his foot in the stirrup, and mounted. The animal really looked very well as he moved around the grass-plot, and, as Mrs. Sparrowgrass seemed to fancy him, I took a written guarantee that he was sound, and bought him. What I gave for ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume IV. (of X.) • Various

... captain, "that I should be disobeyed at every turn now that I'm on my beam-ends, with little more strength in me than a new-born kitten. But never mind, I'm beginnin' to feel stronger, and I'll pay you off, my dear, when I'm ...
— The Young Trawler • R.M. Ballantyne

... it was a cat you might know it!" exclaimed Mrs. Bobbsey with a laugh." I guess they're all right. They can't have gone far. Probably they are on the other side of the street, looking at some bedraggled kitten." But a look up and down the street did not show Flossie and Freddie. By this time the auto was all ready to start ...
— Bobbsey Twins in Washington • Laura Lee Hope

... was in great trouble. But a minute before Spry, the kitten, had strayed away from the mother-cat, and Lucy and she had got ...
— Master Sunshine • Mrs. C. F. Fraser

... man-smell on the trap to form a guide that told the animal exactly where the trap lay. Then, the overwhelming curiosity of the fox had compelled it to investigate the mystery by digging it up, and when found, the fox in its usual way would play with the strange object; just as a domestic kitten would do, and so the fox would ...
— The Drama of the Forests - Romance and Adventure • Arthur Heming

... thank God! and as for me—fine, imprison, torture me as much as you like, you will find me rock!" she exclaimed, with her eyes flashing and all her little dark figure bristling with terror and resistance, for all the world like a poor little frightened kitten spluttering defiance ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth

... for Felix had pushed a slip of paper over to Alice, on which she read—"'Forget-me-not, ladybird, linnet, kitten." I don't think I ever saw a linnet. Isn't it a little ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge

... boy's, and her face had not one regular feature in it. But then—regularity! who wanted it, who would have thought the most pure classic type a change for the better, with those dark, dancing, challenging eyes; with that arch, brilliant, kitten-like face, so sunny, so mignon, and those scarlet lips like a bud of camellia that were never so handsome as when a cigarette was between them, or sooth to say, not seldom ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]

... in the corridor; 'Hi! apprentice! Come here!' A boy of six came up, grimed all over with soot like a kitten, with a shaved head, perfectly bald in places, in a torn, striped smock, and huge goloshes on his bare feet. 'You take the gentleman, you know where,' said Ardalion, addressing the 'apprentice,' and ...
— A Desperate Character and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev

... disadvantage of Maggie though a connoisseur might have seen "points" in her which had a higher promise for maturity than Lucy's natty completeness. It was like the contrast between a rough, dark, overgrown puppy and a white kitten. Lucy put up the neatest little rosebud mouth to be kissed; everything about her was neat,—her little round neck, with the row of coral beads; her little straight nose, not at all snubby; her little clear eyebrows, rather darker than her curls, to match hazel eyes, which looked up with ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot

... in which Agnes joined, and the two, banishing the thoughts of sick babies and pale-faced women, had a gay time. In the meantime, the children had scrambled over rocks to gather lichen, and dug holes deep enough to bury a kitten in, in their efforts to get moss; they had sailed little nut-shell boats down the stream, and in the many ways that children have enjoyed themselves. Everybody was hungry of course, so by the time Agnes was ready for her ferns, there were empty baskets ...
— 'Our guy' - or, The elder brother • Mrs. E. E. Boyd

... Character of the Happy Warrior,' and a chivalrous legend on 'The Horn of Egremont Castle,' which, without being very good, is very tolerable, and free from most of the author's habitual defects. Then follow some pretty, but professedly childish verses, on a kitten playing with the falling leaves. There is rather too much of Mr Ambrose Philips here and there in this piece also; but it ...
— Early Reviews of English Poets • John Louis Haney

... began bucking and kicking in a circle, kicking a ring all round the compass before it finally decided to settle down on all fours. Finishing, it meekly lowered its nose to the ground and now, as docile as a, kitten after having supped on warm milk, began dozing, the steam rising in a cloud from ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in New Mexico • Frank Gee Patchin

... And vivid smiles, and faintly-venomed points Of slander, glancing here and grazing there; And yielding to his kindlier moods, the Seer Would watch her at her petulance, and play, Even when they seemed unloveable, and laugh As those that watch a kitten; thus he grew Tolerant of what he half disdained, and she, Perceiving that she was but half disdained, Began to break her sports with graver fits, Turn red or pale, would often when they met Sigh fully, or all-silent gaze upon him With such a fixt devotion, that the old man, Though doubtful, felt ...
— Idylls of the King • Alfred, Lord Tennyson

... any rate, that was his fancy then, and perhaps another time he may be obstinately hilarious; however, it may be that he is growing graver, for time is a fact so long as clocks and watches continue to go, and a cat can't be a kitten always, as the old gentleman opposite said ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Number 9, July, 1858 • Various

... Satanesses full of spite, did with this babe, even as they had done by the first: they wrapped it in a cloth and set it in a basket which they threw into the stream, then gave out that the Queen had brought forth a kitten. But once more, by the mercy of Allah Almighty, this boy came to the hands of that same Intendant of the gardens who carried him to his wife and placed him under her charge with strict injunctions to take care of the second foundling sedulously as ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton

... glowed with happiness and seemed to smile at one from under her beautiful, wavy brown hair. I am sorry to tell you that your child is not exactly engaging; she resembles a wild and furious little kitten with bristling hair. She seems to me to be always making a round back; she looks as if she wanted to jump at one ...
— Cornelli • Johanna Spyri

... I ever saw!" exclaimed the midget, which was not much larger than a small kitten. "What is your name, and where on earth ...
— Prince Jan, St. Bernard • Forrestine C. Hooker

... look, my Infant, lo! What a pretty baby show! See the Kitten on the Wall, Sporting with the leaves that fall, Wither'd leaves, one, two, and three, From the lofty Elder-tree! Through the calm and frosty air Of this morning bright and fair, Eddying round and round ...
— Poems In Two Volumes, Vol. 1 • William Wordsworth

... rocks and came upon the clear sand, she stopped and looked at her sweet shadow in the moonlight. Then, with the self-pleasing playfulness of a kitten, she stood and put herself into all kinds of postures to see what varying silhouettes they would make on the hard and polished sand (that shone with a soft lustre like satin); now throwing up one arm, now another, and at last making a pirouette, twirling her shawl round, ...
— Aylwin • Theodore Watts-Dunton

... state. The keepers have frequently the utmost difficulty in rearing animals which are born in menageries and zoological gardens. Yet if these animals were born in their own countries and under natural conditions, they would grow up healthy and strong, without receiving any more care than a kitten ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various

... please, Miss Helen," said Alice, the neat housemaid, putting in her head at the nursery door, "there's a lady downstairs, and a heap of luggage, and the nastiest little dog I ever saw. He has almost killed the Persian kitten, Miss, and he is snarling and snapping at every one. See, he took this bit out of my apron, miss. The old lady says as her name is Mrs. Cameron, and she has come to stay; and she'd be glad if you'd go down to her immediately, ...
— Polly - A New-Fashioned Girl • L. T. Meade

... haven't tested you out yet on the first named but the chief engineer speaks in your behalf. The last two you certainly have. There's the story of a man who was going home late at night and picked up what he thought was a kitten and found it to be a pole-cat. It was good judgment to set it down again mighty sudden. But the skin was worth something and he resolved to have the skin to pay for the damage. Now President Whittaker and myself have been up in the north ...
— The Rainy Day Railroad War • Holman Day

... no Betty. Not even a wise old cat like Solomon, or a playful, amusing little kitten. The school children stared when she ...
— A Little Girl in Old Boston • Amanda Millie Douglas

... You see, our Sally's been tied up by the nose for so many months in harbour yonder, that now she's running free she can't hold herself in. Ketch hold of the rail, sir. That's your sort! There she goes again, larking like a young kitten." ...
— The Ocean Cat's Paw - The Story of a Strange Cruise • George Manville Fenn

... nice to get a little help sometimes," said Jan. "Now I have another favour to ask of you. We don't know just what to do with Glory Goldie's kitten. It will have to be put out of the way, I suppose, as we can't afford to keep it; but I can't bear the thought of that, nor has Katrina the heart to drown it. We've talked of asking ...
— The Emperor of Portugalia • Selma Lagerlof

... as unafraid of the mighty Tantor as though he had not just witnessed his shocking murder of a human being, signalled the beast to approach and lift him to its head, and Tantor came as he was bid, docile as a kitten, and hoisted The Killer ...
— The Son of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... a kitten in one hand and an elegant bouquet of pine needles and grass in the other, and what with the due presentation of the bouquets and the struggles of the kittens, the hugging and kissing was much interfered with. Kittens, bouquets, and babies were all somehow squeezed into the sleigh, and ...
— Elizabeth and her German Garden • "Elizabeth", AKA Marie Annette Beauchamp

... street one sees the labourers working in fishermen's boots up to their knees in water, driving the great wooden blocks into the mud. Many of the older houses slope forward at such an angle that you almost fear to pass beneath them. I should be as nervous as a kitten, living in one of the upper storeys. But the Dutchman leans out of a window that is hanging above the street six feet beyond the perpendicular, and ...
— Idle Ideas in 1905 • Jerome K. Jerome

... appropriately be introduced into a conception of repose, its contrast heightening this emotion; the creeping baby, the frolicking kitten, the swinging pendulum, the distant toilers observed by a ...
— Pictorial Composition and the Critical Judgment of Pictures • Henry Rankin Poore

... thinking of Esther now. He was hugging his idea to his breast and hurrying with it, either to entrust it to somebody or to wrap it up in the safety of pen and ink while it was so warm. And when he got home he came on Lydia, sitting on the front steps, singing to herself and cuddling a kitten in the curve of her arm. Lydia with no cares, either of the house or her dancing class or Jeff's future, but given up to the idleness of a summer afternoon, was one of the most pleasing sights ever put into the hollow of a lovely world. Jeffrey ...
— The Prisoner • Alice Brown

... best of women," ran a saying of Batty Langton's, "if you watch 'em, are always practising; even the youngest, as a kitten plays with a leaf." ...
— Lady Good-for-Nothing • A. T. Quiller-Couch

... dubbel barrel shot gun, & slugs? Then they'd get a durn site more'an they'd use in a hull lifetime. This would 'pare to be more senser-abel than payin Lords & Tailor's 150 dollars for a little insignifercant kitten, wot aint cut his eye ...
— The Bad Boy At Home - And His Experiences In Trying To Become An Editor - 1885 • Walter T. Gray

... in the person of the useful and ornamental domestic animal who is popularly supposed to furnish the material for sausages. The accidental discovery of a suspender-button, or the claw of a kitten, in the sausage, gave rise to some doubt as to the composition of this favorite edible; but statisticians usually admit that hogmeat forms the staple. Doctor KANE speaks in glowing terms of the excellence of rats when mixed with due proportions of walrus ...
— Punchinello, Vol.1, No. 4, April 23, 1870 • Various

... which was a tumbler with a little sugar and water mixed in it, and a spoon laid across, out of which he helped himself whenever he felt in the mood,—sitting on the edge of the tumbler, and dipping his long bill, and lapping with his little forked tongue like a kitten. When he found his spoon accidentally dry, he would stoop over and dip his bill in the water in the tumbler,—which caused the prophecy on the part of some of his guardians, that he would fall in some day and be drowned. For which reason it ...
— Our Young Folks, Vol 1, No. 1 - An Illustrated Magazine • Various

... cubs, up to this time, had been very kitten-like in their behavior, purring and frolicking about, and only emitting occasional little growls when thrown about or disturbed by one another. But, at the sight of the fresh meat, the wild blood ...
— Rataplan • Ellen Velvin

... very different food to what they are accustomed to live upon in a wild state. The wild cat lives on raw flesh; while the domestic cat, you know, my dear, will eat cooked meat, and even salt meat, with bread and milk and many other things. I knew a person who had a black kitten called 'Wildfire,' who would sip whiskey-toddy out of his glass, and seemed to like it as well as milk or water, only it made him too ...
— Lady Mary and her Nurse • Catharine Parr Traill

... pennies, are my regular purveyors. Throughout the good season, they come running triumphantly to my door, with a snake at the end of a stick, or a lizard in a cabbage leaf. They bring me the rat caught in a trap, the chicken dead of the pip, the mole slain by the gardener, the kitten killed by accident, the rabbit poisoned by some weed. The business proceeds to the mutual satisfaction of sellers and buyer. No such trade had ever been known before in the village nor ...
— The Life of the Fly - With Which are Interspersed Some Chapters of Autobiography • J. Henri Fabre

... looked at the scolder for a moment; then, placing her watering-pot upon the floor, she darted toward the divan like a kitten that has just received a blow from its mother's paw and feels authorized to play with her. Madame de Bergenheim tried to rise at this unexpected attack; but before she could sit up, she was thrown back upon the cushions by the young girl, who seized both her ...
— Gerfaut, Complete • Charles de Bernard

... up his coat and looking carefully behind him as he sat down on the settle, lest a stray kitten or chicken should preoccupy the bench, "you see I was down to Orrin's abaout a week back, and he hed a litter o' pigs,—eleven on 'em. Well, he couldn't raise the hull on 'em,—'t a'n't good to raise more 'n nine,—an' so he said, ef I'd 'a' had a place o' my own, I could 'a' ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 46, August, 1861 • Various

... down to one corner. Then his captors would get a firm grip on the back of his neck. If the squirrel proved to be a young one, they would put on a collar and little chain, that they had always ready, and keep him to train for a pet. Once Paul caught a gray squirrel kitten so small and young that he had to feed it on milk and crushed walnuts. He called it May. The tiny creature lived in his pocket and desk and shared his bed at night. It would sit on the off page of his book whilst he studied and comb ...
— The Story of Paul Boyton - Voyages on All the Great Rivers of the World • Paul Boyton

... by adding s to the singular, or, when euphony requires it, es; as, tree, trees; sun, suns; dish, dishes; box, boxes. Some retain the old plural form; as, ox, oxen; child, children; chick, chicken; kit, kitten. But habit has burst the barrier of old rules, and we now talk of chicks and chickens, kits and kittens. Oxen alone stands as a monument raised to the memory of ...
— Lectures on Language - As Particularly Connected with English Grammar. • William S. Balch

... up with a poor cripple dying of muscular atrophy who cannot move. It stays with him all the time, and sleeps most of the day in his straw hat. To-night I saw the kitten curled up under the bed-clothes. It seems as if it were a gift of Providence that the little creature should attach itself to the child ...
— In Flanders Fields and Other Poems - With an Essay in Character, by Sir Andrew Macphail • John McCrae

... was a good way off, being the point of the promontory that shut in the mouth of the river, a great crag, with a long reef of rocks running out into the sea, playfully called the Kitten's Tail, though the antiquarians always deposed that the head had nothing to do with cats or kits, but with the disposition to erect chapels to St. Christopher on the points of land where they might first greet the ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge

... me. It is the delight of motherhood and fatherhood in one; and when I was allowed to take you away out of the room where you lay—I admit it was not a pleasant scene—I felt just like a child who is given a kitten for its very own." ...
— The Child of the Dawn • Arthur Christopher Benson

... shirts and a soft spot in her heart for the bel Anglais who chaffed her unmercifully, but paid his rent with commendable promptitude. A huge woman, with a shrewd not unkindly face, she sat in a rocking chair with a diminutive kitten on her shoulder and a mass of knitting in her lap. As she listened to Craven's inquiry she tossed the kitten into a basket and bundled the shawl she was making under her arm, while she rose ponderously to her feet and favoured the stranger ...
— The Shadow of the East • E. M. Hull

... see your uncle. Eh? 'Course 'e will," cooed Howard in the attempt to escape the depressing atmosphere. The little one listened to his inflections as a kitten does, and at last lifted its arms in sign ...
— Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland

... gathering up her floods for the tide, carrying the ships to their destinations, and feeding the universal life. I found in a hidden nook a sheet of fine sand which the water had furrowed and folded like the pink palate of a kitten's mouth, or like a dappled sky. Everything repeats itself by analogy, and each little fraction of the earth reproduces in a smaller and individual form all the phenomena of the planet. Farther on I came across a bank of crumbling ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... and went to her room, where she sat down and tried to think hard. A Pink Kitten was curled up on the window-sill and ...
— The Magic of Oz • L. Frank Baum

... John, was born on June 18, 1803. Southey's little girl was Edith, born in September of the preceding year. It was Southey who made the charming remark that no house was complete unless it had in it a child rising six years, and a kitten rising six months. ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas

... simplest savage. He cannot concentrate his thought—he cannot think at all; his consciousness is in its dawn; he revels in colours, in odours, is thrilled by touch and taste and sound, and is like a well-nourished pup or kitten at play on a green turf in the sunshine. This being so, one would have thought that the pain of the revelation I had received would have quickly vanished—that the vivid impressions of external things would have blotted it out and restored the ...
— Far Away and Long Ago • W. H. Hudson

... what she did. She got the bread all right, but, on the way back she stopped to pet a kitten that rubbed up against her. And then Vi got turned around, and she went down a side street, and walked two or three blocks before she knew that ...
— Six Little Bunkers at Aunt Jo's • Laura Lee Hope

... table and the floor were littered by them; a stack of the Rolls publications was on his right hand; a Dugdale's "Monasticon" lay open at a little distance; and curled upon a newspaper beside it lay a gray kitten. The kitten had that morning upset an inkstand over three sheets of the Canon's laborious handwriting. At the time he had indeed dropped her angrily by the scruff of the neck into a wastepaper basket to repent of her sins; but ...
— The Case of Richard Meynell • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... were standing quite near, and it would have been too dangerous. The Foreign Secretary, who is rather a nervous man, and fastidious about a woman's looks, never could bear me: and I believe he would have thought it almost as justifiable as drowning an ugly kitten, to choke me if he knew ...
— The Powers and Maxine • Charles Norris Williamson

... I didn't dare. I haven't told you, but she went out for her daily walk and brought me home a Christmas card, the prettiest one she could find, she said. I was propped up on pillows, as weak as a kitten. I looked at it and looked at it, and when I saw that it was this room, the old fireplace and mother's picture, and the Hessian soldier andirons, when I realized there was a face at the window and that the door was ajar,—everything just swam before me and I fainted dead away. ...
— The Romance of a Christmas Card • Kate Douglas Wiggin

... a good deal at this account, for he had much the same sympathy for ordinary cases of sea-sickness, as a kitten feels in the agony of the first mouse it has caught, and which it is its sovereign pleasure to play ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper

... kid didn't do anything but save your life. I wouldn't let a little thing like that trouble me if I were you. You've been doing something to that bull, or he'd never have used you like that. Why, Emperor is as gentle as a young kitten. He wouldn't hurt a fly unless the fly happened to bite him too hard. Phil, did you see that fellow do ...
— The Circus Boys Across The Continent • Edgar B. P. Darlington

... Alf rushed in, announcing with breathless haste that "Kitten had a calf." Kitten was a fawn-colored Alderney, the favorite of the barnyard, and so gentle that even Johnnie did not fear to rub her rough nose, scratch her between her horns, or bring her wisps of grass when she was ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe

... day, so I shall be sure of seeing them, whereas now I am sometimes too late. And then—perhaps she may come to see you! I shall hear her, I shall see her in her soft quilted pelisse tripping about as daintily as a kitten. In this one month she has become my little girl again, so light-hearted and gay. Her soul is recovering, and her happiness is owing to you! Oh! I would do impossibilities for you. Only just now she said to me, 'I am very happy, papa!' ...
— Father Goriot • Honore de Balzac

... right," she said upon one of these midnight confabs so immemoriably dear to women, when hairpins can be removed and the dig of skirt bands unhooked. "You're so snowy, and soft, too; you feel like a kitten's ear. And that shining ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst

... dropped asleep like a little kitten tired of play, and Sylvia looked at her mother blankly. "I didn't see ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield

... called "Saved," which tells its own story. A pet kitten has been chased by two lively little terriers, and the big, friendly dog has taken her into his care. She is not afraid of the little dogs now. They may bark as much as they like. The big dog looks ...
— Friends and Helpers • Sarah J. Eddy

... disgrace, refused to betray her, and was sent to the Bastille for her loyalty. She resigned herself to her imprisonment with admirable philosophy, amused herself in the study of Latin, in watching the gambols of a cat and kitten, and in carrying on a safe and sentimental flirtation with the fascinating Duc de Richelieu, who occupied an adjoining cell and passed the hours in singing with her popular airs from Iphigenie. ...
— The Women of the French Salons • Amelia Gere Mason

... the western sun shone brightly in, and tinged the white wainscoted wall with yellow light; the cat sat in the window-seat, winking at the sun, and sleepily whisking her tail for the amusement of her kitten, which was darting to and fro, and patting her on the head, in the hope of rousing her to ...
— Scenes and Characters • Charlotte M. Yonge

... cage; for he said to himself that a creature made to frisk about in the green woods could not be happy shut up in a box. This pretty little animal became so much attached to her kind-hearted protector, that she would run about after him, and come like a kitten whenever he called her. While he was gone to school, she frequently ran off to the woods and played with wild squirrels on a tree that grew near his path homeward. Sometimes she took a nap in a large knot-hole, or, if the weather ...
— Isaac T. Hopper • L. Maria Child

... spry; spirited, spiritful[obs3]; lively, animated, vivacious; brisk as a bee; sparklinly as a thrush, jolly as a sandboy[obs3]; blithesome; gleeful, gleesome[obs3]; hilarious, rattling. winsome, bonny, hearty, buxom. playful, playsome[obs3]; folatre[Fr], playful as a kitten, tricksy[obs3], frisky, frolicsome; gamesome; jocose, jocular, waggish; mirth loving, laughter-loving; mirthful, rollicking. elate, elated; exulting, jubilant, flushed; rejoicing &c. 838; cock-a- hoop. cheering, inspiriting, exhilarating; cardiac, cardiacal[obs3]; pleasing &c. 829; palmy. Adv. cheerfully ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget

... trench-water came the leaf, like a tiny fist of wrinkles, and day by day spread and uncurled, looking like the unwieldy paw of a kitten or cub. The keels and ribs covering the under-side increased in size and strength, and finally the great leaf was ironed out by the warm sun into a mighty sheet of smooth, emerald chlorophyll. Then, for a time,—no one has ever taken the ...
— Edge of the Jungle • William Beebe

... also very much interested in the novelty of a new scene, and anticipated a great deal of pleasure in examining the premises. Aunt Henshaw had told me that she believed there were kittens somewhere around, and I determined to search till I found them; for a little pet kitten appeared to me the sweetest ...
— A Grandmother's Recollections • Ella Rodman

... I am not going away from you. Let me go to sleep for a little.' An old servant who had followed her came up and said in astonishment, 'Well, young sir, you may be proud of yourself, the child is generally so wild and rough, and with you she is as tame as a kitten.' I learned from her that little Sonia lived in the neighborhood, and that her aunt had come to look for her in our house. She would not go away from me, and the old servant had to call her mother, who only persuaded her to return home with ...
— The Malady of the Century • Max Nordau

... mild Equality to dwell, Where Toil shall call the charmer Health his bride, And Laughter tickle Plenty's ribless side! 30 How thou wouldst toss thy heels in gamesome play, And frisk about, as lamb or kitten gay! Yea! and more musically sweet to me Thy dissonant harsh bray of joy would be, Than warbled melodies that soothe to rest 35 The aching of ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge

... old man dozed o'er the latest news, Till the light of his pipe went out, And, unheeded, the kitten, with cunning paws, Rolled and tangled the balls about; Yet still sat the wife in the ancient chair, Swaying to and fro, in ...
— The Universal Reciter - 81 Choice Pieces of Rare Poetical Gems • Various

... the other's, and he knew it, knew that his endurance would be nothing against the muscles seasoned by daily physical work until they were like steel. He knew that in two minutes of battling struggle he would be like a kitten in the big, powerful hands. And he was of no mind to have Brayley manhandle him before such an audience as was now sitting quietly watching, listening to his panting breaths. In one straining effort he jerked his ...
— Under Handicap - A Novel • Jackson Gregory

... presented her as his sister and kept her sternly in view during every possible moment, but she was not sufficiently well dressed to be his sister. And his overcoat was buttoned suspiciously high. Was he to stroll out of the waiting-room and leave her abandoned, like some undesirable kitten, in the corner? The idea was ludicrous: she must be taken care of. Had she thrust herself upon him, enticed him, challenged him? Assuredly not; moved by some completely inexplicable influence, utterly ...
— Margarita's Soul - The Romantic Recollections of a Man of Fifty • Ingraham Lovell

... makes to-day," said the fisherman, "there wouldn't have been water enough to drown a kitten on that side of the ...
— The Moonstone • Wilkie Collins

... A kitten before which I held a small mirror must surely have taken the image for a second living cat, for she went behind the glass and around it when it was ...
— The Mind of the Child, Part II • W. Preyer

... incomprehensible torment of delight. For she roamed the fields and woods with him gladly, lunched in glens remote it seemed from everything but the call of that infernal horn, yielded to the enthusiasm of his maddest moods, romped with him like a kitten or a child—and kept miraculously the poise and reticence of a woman. She talked freely of her brother; ...
— Kenny • Leona Dalrymple

... wonder if you had blankets enough on your bed. I'd be like that yellow cat we used to have back in the time when Father was alive. That cat had kittens and Father had 'em all drowned but one. After that you never saw the cat anywhere unless the kitten was there, too. She wouldn't eat unless it were with her and between bites she'd sit down on it so it couldn't run off. She lugged it around in her mouth until Father used to vow he'd have eyelet holes punched in the scruff of its neck for her teeth to fit into and make it ...
— Kent Knowles: Quahaug • Joseph C. Lincoln

... story-book and picked up her white kitten, and went out to the side verandah, her favourite spot ...
— Two Little Women • Carolyn Wells

... of vineyard!" said the uncle. "Ay, she's a pretty one, gentle as a lamb, well made and active, and obedient as a kitten. She were the light ...
— The Celibates - Includes: Pierrette, The Vicar of Tours, and The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac

... a beautiful disorder. A grey kitten and a white puppy sat together on the grass, enjoying the sunshine and each other's company and pretending to be asleep; and though the kitten displayed no interest in the visitors, holding its personality of more importance than anything else, the puppy jumped up, barked, and rushed at ...
— THE MISSES MALLETT • E. H. YOUNG

... Dog, they called the Cat, And little Kitten too, And down they put the Cod and sauce, To ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood

... duchess was in exile she shared her disgrace, refused to betray her, and was sent to the Bastille for her loyalty. She resigned herself to her imprisonment with admirable philosophy, amused herself in the study of Latin, in watching the gambols of a cat and kitten, and in carrying on a safe and sentimental flirtation with the fascinating Duc de Richelieu, who occupied an adjoining cell and passed the hours in singing with her popular airs from Iphigenie. "Sentimental" is hardly a fitting word to apply to the coquetries of this remarkably clear ...
— The Women of the French Salons • Amelia Gere Mason

... dreadful in your being caught fast asleep, like a white kitten on a velvet rug. If you are never guilty of anything worse, you and your ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson

... playful as a kitten, tricksy[obs3], frisky, frolicsome; gamesome; jocose, jocular, waggish; mirth loving, laughter-loving; mirthful, rollicking. elate, elated; exulting, jubilant, flushed; rejoicing &c. 838; cock-a- hoop. cheering, inspiriting, exhilarating; cardiac, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus

... giving medical care to any wounded enemies who might fall into our hands. When Boer shells began to burst about our ears Dr. Stark was the most practical advocate of caution. He would leave the Royal Hotel at daybreak every morning or even earlier, carrying with him a pet kitten in a basket, and sufficient supplies for a whole day up to dinner-time. When the light began to fade so that gunners could hardly see to shoot straight, and therefore ceased firing, he would emerge from his riverside retreat and return to the hotel. ...
— Four Months Besieged - The Story of Ladysmith • H. H. S. Pearse

... read and write. Oh, Miss Maude now—I don't want to recite. I don't want to." (But she did "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star" and "The Playful Kitten"—the latter all of 40 lines.) "I think, I think they both come out of McGuffey's second Reader. Yes ma'am I remember's McGuffey's and the ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - Volume II. Arkansas Narratives. Part I • Work Projects Administration

... all be attended to, kitten. According to Bland, Johnny checked out before he disappeared. Also his airplane disappeared with him. That doesn't look like he'd been made away with, exactly. He's all right, probably—but we'll find out. I've a right to know what he did with that flying ...
— The Thunder Bird • B. M. Bower

... has he saved me from the rough treatment of rude and ill-conducted curs, when I have been returning from a concert, or tripping quietly home after a pleasant chat with a friend. Often and often, when a kitten, has he carried me on his back through the streets, in order that I might not wet my velvet slippers on a rainy day: and once, ah! well do I remember it, he did me even greater service; for a wicked Tom of our race, who ...
— The Adventures of a Dog, and a Good Dog Too • Alfred Elwes

... written by Miss Salon, in the name of a kitten at Little Strawberry Hill, with whose gambols Lord ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole

... bother of objecting to it. In one of his books he hints that talking to certain persons is like trying to pet a squirrel; if you are wise, you will not imitate that frisky little beast but assume the purring-kitten attitude ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long

... things than for cotton-picking or plantation work, and handed him over to their surveyor, who needed a man to help him. I used often to meet him after this, tripping at his master's heels with the theodolite, or scampering about with tapes and chains like a kitten with a spool of thread. He did not look then as though he were destined to die of a broken heart, though that was his end not so many months afterward. The plantation manager told me that Arick ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... noon voice. Sometimes there sits the brother who follows the sea, their representative man; who knows only how far it is to the nearest port, no more distances, all the rest is sea and distant capes,—patting the dog, or dandling the kitten in arms that were stretched by the cable and the oar, pulling against Boreas or the trade-winds. He looks up at the stranger, half pleased, half astonished, with a mariner's eye, as if he were a dolphin within cast. If men will believe it, sua si bona ...
— A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers • Henry David Thoreau

... on the middle of the floor with a blind kitten just three days old in her lap. The kitten squalled frightfully, and Babs kept on calling it 'poor, pretty darling.' I thought badly of the kitten's future prospects, but well of its nurse's; ...
— A Young Mutineer • Mrs. L. T. Meade

... with a pretty flushed face beneath a French hat, and two little hands stretched out in greeting. Mr Asplin looked at her critically. Was it Peggy? For a moment memory was baffled by the sight of the elegant young lady, but a second glance revealed the well-known features—the arched brows and kitten-like chin. For the rest, the hazel eyes were as clear and loving as ever, and the old mischievous gleam shone through ...
— More About Peggy • Mrs G. de Horne Vaizey

... high opinion of this town, where she only lives on account of her husband, a retired something-or-other who owns the house. Although convulsed with grief, both of them, at the moment of my arrival—a favourite kitten had just been run over—they at once set about making me comfortable in a room with exposure due south. The flooring is of cement: the usual Viareggio custom. Bricks are cold, stone is cold, tiles are cold; but cement! ...
— Alone • Norman Douglas

... day or two his quick ear caught the sound of a feeble mewing inside the arch, and, of course, he wanted to know what it was. So he was told that kittens had to be kept quiet and that Down would be very vexed if her kitten was disturbed; but that by-and-bye she would doubtless bring it out for him to see, and then, of course, he could play with it. Now, Baby Akbar was always a reasonable little fellow, so he waited patiently; though every night when he went to bed and Down came out for her supper, ...
— The Adventures of Akbar • Flora Annie Steel

... stand everything else," said Rose, "if we could just get the children out of the house. Edwin is still as weak as a kitten, and Myrna looks as if she might come down with the fever ...
— Quin • Alice Hegan Rice

... the nature of a religious festival," said Sir Modava. "There are scores of snakes brought before you; but they have had their poison fangs extracted, and they could not harm you much more than a playful kitten. This is a day appointed to make prayers and offerings to the snakes, in order to conciliate them and to insure immunity from their bites. Though these occasions occur all over India, I don't believe there is a single bite the less ...
— Across India - Or, Live Boys in the Far East • Oliver Optic

... again, the Master grimly watchful, Montgomery as alert as a kitten. The Master tried a sudden rush, squattering along with his awkward gait, but coming faster than one would think. The student slipped aside and avoided him. The Master stopped, grinned, and shook his ...
— The Green Flag • Arthur Conan Doyle

... baggage-waggon her cradle, the camp-dogs her playfellows, the caserne oaths her lullaby, the guidons her sole guiding-stars, the razzia her sole fete-day: it was little marvel that the bright, bold, insolent little friend of the flag had nothing left of her sex save a kitten's mischief and coquette's archness. It said much rather for the straight, fair, sunlit instincts of the untaught nature, that Cigarette had gleaned, even out of such a life, two virtues that she would ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida

... Among the treasured pathetic scraps kept in his father's desk, his executors found a pencil drawing by his wife, the closed window of a silent house, into which the perfectly sketched figure of a little kitten was trying ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke, Vol. 2 • Stephen Gwynn

... minute," said the doctor when they were about to start, and after fumbling in a drawer he produced a red ribbon with a little bell attached. "Dere, now, you can find him in de dark," he said, tying it round the kitten's neck. The girls were enchanted with the new pet and promptly christened it "Kitty Wohelo." Playing with it whiled away many a tedious hour for Sahwah when she could not join in the ...
— The Camp Fire Girls in the Maine Woods - Or, The Winnebagos Go Camping • Hildegard G. Frey

... ruler, but history being reticent our chance has gone, unless it should be the good fortune of some member of Sir STANLEY MAUDE'S expedition, rummaging in the archives of Baghdad, to come upon new facts. Meanwhile I offer the name as a terse and snappy one for a Persian kitten, such as I saw the other day convert several shillings'-worth of my aunt's Berlin wool (as it is still, I believe, called, in spite of The Daily Mail) into sheer scrap. Knitting however is not what it was in the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Oct. 17, 1917 • Various

... reminiscences, when her father and mother, the second year after her marriage, had broken up their household in New York, and resolved on a holiday, late in life, in Europe. It was a comfortable, shabby old thing, that she had used to curl up on to learn her German, with the black kitten in her lap, and the tip of its tail for a pointer. She had always meant to cover it new, but had never had time. There was a large gray travelling shawl folded over it now, making extra padding for back and seat, and the thick fringe fell below, a garnishing ...
— The Other Girls • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney

... I help myself?" screamed one of the children, drumming loudly on the table. "I'd rather have bread and molasses!" cried another; and "Oh, Ma, when we move to-morrow will you let me take the kitten I found?" ...
— One Man in His Time • Ellen Glasgow

... black kitten, played a part in the story also. The Bobbsey twins were very fond of Snoop, and had kept him so many years that I suppose he ought to be called cat, instead of ...
— The Bobbsey Twins at School • Laura Lee Hope

... the happy pair giggled, and exchanged looks which were meant to imply that their most desperate quarrels were mere kitten's play; and that Uncle John did so interpret them, he made manifest by a ...
— Stories of Comedy • Various

... "My dear Tom continues to show marks of uncommon genius. He gets on wonderfully in all branches of his education, and the extent of his reading, and of the knowledge he has derived from it, are truly astonishing in a boy not yet eight years old. He is at the same time as playful as a kitten. To give you some idea of the activity of his mind I will mention a few circumstances that may interest you and Colin. You will believe that to him we never appear to regard anything he does as anything more than a schoolboy's amusement. He took ...
— Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay • George Otto Trevelyan

... little Dutch girl and her mother and that's a kitten, and the little girl has her hand up as if she was doing something to her forehead. She has shoes that curve up ...
— The Measurement of Intelligence • Lewis Madison Terman

... should retire and be able to have a home. This is the dream of every officer who gives his days and strength and brains to the service of his country. Then they packed the few articles that they felt most necessary to their comfort, gave away ten guinea pigs, eight white rats, four pigeons and a kitten, crated Bill's collie and the Major's Airdale, and started off for their first post, Fort Sill, where the Major was stationed at the School of Fire ...
— Battling the Clouds - or, For a Comrade's Honor • Captain Frank Cobb

... the other way. They turned up their heads sidewise and blinked at the sky, all blue and calm and infinite, with white clouds sailing over it like swans on a limpid lake; and one stood up on his hind legs and reached up both paws, like a kitten, to pull down a cloud to play with. Then the wind stirred a feather near them, the white feather of a ptarmigan which they had eaten yesterday, and forgetting the big world and the sail and the cloud, the cubs took to playing with the feather, chasing ...
— Northern Trails, Book I. • William J. Long

... time than it takes to tell the story the carrier returned, bringing a receipt for the mail that had been sent, and a pretty little kitten which arrived breathless from its spin through ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 51, October 28, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various

... along a road which was being treated according to the iniquity of Macadam. Over the broken stones had been shot, to consolidate them, a complex of ashes, cabbage-leaves, egg and periwinkle shells, straw, potato-parings, a dead kitten (over which a few carrion-flies were hovering), and other promiscuous nuisances. The road in question, be it remarked, is highly "respectable," if not actually fashionable. The houses facing upon it are severely rated, and are inhabited chiefly by "carriage people." ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 303 - October 22, 1881 • Various

... kept a maternal eye on his socks and shirts and a soft spot in her heart for the bel Anglais who chaffed her unmercifully, but paid his rent with commendable promptitude. A huge woman, with a shrewd not unkindly face, she sat in a rocking chair with a diminutive kitten on her shoulder and a mass of knitting in her lap. As she listened to Craven's inquiry she tossed the kitten into a basket and bundled the shawl she was making under her arm, while she rose ponderously to her feet and favoured the stranger with a stare that was frankly and undisguisedly ...
— The Shadow of the East • E. M. Hull

... did, They called in adventitious aid. A faithful, favourite dog ('twas thus With Tobit and Telemachus) Amused their steps; and for a while They viewed his gambols with a smile. The kitten too was comical, She played so oddly with her tail, Or in the glass was pleased to find Another cat, ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan

... big brown shawl wrapped around his stooped shoulders, a piece of home spun jeans pinned around his head and a pair of patched jeans trousers supported by heavy bands of the same material for suspenders. As he returned from milking, I wondered if he had my gray kitten in his pocket, but suddenly I realized he was hobbling hurriedly, the milk pail was thrown aside and he seemed badly frightened. I ran to find out what had occurred to upset Uncle Jake's ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - Volume II. Arkansas Narratives. Part I • Work Projects Administration

... Nearly every ruined barn or house sheltered one or more of them and they were, as a rule, quite wild. Some, however, had been caught and tamed by the soldiers who made great pets of them. Frequently a soldier would be seen going in or out of the front line with a kitten perched contentedly on top of his pack. There was one big brindle "madame" cat who adopted our machine gun outfit when we first went in. She traveled up and down the line but never stayed anywhere except in one of the machine gun emplacements. ...
— The Emma Gees • Herbert Wes McBride

... remaining picture showed a little girl seated in a big armchair and reading with profound culture the most massive of bibles: she had her grandmother's mutch cap and spectacles on, and looked very sweet and solemn; a doll sat bolt upright beside her, and on the floor a kitten hunted a ball of wool with ...
— Mary, Mary • James Stephens

... Trailanga replied, "Lahiri Mahasaya is like a divine kitten, remaining wherever the Cosmic Mother has placed him. While dutifully playing the part of a worldly man, he has received that perfect self-realization for which I ...
— Autobiography of a YOGI • Paramhansa Yogananda

... very fond of animals—that was always one of his good traits—and he one day found a little stray white kitten somewhere about the place, and brought it into the room where I sat alone at work. He began grimly to play with it. Just then Janet opened the door. She gave a delighted exclamation, and, coming eagerly ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 5, May, 1891 • Various

... was gambolling all around her anchor among the silver-tipped waves. Backing with a start of affected surprise at the sight of the strained cable, she pounced on it like a kitten, while the spray of her descent burst through the hawse-holes with the report of a gun. Shaking her head, she would say: "Well, I'm sorry I can't stay any longer with you. I'm going North," and would sidle off, halting suddenly with a dramatic rattle of her rigging. "As I was just going ...
— "Captains Courageous" • Rudyard Kipling

... herself in the depths of her dreaded jungle. It was so confusing she did not know which way to turn. The roar and clang of a great city smote on her ears as she stood in the big Union depot, helpless, bewildered, and as lost as a stray kitten in the midst of that noisy, pushing crowd. Sharp elbows jostled her this way and that; strange faces streamed past her by thousands, it seemed. How could anybody find anybody else in such a whirlpool of people? Hunting for a needle in a haystack seemed nothing in comparison to finding ...
— The Little Colonel's House Party • Annie Fellows Johnston

... and Ike dusted the blinds from the top to the bottom in a "wholesale way," as he called it, and cleaned the knives on the wrong side of the Bath-brick to his heart's content. Every one, even the dumb animals, seemed conscious of Aunt Lina's departure. My little pet kitten, Norah, resumed her place by the side of the heater in the library, starting once in a while in her dreams and springing up as though she heard the rustle of Aunt Lina's gown, or the sharp, clear notes of her voice—but coiled herself down with a consoling "pur," ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various

... month, too, he has been making a little money, and he gives me three francs every evening that I put into a money-box. Only he will never let me out except to come here—and he calls me his little kitten! Mamma never called me anything but bad names—and ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac

... the china doll, has only one leg, and my three wax dolls are no better. Fanny has only one arm; both Julia's eyes are out; and the kitten scratched off Maria's wig the other day, and she has the most dreadful-looking, bald pate you ever saw! Instead of its being made of nice white wax, it is nothing but old brown paper! I think it is very mean not to make dolls' bald heads like other ...
— The Two Story Mittens and the Little Play Mittens - Being the Fourth Book of the Series • Frances Elizabeth Barrow

... shrug with her shoulders, and did not say a single word more. Lady Fanny, who was as gay as a young kitten (if I may be allowed so to speak of the aristocracy), laughed, and blushed, and giggled, and seemed quite to enjoy her sister's ill-humour. And the Countess began at once, and entered into the history of the thirteen ...
— The History of Samuel Titmarsh - and the Great Hoggarty Diamond • William Makepeace Thackeray

... home. "If we must economize on cats," cried Nancy passionately, "don't let's begin on this one! She doesn't look it, but she is a heroine. When the Rideout's house burned down, her kittens were in a basket by the kitchen stove. Three times she ran in through the flames and brought out a kitten in her mouth. The tip of her tail is gone, and part of an ear, and she's blind in one eye. Mr. Harmon says she's too homely to live; now what ...
— Mother Carey's Chickens • Kate Douglas Wiggin

... by there was a pluck beneath the water, and you struck. Whatever else it was, it was no fish; but you carefully winched up and brought in a black kitten not long drowned. Fortune was not content with smiting you, it derided. As you blushingly remarked to the laughing but unappreciative Jamie, this was nothing short of catastrophe. Jamie beguiled the next drift by reminiscences of Sir George Griffith ...
— Lines in Pleasant Places - Being the Aftermath of an Old Angler • William Senior

... came through parted green wool curtains, a girl so flaxen-haired, with such blue eyes—like a friendly kitten—that Wesley Dean almost forgot the errand that had brought ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 • Various

... as still as a sentinel with his back against the gate-post and a look of triumph on his face, clutching firmly to his breast a small jet-black kitten. It was mewing piteously, with some reason—for in his determination not to let it go, he gripped it hard, so that it was spread out flat and could hardly breathe. The children gathered round ...
— Penelope and the Others - Story of Five Country Children • Amy Walton

... his mother!" cried Vanda. "Come and kiss me, my kitten. No, it is not your grandfather you are to thank, but monsieur, who is good enough to lend me one. I am to have it to-morrow. How are they ...
— The Brotherhood of Consolation • Honore de Balzac

... seven-toed kitten, little daughter. I expect that she will catch a great many mice with those big feet of hers, when she grows ...
— A Kindergarten Story Book • Jane L. Hoxie

... little kitten, chasing a ball of yarn, had suddenly turned around and attacked Janice, tooth and nail, the girl would ...
— Janice Day, The Young Homemaker • Helen Beecher Long

... and forwards between her and a gap in the hedge, until Beth understood that she wished her to follow her through it into the next garden. Beth did so, and the cat led her to a little warm nest where, to Beth's wild delight, she showed her a tiny black kitten. Beth picked it up, and carried it, followed by the cat, into the house in a state of breathless excitement, shrieking out the news as she ran. Beth was immediately seized upon. What was she doing at home when ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand

... was no kitten, might not be altogether infatuated. The shock of the afternoon, for all her heroics, might have waked in her some doubt of the charms of Mr. Boyce. The girl was shrewd enough. She had dealt with fortune-hunters before—remember the Scottish lord's son—and shown a humorous appreciation of ...
— The Highwayman • H.C. Bailey

... out of the way than Tonio slyly disappeared—following, doubtless, the example set him by his master and mistress—possessing no more sense of responsibility to restrain his movements than a kitten or a butterfly. Thus the dwarf found himself, greatly to his satisfaction and delight, left in sole charge of the captives ...
— Two Little Travellers - A Story for Girls • Frances Browne Arthur

... Felix had pushed a slip of paper over to Alice, on which she read—"'Forget-me-not, ladybird, linnet, kitten." I don't think I ever saw a linnet. Isn't ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge

... the man. The poor mourned bitterly that he was gone, and even the newsboys were filled with regret over his taking away. In speaking of his parent, President Roosevelt once said: "I can remember seeing him going down Broadway, staid and respectable business man that he was, with a poor sick kitten in his coat pocket, which he had picked up in the street." Such a man could not but have a heart overflowing ...
— American Boy's Life of Theodore Roosevelt • Edward Stratemeyer

... open her eyes the moment she woke up; she lay still, enjoying the warmth, the sweet scents, and the balmy air, so different from the cold winds of early spring. Presently she yawned, stretched herself like a sleepy kitten, and finally sat up and opened ...
— The Happy Adventurers • Lydia Miller Middleton

... for, after all, the ears had a generous look, in harmony with the frank, open face, and the shadowed eye was the softest, sweetest blue eye I ever saw. She had been called Puss when a baby, because of her nestling, kitten-like way, and the odd name clung to her. Luke Lord was homely; but he didn't care a bit. He was so jolly and good-natured that everybody liked him, and he liked everybody, and so was happy. He had light hair, very light for fifteen years, ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. V, August, 1878, No 10. - Scribner's Illustrated • Various

... the poor fellow collapsed and sank to the ground as weak as a kitten. Frank let the bag fall ...
— Klondike Nuggets - and How Two Boys Secured Them • E. S. Ellis

... as her mouth had a natural propensity for looking; balancing herself occasionally on the arm of the sofa, which, being rather small and of a light figure, she could do with both impunity and grace; or else rushing to the open window, ostensibly to let her black kitten investigate street-sights from its mistress's shoulder. Agatha was very much of a child still, or could ...
— Agatha's Husband - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik (AKA: Dinah Maria Mulock)

... she answered coaxingly, rubbing her head against his sleeve like a kitten. "Come, I ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, No. 23, February, 1873, Vol. XI. • Various

... mode of settling a question. Now, as for our friend the landlord, I am sorry to say that his new business doesn't seem to have improved his manners or his temper a great deal. As a miller, he was one of the best-tempered men in the world, and wouldn't have harmed a kitten. But, now, he can swear, and bluster, and throw glasses at people's heads, and all that sort of thing, with the best of brawling rowdies. I'm afraid he's taking lessons in ...
— Ten Nights in a Bar Room • T. S. Arthur

... went to her room, where she sat down and tried to think hard. A Pink Kitten was curled up on the window-sill and ...
— The Magic of Oz • L. Frank Baum

... "Oh, Mr. Curiosity," she exclaimed, "that is too much for you, you can't lift that up." To her horror and amazement, however, he had lifted it up, and was putting it on again after popping the kitten in, whose remains were discovered at the bottom when the soup was strained. The poor cook was so bewildered, that she did not know what to do: it was time for the dinner to be served, and she, therefore, for the look's sake, thought it best to send the soup in as it was, even if it were sent ...
— Anecdotes of the Habits and Instinct of Animals • R. Lee

... enough to eat, nor half enough to wear. What was worse than that, she had nobody to kiss, and nobody to kiss her; nobody to love her and pet her; nobody in all the wide world to care whether she lived or died, except a half-starved kitten that lived in the wood-shed. For June was black, and a slave; and this Frenchwoman, Madame Joilet, was ...
— The Junior Classics • Various

... softness, the velvet grace of a kitten; her laugh was clearer than the ring of silver and crystal; as she took her sire's cold hands and rubbed them, and stood on tiptoe to reach his lips for a kiss, there seemed to shine round her a halo of loving delight. The grave and reverend seignor looked ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte

... she went to New York shopping. She secretly regarded that as an expedition. She was terrified at the crossings. Stout, elderly woman as she was, when she found herself in the whirl of the great city, she became as a small, scared kitten. She gathered up her skirts, and fled incontinently across the streets, with policemen looking after her with haughty disapprobation. But when she was told to step lively on the trolley-cars, her ...
— By the Light of the Soul - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

... freedom of the coming day and of many coming desert days, filled her heart with an almost childish sensation. She felt younger than she had felt for years, and even foolishly innocent, like a puppy dog or a kitten. Her thick black hair, unbound, fell in a veil round her strong, active body, and she had the rare consciousness that behind that other more mysterious veil her soul was to-day a less unfit companion for its mate than it had been since her ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens

... a boy, after a moment's thought, replied—"A kitten is remarkable for rushing like mad at nothing whatever, and ...
— Children's Rhymes, Children's Games, Children's Songs, Children's Stories - A Book for Bairns and Big Folk • Robert Ford

... only creatures who are busy in this way. There is your kitten, for instance, who a few months ago was only a tiny bit of fur, but is now turning gradually into a grown-up cat. It is her daily food which is daily becoming a cat inside her—her saucers of milk now, and very soon her mice, all ...
— The History of a Mouthful of Bread - And its effect on the organization of men and animals • Jean Mace

... "The thought of her should cheer, and not cloud our meeting. Her presence never brought me sorrow, nor does her remembrance. Come, dear," she added, cheerfully, taking the child's hand, "come in and rest your poor little tired self. Kate, find the white kitten for her. A prettier one you never saw in France or Cuba, Miss Carrie,—that's what papa ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various

... ones were quite right. So they hustled and tumbled one another at each fresh log in their haste to be first, and squealed little squeals, and growled little growls, as if each was a pig, a pup, and a kitten all rolled into one. ...
— The Biography of a Grizzly • Ernest Thompson Seton

... position, one to which I was a comparative stranger. There was nothing to do but to make the best of the situation, however, and this I did, though I can truthfully say that for the first five innings I was as nervous as a kitten. ...
— A Ball Player's Career - Being the Personal Experiences and Reminiscensces of Adrian C. Anson • Adrian C. Anson

... like her old self again, and the two girls were laughing merrily over the antics of Eva's Angora kitten when the doorbell rang, and Eva, looking rather ...
— Grace Harlowe's Senior Year at High School - or The Parting of the Ways • Jessie Graham Flower

... was accustomed from day to day to take her station quietly at my elbow, on the writing table, sometimes for hour after hour, whilst I was engaged in study, became at length less constant in her attendance, as she had a kitten to take care of. One morning she placed herself in the same spot, but seemed unquiet, and, instead of seating herself as usual, continued to rub her furry sides against my hand and pen, as though resolved to draw my attention, and make me leave off. As soon as she had accomplished this ...
— Stories about the Instinct of Animals, Their Characters, and Habits • Thomas Bingley

... the last bead and looked at the unstable baubles in her pink left palm. She tilted her hand so that they rolled back and forth. "Could a kitten look at a king?" she asked with ...
— Children of the Desert • Louis Dodge

... is no one with whom to leave the puppies." "Yes, we rented our house to Mrs. S—— for less than we expected to get for it, because she is so fond of cats and promised to take good care of Pom Pom"—which recalls to my mind a dear little girl who had a white kitten that she was entrusting to a neighbor. The neighbor, a busy person with eight children, received the kitten without demonstration of any kind. Little Lydia looked at her for a few moments and then said, "Mrs. F——, that kitten must be loved." That is really the trouble, not only must they ...
— The Smiling Hill-Top - And Other California Sketches • Julia M. Sloane

... When Nance's kitten, presented to her by their neighbour, Mrs. Helier Baker, solved much speculation as to its sex by becoming a mother, Tom gladly undertook the task of drowning the superfluous offspring. He got so much amusement out of it that, for weeks, Nance's horrified inner vision saw little blind heads, ...
— A Maid of the Silver Sea • John Oxenham

... one corner. Then his captors would get a firm grip on the back of his neck. If the squirrel proved to be a young one, they would put on a collar and little chain, that they had always ready, and keep him to train for a pet. Once Paul caught a gray squirrel kitten so small and young that he had to feed it on milk and crushed walnuts. He called it May. The tiny creature lived in his pocket and desk and shared his bed at night. It would sit on the off page of his book whilst he ...
— The Story of Paul Boyton - Voyages on All the Great Rivers of the World • Paul Boyton

... a sandboy, he is happier than a king, And his trawler is the darling of his heart (With her cuddy like a cupboard where a kitten couldn't swing, And a smell of fish that simply won't depart); He has found upon occasion sundry targets for his guns; He could tell you tales of mine and submarine; Oh, the holes he's in and out of and the glorious risks he runs Turn his son—who's ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, April 4, 1917 • Various

... walked a hundred feet under ordinary circumstances, but that scream brought me here on the run. Now that the excitement is over I feel weak as a kitten," Charley answered. ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely

... my Infant, lo! What a pretty baby show! See the Kitten on the Wall, Sporting with the leaves that fall, Wither'd leaves, one, two, and three, From the lofty Elder-tree! Through the calm and frosty air Of this morning bright and fair, Eddying round and round they sink Softly, slowly: one might think, 10 From ...
— Poems In Two Volumes, Vol. 1 • William Wordsworth

... Chinese boy, as it seemed, although at second glance he looked rather old for a boy. He wore blue clothes and was shelling peas. His glossy black "pigtail" reached down to the floor, and the kitten was trying to raise the end of it in her pretty white paws. As Lucy had said, heavy black silk cords were braided in with the hair, ...
— Little Sky-High - The Surprising Doings of Washee-Washee-Wang • Hezekiah Butterworth

... is just what she did. She got the bread all right, but, on the way back she stopped to pet a kitten that rubbed up against her. And then Vi got turned around, and she went down a side street, and walked two or three blocks before she ...
— Six Little Bunkers at Aunt Jo's • Laura Lee Hope

... well one," growled Tag, "you never would have put me down, or held me. But I'm like a kitten ...
— The High School Boys in Summer Camp • H. Irving Hancock

... not a louder sound, not more emphatic, imperative or clear than the others; it was formless, feeble and ineffably pathetic. It was its utter incongruity which reached Dewforth through the robotic clamor, and which touched him ... a mewing, as of a kitten ...
— In the Control Tower • Will Mohler

... small round intent, Like sportive kitten with its tail; While no sick-headache they bewail, And while their host will credit give, Joyous and ...
— Faust Part 1 • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

... and smiling that the twins knew at once there must be something very nice in the bundle, but what it was they could not guess. Taro thought, "Maybe it's a puppy." He had wanted a puppy for a long time. And Take thought, "Perhaps it's a kitten! But it looks pretty large for a kitten, and it doesn't mew. Kittens always mew." And they ...
— THE JAPANESE TWINS • Lucy Fitch Perkins

... telling about their pets. I have a little dog that can turn somersaults. He shuts doors when you tell him to, and gives you his paw if you ask him in French. He is a black and tan. Then I have a pet kitten, and I tie a blue ribbon round its neck. It jumps through my arms; but it is too fond of staying out all night on the fences. I have seventeen dolls. The largest is a Japanese baby, and is as large as a live one. ...
— Harper's Young People, April 27, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various

... two years ago and opened a shop, was seen kicking a small kitten out of his house. The next day a committee of Riverdale citizens waited on him, and said they had had a great deal of trouble to root out cruelty from their village, and they didn't want any one to come there and introduce it again, and they thought he had better move on to ...
— Beautiful Joe • Marshall Saunders

... what's in your mind, Phil, but you needn't trouble about that. We're just trying to get acquainted, you and I. We understand each other beautifully, and after while we'll see whether we have any advice for each other. At your age I hadn't the sense of a kitten. You're most astonishingly wise; I marvel at you! And you've grown up a nice, sensible girl in spite of your aunts—none of their cattishness—not a hint of it. I can't tell you how relieved I am to find ...
— Otherwise Phyllis • Meredith Nicholson

... to frisk about in the green woods could not be happy shut up in a box. This pretty little animal became so much attached to her kind-hearted protector, that she would run about after him, and come like a kitten whenever he called her. While he was gone to school, she frequently ran off to the woods and played with wild squirrels on a tree that grew near his path homeward. Sometimes she took a nap in a large knot-hole, or, if the weather was very warm, made a cool ...
— Isaac T. Hopper • L. Maria Child

... man dozed o'er the latest news Till the light in his pipe went out; And, unheeded, the kitten with cunning paws Rolled and tangled the balls about; Yet still sat the wife in the ancient chair, Swaying to and fro in ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For • Various

... the snarler And the guests of every sort— The elocution chap With rhetoric on tap; The mimic and the funny dog; The social sponge; the money-hog; Vulgarian and dude; And the prude; The adiposing dame With pimply face aflame; The kitten-playful virgin— Vergin' on to fifty years; The solemn-looking sturgeon Of a firm of auctioneers; The widower flirtatious; The widow all too gracious; The man with a proboscis and a sepulcher beneath. One assassin picks the banjo, and ...
— Black Beetles in Amber • Ambrose Bierce

... the big chairs, and all the paraphernalia of Race Guides and race-glasses, fox-masks and stags'-horns, and hunting-whips. And yet, something that from the first moment struck him as not quite in keeping, foreign to the picture—a little jumble of books, a vase of flowers, a grey kitten. ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... but I never did it again. I caught one, a kitten, and set off with a number of boys to kill it; but as we went along it began to play with my necktie, and to purr. Our hearts were softened, so we let it go. Ah, Corrie, my boy, never go hunting ...
— Gascoyne, The Sandal Wood Trader - A Tale of the Pacific • R. M. Ballantyne

... possible way. If you wouldn't let them smash their pots on the table, if you wouldn't let them drag the kitten about with a string round its neck, if you wouldn't give them whatever they asked for, every mortal thing—then there was a shine on, and their mother coming in asking—"What's the matter with him? What have you done to him? What is it, Darling?" And then she'd turn on you as if she'd trample ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence

... profits. The day that the elopement was the talk of the town, Colonel Alphabetical Morrison was in the office. He said that he remembered Juanita Sinclair when she was a princess and wore Dolly Varden clothes and was the playfullest kitten in the basketful that used to turn out to the platform dances on Fourth of July, and appear as belles of the suppers given for the Silver Cornet Band just after the war. "But," added the Colonel, "this town is full of saffron-coloured old girls with wiry hair and sun-bleached eyes, who ...
— In Our Town • William Allen White

... Many a time have I seen him placidly extended before a fire, while puss used his shaggy body as a sleeping box, and once he was observed to help that anxious tabby-mother with the toilet of her kittens by licking them carefully all over. At every lick of Rufus's huge prehensile tongue a kitten was lifted bodily into the air, only, however, to descend washed and unharmed to the ground. But out of doors, in the society of Flick, Rufus's whole nature seemed to change. He became a demon-exterminator of ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 102, April 16, 1892 • Various

... laugh, in which Agnes joined, and the two, banishing the thoughts of sick babies and pale-faced women, had a gay time. In the meantime, the children had scrambled over rocks to gather lichen, and dug holes deep enough to bury a kitten in, in their efforts to get moss; they had sailed little nut-shell boats down the stream, and in the many ways that children have enjoyed themselves. Everybody was hungry of course, so by the time Agnes was ready for her ferns, there were empty baskets in which to ...
— 'Our guy' - or, The elder brother • Mrs. E. E. Boyd

... very sick at heart, he saw a little black cat running madly back and forth along the edge of a steep cliff from one of whose crevices came a persistent, unhappy mewing. The poor cat was a mother-cat, and was trying to rescue a kitten of hers that had fallen down between the rocks. At great risk of being dashed to pieces himself, the brave Prince climbed down the precipice, rescued the kitten, and gave it back to ...
— The Firelight Fairy Book • Henry Beston

... on the floor and clung to the walls; but the lash at the end of the big whip caught her everywhere, cracking against her ears with the noise of fireworks, streaking her flesh with burning weals. A regular dance of the animal being taught its tricks. This poor kitten waltzed. It was a sight! Her heels in the air like little girls playing at skipping, and crying "Father!" She was all out of breath, rebounding like an india-rubber ball, letting herself be beaten, unable to see or any longer to seek a refuge. And ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola

... "but I remember you carried me home once when I had hurt my foot, and you jumped into the ice pond to save my kitten, and—" ...
— The Voice of the People • Ellen Glasgow

... half-way through the hamlet and all goes well; still no sign of life except—yes, this so-called proof of every rule is always forthcoming, except that there is the sudden appearance of one stately cock. This is followed immediately by its sudden and unstately disappearance. A kitten also emerges from somewhere, glares, arches, fuffs, becomes indescribable, and—is not! Two or three children turn up and gape, but do not recover in time to insult, or to increase the dangers of the awkward turn in the road which is now ...
— The Eagle Cliff • R.M. Ballantyne

... each had a kitten in one hand and an elegant bouquet of pine needles and grass in the other, and what with the due presentation of the bouquets and the struggles of the kittens, the hugging and kissing was much interfered with. Kittens, bouquets, and babies were all somehow squeezed into the sleigh, ...
— Elizabeth and her German Garden • "Elizabeth", AKA Marie Annette Beauchamp

... stood engaged in talk With mother on that narrow walk Between the laurels (where we play At Red-skins lurking for their prey) And the grey old wall of roses Where the Persian kitten dozes And the sunlight sleeps upon Crannies of the crumbling stone —So hot it is you scarce can bear Your naked hand upon it there, Though there luxuriating in heat With a slow and gorgeous beat White-winged ...
— Collected Poems - Volume One (of 2) • Alfred Noyes

... crying, his whimpering, bothered him. It was a sniffling, wild-beast whine. That's the way a wolf or a tiger would sound, outside the circle of a fire's glow, unable to help its kitten or cub. But it annoyed him just the same—took his mind off important things. And what had English to cry over anyway? The ...
— Winner Take All • Larry Evans

... minute, and frown on you the next—toss you flowers with one hand, and hail stones with the other. I know her. Many's the time she has coaxed me out of a good, warm bed, wheedled me into the fields in a white dress and thin shoes, and then sent me home wet as a drowned kitten, with a snapping ...
— Little Ferns For Fanny's Little Friends • Fanny Fern

... to intone in concert a strange chant which is as tangled as a skein of wool after serving as a plaything for a kitten's prolonged game of sport. Sadly the chant meanders, wavers, to a high, wailing note. Then, as it were, it soars yet higher towards the dull, murky sky, breaks suddenly into a snarl, and, growling like a wild beast in terror, dies away ...
— Through Russia • Maxim Gorky

... pour over her, her heart would expand with a tender warmth, and the tears would stream down her cheeks. But that lasted only a moment. Then would come emptiness again, and the feeling, What is the use of living? The black kitten Bryska rubbed up against her and purred softly, but the little creature's caresses left Olenka untouched. That was not what she needed. What she needed was a love that would absorb her whole being, her reason, ...
— Best Russian Short Stories • Various

... and we are almost at the door. Flames are darting at us like serpents, leaping kitten-like at our heels. Above us is a billowy canopy of fire soaring upward with a vast crackling roar. Fiery splinters shoot around us, while before us is a black pit of smoke. Smooth walls of fire uprear about us. We are in a cavern of fire, ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service

... four short but eventful years of Genevieve Maud's life. Her method of approach had been singularly compelling; old and young paused not to argue, but freely stripped themselves of adornments she fancied, and animals, from the kitten she carried round by one ear to the great St. Bernard she half strangled in recurring moments of endearment, bore with her adoringly, and humbly followed the trail of cake she left behind her when she ...
— Many Kingdoms • Elizabeth Jordan

... can see, then his sin remains. Habitually a bungler as he is, and callous when not actively cruel, we are forced to regard him, when he seems to exhibit benevolence, as not divinely benevolent, but merely weak and capricious, like a boy who fondles a kitten and the next moment sets a dog at it. And not only does his moral character fall from him bit by bit, but his dignity disappears also. The orderly processes of the stars and the larger phenomena of nature are suggestive of nothing so ...
— Communism and Christianism - Analyzed and Contrasted from the Marxian and Darwinian Points of View • William Montgomery Brown

... were there when I was at an age when attachment to a place gets most deeply rooted, I think. As a mere child one enjoys and suffers like a kitten from hour to hour. But when one is just old enough to form associations and weave dreams, and yet is still a child—it is then, I fancy, that a home gets almost bound up with ...
— Mrs. Overtheway's Remembrances • Juliana Horatia Ewing

... out of the water so smoothly that the Island Queen hardly rocked, dangling the limp form of the Zid from its great rubbery lips like a drowned kitten. ...
— Traders Risk • Roger Dee

... commenced a kitten-like frolic with Bill, who was always only too happy to second any of her motions, and readily promised that after supper she would go with him a walk of half a mile over to a neighbor's, where was ...
— Betty's Bright Idea; Deacon Pitkin's Farm; and The First Christmas - of New England • Harriet Beecher Stowe

... I've knowed Homer sence he was knee high to a mouse's kitten, and I don't know nothin' about you a-tall. I gather you're calc'latin' on marryin' Homer.... Mebby you be and mebby you hain't.... ...
— Scattergood Baines • Clarence Budington Kelland

... Elizabeth had sent word that I mustn't wear a bonnet, or think of such a thing; and she sent me down a fur mantle, made of white kitten-skins, I reckon, with little black tails dropping all over it—just the tips, which needn't have hurt the black kittens much, if it was all day to the white ones. So, when I come down, holding up my long skirts with one hand, and folding this fur ...
— Phemie Frost's Experiences • Ann S. Stephens

... usually met under rather unconventional circumstances, I believe,” he remarked dryly. “My introduction to her came through the kitten she smuggled into the alms box of the chapel. It took me ...
— The House of a Thousand Candles • Meredith Nicholson

... my kitten, And hey my kitten, my deary, Such a sweet pet as this Was neither far ...
— Traditional Nursery Songs of England - With Pictures by Eminent Modern Artists • Various

... jocose, when he rallies the step-mother of his friend Beauchamp in a sprightly manner, or exchanges quips with Harriet's cousins at the house of "that excellent ancient," her grandmother. It is a mammoth posing as a kitten, though whatever he says or does, his audience throw up their hands and eyes and ask: "Was there ever such a man?" "Thank Heaven, never!" the nineteenth century ...
— Letters on Literature • Andrew Lang

... like this before, and my wonder at it almost drove the pain away. Mother and I always chased rats and birds, and once we killed a kitten. While I was puzzling over it, one of the boys cried out, ...
— Beautiful Joe • Marshall Saunders

... her that she was guiltless of any design against her former admirer. This was quite unnecessary, as the gentle Isabel, after bidding Brace, with a rap on the knuckles, to "go and play," contented herself with curling up like a kitten beside Miss Keene, and left that gentleman to wander somewhat aimlessly in ...
— The Crusade of the Excelsior • Bret Harte

... of course! I suppose not. And it doesn't take anything at all to make the tears come in her eyes; the other day I didn't know whether to laugh or be vexed at the way she went on with a kitten, for half an hour or more. I wish you had seen her! I am not sure she didn't cry over that. Now I suppose the next thing, brother, you will go and make her ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Elizabeth Wetherell

... attended by Hector, the large Newfoundland dog already spoken of, and who was now lying stretched on the floor at Pumpkin's feet, his nose resting on his fore feet, and his eyes, with great gravity, watching the motions of a skittish kitten under the table. Opposite to him sat Tonson the gamekeeper—a thin, wiry, beetle-browed fellow, with eyes like a ferret; and there were also, one or two farmers, who lived ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren

... farm, or the building of a house; she could work, she could order, plan, regulate, and execute; but what to do with a baby? There it lay, helpless, soft, incapable, not to be scolded, or worked, or made responsible in any way, the most impracticable creature possible: a kitten she could have put into a basket at night, and set in the shed; a puppy she could and would have drowned; but a baby, an unlucky, red, screeching creature, with a soul, was worse than all other evils. However, she couldn't let it die; so she went after some milk, and, with Aunt Rhody's help, after ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 37, November, 1860 • Various

... laugh at me, perhaps, for my long "harping" on my ward; but anyhow, don't misunderstand. It's not because she is pretty and engaging (one would say that of a kitten), but because of the startling contrast between the real girl and the girl of my imagination. I can't help thinking about her a good deal for this reason, and what I think of I have generally talked of or written of fully to you, my best and oldest friend. ...
— Set in Silver • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson

... girl looked out, impatiently waiting her father's return, wondering why he was gone so long and if she should like her cousin George, or whether he was a bearish looking fellow, with warty hands, who would tease her pet kitten and ink the faces of her doll babies. In the centre of the room the dinner table was standing, and Ida Selden had twice changed the location of her cousin's plate, once placing it at her side, and lastly putting it directly in front, ...
— The English Orphans • Mary Jane Holmes

... other. She dislikes me, as I dislike her. If you wish to see her, send a message through her maid, or," a happy thought coming to her, "through Margaret; she cares for Tita as a cat might care for her kitten!" ...
— The Hoyden • Mrs. Hungerford

... truly story about a little, little boy. He did not have any brothers or sisters, and he was very lonely and unhappy although he had nice clothes and plenty to eat. So he thought if he just had a little kitten or a dog to play with and live with he would be a good deal happier, and perhaps he would even get to be as happy as he could be. But his mother did not like to have dogs or cats around because they tracked up things, so she wouldn't ...
— The Girl Scouts at Home - or Rosanna's Beautiful Day • Katherine Keene Galt

... "but it was a very pretty story for all that. How I should have laughed to see Ben making a paint-brush out of the black cat's tail! I intend to try the experiment with Emily's kitten." ...
— Biographical Stories - (From: "True Stories of History and Biography") • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... street and saw their shells falling all over the edge of the village. They were only a quarter of an hour behind us. I yelled for Cecil who was helping the looted cook pack up her own things and anyone else's she could find in a sheet. I gathered up a dog and a kitten Cecil wanted and left a note for the next English officer who occupied my room with the inscription "I'd leave my happy home for you." We then put the cook, the kitten, the dog and Cecil in the cart and I got on the horse and we let out for Kronstad at a gallop. We raced ...
— Adventures and Letters • Richard Harding Davis

... whether you wouldn't rather have a candle, after you've been sitting in the dark half the night. When I was left in this way, I used to sit, think, think, thinking, till I felt as lonesome as a kitten in a wash-house copper with the lid on; but I believe the old brokers' men who are regularly trained to it, never think at all. I have heard some on 'em say, indeed, that they don't ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens

... had thought it innocence, he had imagined it a purity of mind that, in a city such as this, was almost unthinkable. It was his better nature then that had prompted the warning, the opening of a kitten's eyes before it is ...
— Sally Bishop - A Romance • E. Temple Thurston

... feet and, before I could protest, had picked me off the ground like a kitten and was tossing me ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke

... and hangings, all new, belonged to Messrs. Bampton in Piccadilly, as did the carpets. The pictures, belonging to the entail, were paid for. Lady Kingsmead lay on a chaise-longue and played with a Persian kitten named Omar. ...
— The Halo • Bettina von Hutten

... maintain that he can see, then his sin remains. Habitually a bungler as he is, and callous when not actively cruel, we are forced to regard him, when he seems to exhibit benevolence, as not divinely benevolent, but merely weak and capricious, like a boy who fondles a kitten and the next moment sets a dog at it. And not only does his moral character fall from him bit by bit, but his dignity disappears also. The orderly processes of the stars and the larger phenomena of nature ...
— Communism and Christianism - Analyzed and Contrasted from the Marxian and Darwinian Points of View • William Montgomery Brown

... Synod, And snap'd their Canons with a why-not; 530 (Grave Synod Men, that were rever'd For solid face and depth of beard;) Their classic model prov'd a maggot, Their direct'ry an Indian Pagod; And drown'd their discipline like a kitten, 535 On which they'd been so long a sitting; Decry'd it as a holy cheat, Grown out of date, and obsolete; And all the Saints of the first grass As casting foals of Balaam's ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler

... law to us. He always put his whole mind into answering any of our questions. One trifling instance makes me feel how he cared for what we cared for. He had no special taste for cats, though he admired the pretty ways of a kitten. But yet he knew and remembered the individualities of my many cats, and would talk about the habits and characters of the more remarkable ones years ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume I • Francis Darwin

... well and had a sweet little girl, as good as a kitten. Mr. Manning's Aunt Comfort had come to stay a spell through the winter. And now there was getting ready for Thanksgiving. There was no time to make mince pies, but then Mrs. Leverett didn't care so much for them early in the season. Hollis' family ...
— A Little Girl in Old Boston • Amanda Millie Douglas

... understand! As I neared her she shivered and mewed twice. Then she limped painfully off—poor soul, she had but three feet!—to another tree, leaving behind her, unwillingly enough, a much-licked dead kitten. That was what she wanted to tell me then. As I was there, I deposited the garbage by the side of the little corpse, knowing she would resume her watch, and retired. My friend who had put up her parcels was prepared to go. She thanked me with a smile as she went out, looking carefully round ...
— Earthwork Out Of Tuscany • Maurice Hewlett

... to New York shopping. She secretly regarded that as an expedition. She was terrified at the crossings. Stout, elderly woman as she was, when she found herself in the whirl of the great city, she became as a small, scared kitten. She gathered up her skirts, and fled incontinently across the streets, with policemen looking after her with haughty disapprobation. But when she was told to step lively on the trolley-cars, her true ...
— By the Light of the Soul - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

... terrier lay blinking in the hot African sun, while Cecilia Rhodes, the house kitten, languished in a cigar box wrapped about with twine to represent bars of iron. Above her meek face was a large label marked 'African Lion.' Her captor, my young son Jack, was out again among the flower-beds in quest of other big game, ...
— A Woman's Part in a Revolution • Natalie Harris Hammond

... cat comes up the garden walk, accompanied by a wicked kitten, who ambushes round the corner of the flowerbed, and pounces out on her mother, knocking her down and severely maltreating her. But the old lady picks herself up without a murmur, and comes into the verandah followed by her unnatural offspring, ready for any mischief. The ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley

... him. But Holy Joe likes it: fairly laps it up like a kitten, poor old dear. Well, Bobby says to ...
— Fanny's First Play • George Bernard Shaw

... she threw herself in my arms then and there. No, no! She demurred. All young girls, it seems, demur under the circumstances; but she was adorable, coy and tender in turns, pouting and coaxing, and playing like a kitten till she had taken the papers from me and, with a woman's natural curiosity, had turned the English letters over and over, even though she could not read a word ...
— Castles in the Air • Baroness Emmuska Orczy

... brooding over a glass of whisky. He is noticeably shabby. MRS. WERMELSKIRCH, a gipsy-like, slovenly old woman, is rinsing glasses behind the bar. FRANZISKA is crouching on a window ledge at the right playing with a kitten. The waiter GEORGE is standing at the bar over a glass of beer. He has an elegant spring suit on, as well as patent-leather shoes, kid-gloves and a top-hat set far ...
— The Dramatic Works of Gerhart Hauptmann - Volume II • Gerhart Hauptmann

... cut as short as a boy's, and her face had not one regular feature in it. But then—regularity! who wanted it, who would have thought the most pure classic type a change for the better, with those dark, dancing, challenging eyes; with that arch, brilliant, kitten-like face, so sunny, so mignon, and those scarlet lips like a bud of camellia that were never so handsome as when a cigarette was between them, or sooth to say, not ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]

... been so much of a surprise had anybody known of his conversation, a few weeks before, with Eltje Vanderveer, the railroad president's only daughter. She was a few months younger than Rod, and ever since he had jumped into the river to save her pet kitten from drowning, they had been ...
— Cab and Caboose - The Story of a Railroad Boy • Kirk Munroe

... the other calls across the water, 'and the best joke I've enjoyed since I saw Black Diamond brand you with the hot iron you'd just branded the lugger's kitten with.' ...
— The Gentleman - A Romance of the Sea • Alfred Ollivant

... purring kitten, she once more settled herself against him. Somehow Frederick couldn't tell her of Tessibel just then. The right moment had come and gone. In the morning he would! By the light of the day it ...
— The Secret of the Storm Country • Grace Miller White

... for the tide, carrying the ships to their destinations, and feeding the universal life. I found in a hidden nook a sheet of fine sand which the water had furrowed and folded like the pink palate of a kitten's mouth, or like a dappled sky. Everything repeats itself by analogy, and each little fraction of the earth reproduces in a smaller and individual form all the phenomena of the planet. Farther on I came across a bank of crumbling shells, and ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... of sleep are usually more sound than the remainder. Hardly anything will interrupt the repose of some persons during the early part of the night, while they awake afterwards at the slightest noise or movement—the chirping of a cricket, or the playing of a kitten. ...
— The Young Mother - Management of Children in Regard to Health • William A. Alcott

... recognition—something as if he were one of Heaven's assessors, come down to 'doom' every acquaintance he met—that, I have sometimes begun to sneeze on the spot, and gone home with a violent cold dating from that instant. I don't doubt he would cut his kitten's tail off if he caught her playing with it. Please tell me who taught her ...
— The Secret of a Happy Home (1896) • Marion Harland

... carefully concealed under her sweater. But a long end soon worked out and trailed behind her unnoticed, till Goliath, basking on the veranda steps, spied it. The lure proved too much for him, and he came sporting after it, as friskily as a young kitten, much to Cynthia's delight when she caught ...
— The Boarded-Up House • Augusta Huiell Seaman

... obscurity. What, was he not asleep? Faith, no; he had been ruminating on all sorts of subjects in the silence of the winter night; and while she was cramming the stove with coal he frolicked for a moment with Charlot, who rolled and tumbled on the bed like a young kitten. He knew Silvine's story, and had a very kindly feeling for the meek, courageous girl whom misfortune had tried so sorely, mourning the only man she had ever loved, her sole comfort that child of shame whose existence ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola

... by the fact that the telephone had been put in, and my friend, the grocer's boy, had brought me reinforcements in the shape of plates, tumblers, pots, pans, brooms, buckets, and supplies, and had further completed my rapture by promising me a kitten. ...
— At Home with the Jardines • Lilian Bell

... cat came into the room with the new kitten in her mouth, and then Flaxie screamed with terror. She thought the cat was eating it up for a mouse; but instead of that she dropped it gently on the sofa, purring, and looking at the two little girls ...
— Lill's Travels in Santa Claus Land and other Stories • Ellis Towne, Sophie May and Ella Farman

... glad you've come! I've been telling my neighbors all about the Lord Jesus, and how they ought to believe in Him, but I'm afraid I don't do it quite right. Now that you've come you can tell them! Here, you, Kitten," speaking to one of the crowd of children that had followed us into the house, "you run home and get your grandma to come. And you, Girlie, your second great-aunt said that she wanted to believe. Run fast and tell her that the teachers have come. All of you youngsters, you scoot home as fast ...
— Have We No Rights? - A frank discussion of the "rights" of missionaries • Mabel Williamson

... a balance lug-sail. It floated more lightly on the water than the bigger vessel, which was laden with coal and provender and salt for the North Atlantic fishery, and the painter hung loose, while the dinghy, tide-borne, sidled up to stern of its big companion like a kitten following its mother with the uncertain steps ...
— The Last Hope • Henry Seton Merriman

... lakes along its course were probably the spots where he flourished about in his uneasy slumbers at night. He must have played all the antics of a kitten in the neighborhood of the Portage. When the fort was first pointed out to me, I exclaimed, with delight, "Oh, we shall be there in ...
— Wau-bun - The Early Day in the Northwest • Juliette Augusta Magill Kinzie

... of afternoon lay across the lawn, and the grass, more green than ever in the level light, clasped the dazzling blue of the quiet waters. The three men stretched themselves in their easy chairs, as a stroked kitten stretches itself, with a lounging abandon which is forbidden to their sisters, as Madeline's voice rose fresh and true and touched ...
— Jewel Weed • Alice Ames Winter

... "I do not mean that way; I mean the way a kitten will pretend that a ball is another kitten, will lie on the floor with the ball between its paws, will kick it with its hind feet and paw at it with its forefeet and yet ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White

... is really just like a story book. We had supper out in the porch, prepared, spread, and fetched by Frau Bornsted, and it was a milk soup—very nice and funny, and I lapped it up like a thirsty kitten—and cold meat, and fried potatoes, and curds and whey, and wild strawberries and cream. They have an active cow who does all the curds and whey and cream and butter and milk-soup, besides keeping on having calves without a murmur,—"She is an example," said Frau ...
— Christine • Alice Cholmondeley

... from the projector of a part of this railroad line; on is De Soto, always thrillingly historic; farther is Eudora (a word of Greek genesis, and meaning a good gift, though likely enough he who christened this village may have known as little of Greek as a kitten); on is Lawrence, named for a famous anti-slavery agitator and philanthropist of Massachusetts—for Lawrence is a New England colony, as is Manhattan, farther up the Kansas River, familiarly known as the "Kaw," which is the leading river of Kansas; here is Lecompton, ...
— A Hero and Some Other Folks • William A. Quayle

... remained behind to take care of the local priest who was desperately ill. A few days later, the priest died and she was ready to follow the unit back over the border. Just before leaving she found and picked up a poor, small abandoned kitten. Tying the kitten up in her shawl and hanging it from her neck, she rode away from Rumania back to Russia. One soldier was riding back with her. At night time they arrived at a small village and for some reason or other, the soldier disappeared. After waiting for a while, there was nothing ...
— Nelka - Mrs. Helen de Smirnoff Moukhanoff, 1878-1963, a Biographical Sketch • Michael Moukhanoff

... the only creatures who are busy in this way. There is your kitten, for instance, who a few months ago was only a tiny bit of fur, but is now turning gradually into a grown-up cat. It is her daily food which is daily becoming a cat inside her—her saucers of milk now, and very soon her mice, all serve to the ...
— The History of a Mouthful of Bread - And its effect on the organization of men and animals • Jean Mace

... cage, boys," called Mrs. Steiner, "I wish you to see a lion that I once held in my arms and petted as if it were a kitten. He is now a great, grown lion, but he was born in this garden, and crowds came to see him and some people would give the keeper a fee to be allowed to take it in their arms. No one would dare to ...
— Pixy's Holiday Journey • George Lang

... at that. The idea of a big, savage lion meaouing like a kitten! Tom had to laugh and then he couldn't pucker up his ...
— Bunny Brown and His Sister Sue Playing Circus • Laura Lee Hope

... fellow of twenty-five or twenty-six, nephew of a stockbroker. It was the most loving couple, the merriest, happiest household in the world. Never once did I breakfast at their little flat, fifth floor of a house in the Rue Taitbout, without being melted to tears. 'Eat, my kitten,' 'Drink, my lamb!' and such looks and endearments, and each so pleased with the other! One day he said to her: 'My kitten, your money does not bring you in what it ought; give me your scrip and in forty-eight hours I shall have doubled your capital.' She went softly to her cupboard and ...
— The Aspirations of Jean Servien • Anatole France

... severe punishment, and she began to cry, and wish she had minded quickly, and then she would have been down stairs, where the sun was shining brightly into the windows. She would have been sitting in her chair, with her dear little kitten in her lap, and a nice bowl of bread and milk for her breakfast. She always saved a little milk in the bottom of the bowl for Daisy her kitten, and after she had done, she would give the rest to Daisy. So you see that Emma ...
— Aunt Fanny's Story-Book for Little Boys and Girls • Frances Elizabeth Barrow

... say a cat's a plumb fool," declared Cap'n Amazon. "They'll desert ship as soon as wink. Treacherous critters, the hull tribe. Why, when I was up country in Cuba once, I stopped at a man's hacienda and he had a tame wildcat—had had it from a kitten. Brought it up on ...
— Cap'n Abe, Storekeeper • James A. Cooper

... bathing appointment," she said, shutting the door after her. "May I come in? Pray do not move. You look like a little Persian kitten. Now, tell me something really interesting about your life. When I meet new people I squeeze them dry like a sponge. ...
— In a German Pension • Katherine Mansfield

... little doubt. With sombre heart he failed not to mark every point of this all-human grace, but to him goddess-like beauty, the triumph and glory of youth. The coy, dainty poise of the adorable foot—pointed so—and treading the ground with the softness of a kitten at play; the maddening curve of her waist, which a sacque, depending from an exquisite nape, partly concealed, only to enhance its lithe suppleness; the divinely young throat and bust; and above all the dazzling black rays from eyes ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle

... guiltless of any design against her former admirer. This was quite unnecessary, as the gentle Isabel, after bidding Brace, with a rap on the knuckles, to "go and play," contented herself with curling up like a kitten beside Miss Keene, and left that gentleman to wander somewhat aimlessly in ...
— The Crusade of the Excelsior • Bret Harte

... were paved with brick, and in one a chimney-place had come to light. Everywhere were bits of charred wood. Did no place in James Towne escape the scourge of fire? A kitten came springing over the mounds of excavated earth and began to prowl about the old fireplace. Except for a skittish pebble that she chased across the empty front, she found nothing of interest; no hint of savoury odours from ...
— Virginia: The Old Dominion • Frank W. Hutchins and Cortelle Hutchins

... load of books. The manner of this will be best understood by a feline illustration. Everybody has heard of the two Kilkenny cats, who devoured each other; but it is not so generally known, that they left behind them an orphan kitten, which, true to its breed, began to eat itself up, till it was diverted from the operation by a mouse. Now the human mind, under vexation, is like that kitten, for it is apt to prey upon itself, unless drawn off by ...
— Selected English Letters (XV - XIX Centuries) • Various

... we call her fur short, is back at home in the hills. She's a good hundred, colonel, an' two or three yars more to boot, I reckon, but as spry as a kitten. Full o' tales o' the early days an' the wild beasts an' the Injuns. She says you couldn't make up any story of them times that ain't beat by the truth. When she come up the Wilderness Road from Virginia in the Revolution ...
— The Guns of Bull Run - A Story of the Civil War's Eve • Joseph A. Altsheler

... is never perfectly furnished for enjoyment unless there is a child in it rising three years old, and a kitten rising three weeks.—Southey. ...
— Pearls of Thought • Maturin M. Ballou

... Mr. Garnet," said Mrs. Ukridge, opening her eyes till she looked like an astonished kitten. "Such a lot of them! ...
— Love Among the Chickens - A Story of the Haps and Mishaps on an English Chicken Farm • P. G. Wodehouse

... emotions,—about as nearly a "mew," to my ears, as the catbird executes. Whether frolicking with a comrade among the bushes, reproving a too inquisitive bird student, or warning the neighborhood against some monster like a stray kitten, this one cry seemed to answer for all his needs, and, excepting the song, was the only ...
— A Bird-Lover in the West • Olive Thorne Miller

... in the nature of a religious festival," said Sir Modava. "There are scores of snakes brought before you; but they have had their poison fangs extracted, and they could not harm you much more than a playful kitten. This is a day appointed to make prayers and offerings to the snakes, in order to conciliate them and to insure immunity from their bites. Though these occasions occur all over India, I don't believe there is a single bite the ...
— Across India - Or, Live Boys in the Far East • Oliver Optic

... of the mighty Tantor as though he had not just witnessed his shocking murder of a human being, signalled the beast to approach and lift him to its head, and Tantor came as he was bid, docile as a kitten, and ...
— The Son of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... she whispered, as they moved on after the tickets had been taken, thrusting her pretty head over into Honor's place. 'Nobody's looking, give me a kiss, and say you don't bear malice, though your kitten has been ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge

... like a man who had stretched forth his hand to take a kitten and had had an elephant tossed at him. "It's a pretty big contract, ...
— All-Wool Morrison • Holman Day

... still, as skipper of a merchant-man, when he visits a friend or gallants the ladies, decorates himself with a scarlet coat, cockade, and sword; who gives vent to a kind of Irish howl when his favourite kitten is suffocated under a feather bed; and falls abjectly on his knees when threatened with the dreadful name of Law, is a character which, in its surly good-humour and sensitive dignity, might easily, under more favourable circumstances, have grown into an individuality, if not equal to ...
— Fielding - (English Men of Letters Series) • Austin Dobson

... turbines purring like a sleeping kitten, and its twin screws turning lazily, almost imperceptibly in the dark waters, moved through the frosty night like a cloud brooding over the deep. Yet it was a cloud of tremendous potentiality, enwrapping a spirit of energy incarnate. From ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking

... In the evening I went to sit with Alec a little. He was wakeful, large-eyed, and restless. He lay with a book of stories from Homer, of which he is very fond, in one hand, the other clasping his black kitten, which slept peacefully on the counterpane. He wanted to talk, but to keep him quiet I told him a long trivial story, full of unexciting incidents. He lay musing, his head on his hand; then he seemed inclined to sleep, so I sate beside ...
— The Altar Fire • Arthur Christopher Benson

... old friend in such a fury. He menaced the girl with his fists as though about to forget that she was a woman. But she did not retreat. The picture was that of the kitten and the mastiff. Her sparkling eyes followed him. The scarlet of an anger as ready as his own leaped to the soft curves ...
— The Ramrodders - A Novel • Holman Day

... Dierdre O'Farrell who spoke, and we glared into each other's eyes like two Kilkenny cats—or a surprised Kilkenny cat and a spitfire Kilkenny kitten. ...
— Everyman's Land • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson

... a trick of grabbing at you suddenly, when she gets excited, like a kitten with a ...
— Three Men and a Maid • P. G. Wodehouse

... awaited me, and the thing was done so like a child or a kind dog, that the best I could do was just to follow her whenever she went on, to listen for the fall of her bare feet, and to watch in the dusk for the shining of her body. And there was another thought came in my head. She played kitten with me now when we were alone; but in the house she had carried it the way a countess might, so proud and humble. And what with her dress—for all there was so little of it, and that native enough—what with her fine tapa and fine scents, and her red flowers and seeds, that were quite as bright ...
— Island Nights' Entertainments • Robert Louis Stevenson

... chamber that I thought I recognized. He disappeared through a door in the corner of that, and by the time we had groped our way after him he was sitting in the old black panther's cage with the brute's head in his lap, stroking and twisting its ears as if it were a kitten. The cage door was wide open, and the day was already growing hot and brassy ...
— Caves of Terror • Talbot Mundy

... his captors would get a firm grip on the back of his neck. If the squirrel proved to be a young one, they would put on a collar and little chain, that they had always ready, and keep him to train for a pet. Once Paul caught a gray squirrel kitten so small and young that he had to feed it on milk and crushed walnuts. He called it May. The tiny creature lived in his pocket and desk and shared his bed at night. It would sit on the off page of his book whilst he studied and comb its little ...
— The Story of Paul Boyton - Voyages on All the Great Rivers of the World • Paul Boyton

... all; oh, none, thank you; none in the world. I'd be so frightened if there was. But, thank Heaven, Doctor Buddle says there's nothing to make us at all uneasy. My blessed little man! And he has his canary in the cage in the window, and his kitten to play with in ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu

... heavily behind the other. I meet him as I go to the post-office, and on returning, twenty minutes later, I pass him again, a little farther advanced. All the children accost him, and I have seen him stop—no great retardation indeed—to fondle in his arms a puppy or a kitten. Yet he is liable to excitement, in his way; for once, in some high debate, wherein he assisted as listener, when one old man on a wharf was doubting the assertion of another old man about a certain equinoctial gale, I saw ...
— Oldport Days • Thomas Wentworth Higginson

... than affection, heard him weave the illusion of his love for her, willing to be amused by it, because it was so sincere with him; for Jack was all lover, and meek and artful, bold and domestic, soft and outlawed, as the houseless Thomas cat that makes highways of the fences, and wooes the demurest kitten forth by the magic of ...
— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend

... a beautiful kitten you've got there, Mrs. Hopkins. An' it's a splendid mouser she is, I'll be bound. Does n't she look as if she'd clans the house out o'them little bastes, ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... lappet of my coat (which, being made of that country silk, was very thick and strong), and dragged me out. He took me out in his right fore-foot, and held me as a nurse does a child, just as I have seen the same sort of creature do with a kitten in Europe: and, when I offered to struggle, he squeezed me so hard that I thought it more prudent to submit. I have good reason to believe that he took me for a young one of his own species, by his often stroking my face very gently ...
— Gulliver's Travels - Into Several Remote Regions of the World • Jonathan Swift

... hanging-point. It takes one turn at least round something or other, provisionally, and in case it should be wanted; often, as she swings, every other limb hangs in the most ridiculous repose, and the tail alone supports. Sometimes it carries, by way of ornament, a bunch of flowers or a live kitten. Sometimes it is curled round the neck, or carried over the head in the hands, out of harm's way; or when she comes silently up behind you, puts her cold hand in yours, and walks by your side like a child, she steadies herself by taking a half-turn of her tail round your wrist. Her relative ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley

... man was away, and she had left Grace at home, the little thing crawled down to the waterhole and tumbled in. I happened to be riding up with a message for mother, to borrow some soap, when I heard a little cry like a lamb's, and there was poor little Gracey struggling in the water like a drowning kitten, with her face under. Another minute or two would have finished her, but I was off the old pony and into the water like a teal flapper. I had her out in a second or two, and she gasped and cried a bit, but soon came to, and when Mrs. Storefield came home she first cried over ...
— Robbery Under Arms • Thomas Alexander Browne, AKA Rolf Boldrewood

... fell over the edge of the jar. Susan, who was seven, was putting raisins, a few at a time, into a meat chopper screwed down on the kitchen table. George, three years old, was turning the handle of the chopper to grind the raisins. Baby Joe was creeping about the kitchen floor after a kitten. Mrs. Burns was taking a great piece of meat from a steaming kettle on the back of the stove. Every one was working, except the baby and the kitten, but all seemed to be having a glorious time. What they were saying seemed so funny ...
— Good Cheer Stories Every Child Should Know • Various

... I am sure you are tired; I never like you to stay when you are tired; but, you know, you must not play with the kitten ...
— The Ethics of the Dust • John Ruskin

... masterpiece!" exclaimed Dolly, with withering sarcasm; "oh, a most amazing masterpiece, I'll be bound! His worship the French Ambassador is a kitten at diplomacy beside you, sir. An hour and a half, did you say, sir? Gemini, the Secretary of State and his whole corps could not have composed the like in ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... unawares upon the whale in the fancied security of the middle of solitary seas, you find him unbent from the vast corpulence of his dignity, and kitten-like, he plays on the ocean as if it were a hearth. But still you see his power in his play. The broad palms of his tail are flirted high into the air; then smiting the surface, the thunderous concussion resounds for miles. You would almost ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville

... from her with somewhat of the look which may be imagined upon the face of a man who, thinking to play with a kitten, has run upon a tiger; and ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace

... now!" sneered the gunman. "I ain't workin' for no pussy-kitten specimen which spends his time gallivantin' around the country with a girl, makin' believe he's bossin', when—" Here he added something that made the ...
— The Range Boss • Charles Alden Seltzer

... Master Pothier rubbed his hands at this reminder, "I remember him, Jean! A hero like St. Denis! It was he who walked into the Chateau of the Intendant and brought off young De Repentigny as a cat does her kitten." ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby

... respective "bills of lading" at the frequent places where they rest and indulge their appetites for tid-bits, they advance, in the brief space of four hours, from a simple diet of peanuts and bubbles of greasy pastry to such epicurean dishes as pickled duck, salted eggs, and fricasseed kitten! ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens

... think so," said Noel; "you have to be a prince before you're a king, just as you have to be a kitten before you're a cat, or a puppy before you're a dog, or a worm before ...
— New Treasure Seekers - or, The Bastable Children in Search of a Fortune • E. (Edith) Nesbit

... nights, even when there was no passion between them, she made such a delight with her childish clinging, her soft nestling against him, that he would hold his breath to listen to her quiet breathing and move a little away as though in sleep, so as to feel her kitten-like, half-unconscious wriggle into the curve of his arm again. It was sweet at such times to feel such utter dependence upon him as the protective male, and the best in him was stirred to response. The next morning she might jar again from ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse

... minute Mr. Fletcher forgot himself, and felt as he remembered feeling long ago, when, a warm-hearted boy, he had comforted his little sister for a lost kitten or a broken doll. It was a new sensation, therefore interesting and agreeable while it lasted, and when it vanished, which it speedily did, he sighed, then shrugged his shoulders and wished "the girl would ...
— Work: A Story of Experience • Louisa May Alcott

... thought, glancing at that curled-up, sleeping little kitten with her enormous plait of hair. "No, how could she? She's virtuous. She fell in love with Nicholas and does not wish to know anything more. Even Mamma does not understand. It is wonderful how clever I am and how... charming she is," ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy

... twelve marbles, part of a jews-harp, a piece of blue bottle-glass to look through, a spool cannon, a key that wouldn't unlock anything, a fragment of chalk, a glass stopper of a decanter, a tin soldier, a couple of tadpoles, six fire-crackers, a kitten with only one eye, a brass doorknob, a dog-collar—but no dog—the handle of a knife, four pieces of orange-peel, and a dilapidated old ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... in trouble awakened a feeling that seldom came to the surface in Ethelinda. She felt moved to pick her up and comfort her and put her out of harm's way as she would have done to a helpless little kitten. But she did not know how to begin. Naturally undemonstrative, any expression of sympathy was hard for her to make. They had grown into very friendly relations this last month. Warwick Hall had widened Ethelinda's horizon, until she was able to take an interest ...
— The Little Colonel's Chum: Mary Ware • Annie Fellows Johnston

... 'I will that you tell the men you know what I have told you. You are a very little thing; it were no more to me to cut you short than to drown a kitten. But my own neck I prize. What I have told you I would have come to the ears of my lord of Winchester. I may not be seen to speak with him myself. If you will not tell him, another will; but I would ...
— The Fifth Queen • Ford Madox Ford

... nearer; seemed to contemplate us—quizzically, AMUSED; as a man would look down upon some curious and interesting insect, a puppy, a kitten. I sensed this amusement in the Disk's regard even as I had sensed its soul of awful tranquillity; as we had sensed the playful malice in the eye stars of the living corridor, the curiosity in the column that had ...
— The Metal Monster • A. Merritt

... true adventure abides most where most the forces of humanity are. So I camped down in the heart of things, surely; for in the next room were a child, kitten, and canary; in the basement was a sewing-machine; while across the entry were a piano, flute, and music-box. But Providence, that ever takes care of its own, did ever prevent all these from performing at once, or the grand seraglio of Satan would have ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various

... courtin' Sister Sall. She was a real handsum lookin' gal; you scarce ever seed a more out and out complete critter than she was—a fine figur' head, and a beautiful model of a craft as any in the state, a real clipper, and as full of fun and frolic as a kitten. Well he fairly turned Sall's head; the more we wanted her to give him up the more she wouldn't, and we got plaguy oneasy about it, for his character was none of the best. He was a univarsal favourite ...
— The Clockmaker • Thomas Chandler Haliburton

... It is unfair!" exclaimed Hopewell Drugg's wife, her cheeks and eyes suddenly ablaze with indignation. To tell the truth, she was like an angry kitten, and had the matter not been so serious, Janice ...
— How Janice Day Won • Helen Beecher Long

... should miss his aim? To be a lever powerful enough to heave great masses of rock, and when sprung to the utmost power to succeed only in giving an affected woman a bump in the forehead—to be a catapult dealing ruin on a pole-kitten! To accomplish the task of Sisyphus, to crush an ant; to sweat all over with hate, and for nothing at all. Would not this be humiliating, when he felt himself a mechanism of hostility capable of reducing the world to powder! To put into movement all the wheels within ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo

... Brother—spite of the fool's scorn! And fain would take thee with me, in the Dell Of Peace and mild Equality to dwell, Where Toil shall call the charmer Health his bride, And Laughter tickle Plenty's ribless side! 30 How thou wouldst toss thy heels in gamesome play, And frisk about, as lamb or kitten gay! Yea! and more musically sweet to me Thy dissonant harsh bray of joy would be, Than warbled melodies that soothe to rest 35 The aching of pale Fashion's ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge

... on the grass with a little cat in her arms, which she is trying to put to sleep. But the kitten is not so accommodating as a doll would be, and just as Polly does not dare to move for fear of waking her, she makes up her mind that a run after a leaf and a play with any chance caterpillar which may be so unlucky as to cross her path, will be very preferable, ...
— Happy Days for Boys and Girls • Various

... endless procession of trucks and carts come to a sudden halt, and should I hear the sound of the heavy drums and see the little man on his white horse in his old and much-worn green uniform, then I don't know, but I am afraid that I would leave my books and the kitten and my home and everything else to follow him wherever he cared to lead. My own grandfather did this and Heaven knows he was not born to be a hero. Millions of other people's grandfathers did it. They received no reward, but they expected none. They cheerfully ...
— The Story of Mankind • Hendrik van Loon

... merely a beautiful image to which the label "flower" has been affixed, but the full impact of its unimaginable beauty and wonder, the direct sensation of life having communion with life: that the scents of ceasing rain, the voice of trees, the deep softness of the kitten's fur, the acrid touch of sorrel on the tongue, should be in themselves profound, complete, and simple experiences, calling forth simplicity ...
— Practical Mysticism - A Little Book for Normal People • Evelyn Underhill

... admirable spirits. On Thursday evening he was considerably agitated and oppressed, and yesterday morning he had not his natural look at all; but since his entire success he has been as gay and playful as a kitten. The party came in one after another, and the spirits of all were kindled brighter and brighter, and we fairly sat up till after two o'clock. I think, therefore, we may now safely boast the Plymouth expedition has ...
— Daniel Webster • Henry Cabot Lodge

... desire to return to nature is, of course, in some respects, rather like the heroic desire of a kitten to return to its own tail. A tail is a simple and beautiful object, rhythmic in curve and soothing in texture; but it is certainly one of the minor but characteristic qualities of a tail that it should hang behind. It is impossible to deny that it would in some degree lose its ...
— Twelve Types • G.K. Chesterton

... all right, I don't doubt; at any rate, that was his fancy then, and perhaps another time he may be obstinately hilarious; however, it may be that he is growing graver, for time is a fact so long as clocks and watches continue to go, and a cat can't be a kitten always, as the old gentleman opposite ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Number 9, July, 1858 • Various

... she's getting!" was the reply. "I can't understand it. She used to be brave enough, and now she's as timid as a kitten." ...
— Under Padlock and Seal • Charles Harold Avery

... handmaiden really fetches our water.) In other respects Providence has treated us pretty tolerably well; but here I shall expect something further to be done. Also, in the way of future favors, a kitten would be very acceptable. Animals (except, perhaps, a pig) seem never out of place, even in the most paradisiacal spheres. And, by the way, a young colt comes up our avenue, now and then, to crop the seldom-trodden herbage; and so does a company of cows, whose sweet breath well repays ...
— Passages From The American Notebooks, Volume 2. • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... style, and manifests a desire to learn to do other kinds of work. She is neat and orderly in her habits, and ever acts in a ladylike manner, while in disposition she is cheerful as a sunbeam, and as playful as a kitten. For about one year, at irregular intervals, a young minister of the name of J. B. Howell, devoted one hour each week to her instruction, and she made some advancement, novel as his method was; ...
— Anecdotes & Incidents of the Deaf and Dumb • W. R. Roe

... choice. You see, I've never owned a line watch. I guess it was just as well, too, for I never appreciated watchmaking until Mr. McPhearson told me what a really good watch meant. Now I'd as soon starve a kitten as ...
— Christopher and the Clockmakers • Sara Ware Bassett

... Emily Elizabeth had sent word that I mustn't wear a bonnet, or think of such a thing; and she sent me down a fur mantle, made of white kitten-skins, I reckon, with little black tails dropping all over it—just the tips, which needn't have hurt the black kittens much, if it was all day to the white ones. So, when I come down, holding up my long skirts with one hand, and folding this fur across my innocent bosom, ...
— Phemie Frost's Experiences • Ann S. Stephens

... church-member he'd been a real fightin' character. I was always 'fraid to have him roused, for all he was so willin' and meechin' to home, and set round clever as anybody. My Susan Ellen used to boss him same's the kitten, when ...
— The Life of Nancy • Sarah Orne Jewett

... she moved her arm, and out from the coat peeped a kitten. It was white, with a black spot ...
— Clematis • Bertha B. Cobb

... Bertric, and that was that he had found a black kitten on board. None knew whence it came, and he said it was an ill sign. And he dared do nought but treat it well, ...
— King Olaf's Kinsman - A Story of the Last Saxon Struggle against the Danes in - the Days of Ironside and Cnut • Charles Whistler

... all the Rooms in her House, but no such Lady could be found. At last she bethought her self, and led 'em into her Parlour, where she open'd a little Closet-door, and shew'd 'em a black Cat that had just kitten'd: assuring 'em, that she should never trouble the Parish as long as she had Rats or Mice in the House; and so dismiss'd 'em like ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume V • Aphra Behn

... the newsboys were filled with regret over his taking away. In speaking of his parent, President Roosevelt once said: "I can remember seeing him going down Broadway, staid and respectable business man that he was, with a poor sick kitten in his coat pocket, which he had picked up in the street." Such a man could not but have a ...
— American Boy's Life of Theodore Roosevelt • Edward Stratemeyer

... It is our dining-table, and the centre of the grove is our salle a manger. Wrens and blackcaps hop about the branches of the filbert-bushes, and when the metayer's lean cat comes sneaking along, followed by a hungry kitten that is only too willing to take lessons in craft and slaughter, the little birds follow them about from branch to branch, scolding the marauders at a safe distance, and giving the alarm to all the other feathered people ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker

... for the exercise of the useful and domestic virtues which depend greatly upon our not exalting our feelings above the temper of well-ordered and well-educated society."[16] He phrased the same matter differently when he said: "'I'd rather be a kitten and cry, Mew!' than write the best poetry in the world on condition of laying aside common-sense in the ordinary transactions and business of the world."[17] "He thought," said Lockhart, "that to spend some fair portion of every day in any matter-of-fact ...
— Sir Walter Scott as a Critic of Literature • Margaret Ball

... told him grimly. But she reached out and put a cautious finger tip to the less lively end of 113-A. After a moment she said, "Hey!" She moved the finger lightly along the thing's surface. It had a velvety, smooth, warm feeling, rather like a kitten. "You know," she said surprised, "it feels sort of ...
— Legacy • James H Schmitz

... too, but—I fear for Nina. Let me read Elsie's letter to you, and you will understand the situation, for she is such an innocent little kitten that she has disclosed more than she ...
— Miss Dexie - A Romance of the Provinces • Stanford Eveleth

... upon the girl disastrously, and—she had had warning and hadn't heeded. Until recently, it is true, Elsie's blithe buoyancy had seemed always the normal, unconscious, almost effortless efflorescence of a lovely nature, as natural as playful grace to a kitten, as simple as breathing. But once or twice back in the fall, Miss Pritchard had been startled into wondering if the sweet instrument wasn't in danger of being strained through constant playing upon it, and to be fearful that Elsie might truly be rarely sensitive in a personal, ...
— Elsie Marley, Honey • Joslyn Gray

... depict Hotspur as scorning the arts. When Glendower praises poetry, Hotspur vows he'd "rather be a kitten and cry mew ... than a metre ballad-monger. ..." Nothing sets his teeth on edge "so much as mincing poetry": and a little later he prefers the howling of a dog to music. When he is reproved by Lord Worcester for "defect of manners, want of ...
— The Man Shakespeare • Frank Harris

... see the beautiful present Mr. Murray sent me several days ago. It is as gentle and playful as a kitten, and seems to ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans

... and their new mystical intimacy. He knew that she was dead but he did not believe it. It was just one of those mysterious tricks which grown-up people played on children to pretend that death was so enormously conclusive. Though he had buried the black kitten with his own hands in the back garden, and had felt the stiffness of its pitiful body and the dank chill of its once glossy fur, he was calmly sure that somewhere or other, out of sight, it still pursued its own tail with ...
— The Dark House • I. A. R. Wylie

... so happy and smiling that the twins knew at once there must be something very nice in the bundle, but what it was they could not guess. Taro thought, "Maybe it's a puppy." He had wanted a puppy for a long time. And Take thought, "Perhaps it's a kitten! But it looks pretty large for a kitten, and it doesn't mew. Kittens always mew." And they both thought, ...
— THE JAPANESE TWINS • Lucy Fitch Perkins

... the culprit into the clutches of the law, he had resumed the pursuit where it was interrupted. As a thoughtless child whose bird has flown from the cage looks into the water jug to find it, he had turned the light of his lantern upon places where a kitten could not have hidden itself, and had even been to the meadow on the bank of the Main to seek Kuni with the widow of the thief Nickel; but here the sacrament was just being given to the sufferer, and to interrupt such a ceremony ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... Jane up for a parting wave to Alice through the car window as the train pulled out. Alice held up a pert maltese kitten and made it wave its paw ...
— Chicken Little Jane • Lily Munsell Ritchie

... question mark, or their own names, if their names were such as could be pictured. There can be no objection to one's appropriation of such an emblem if one fancies it. But Lilly, Belle, Dolly and Kitten are Lillian, Isabel, Dorothy and Katherine in these days, and appropriate ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post

... Ike dusted the blinds from the top to the bottom in a "wholesale way," as he called it, and cleaned the knives on the wrong side of the Bath-brick to his heart's content. Every one, even the dumb animals, seemed conscious of Aunt Lina's departure. My little pet kitten, Norah, resumed her place by the side of the heater in the library, starting once in a while in her dreams and springing up as though she heard the rustle of Aunt Lina's gown, or the sharp, clear notes of her voice—but coiled herself down ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various

... that is not only indisputably English, but was made by one of the greatest men that England ever produced, Sir Isaac Newton, who, after he had made a large hole in his study-door for his cat to creep through, made a small hole beside it for the kitten. You will acknowledge, sir, that this is a ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. IV • Maria Edgeworth

... repair of roads. A few weeks ago I passed along a road which was being treated according to the iniquity of Macadam. Over the broken stones had been shot, to consolidate them, a complex of ashes, cabbage-leaves, egg and periwinkle shells, straw, potato-parings, a dead kitten (over which a few carrion-flies were hovering), and other promiscuous nuisances. The road in question, be it remarked, is highly "respectable," if not actually fashionable. The houses facing upon it are severely rated, and are inhabited chiefly by "carriage people." What, then, may not be ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 303 - October 22, 1881 • Various

... exciting episode one February evening. He had been acting rather strangely for two or three days; we thought that one of the servants had been giving him a dose of bhang in revenge for having worried his kitten, and that he would soon recover; but on this particular day, when out for a run with his owner, his strange behavior took the form of leaping impulsively at Mr. North, and, with seemingly wild frolic, ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens

... the T Down boys yearnin' to bust into this ruckus," Harlan said as he stood near Linton's horse as Linton grinned down at him; "but there'll be some. Put it right up to them that it ain't goin' to be no pussy-kitten job, an' that it's likely some of them won't ever see the T Down again. But to offset that, you can tell 'em that if we make good, the Rancho Seco will owe them a heap—an' they'll ...
— 'Drag' Harlan • Charles Alden Seltzer

... his tongue over his lips, and said briefly: "Then he showed it to me. It was the young girl and kitten in there." ...
— Hillsboro People • Dorothy Canfield

... might not have said was checked by the patter of footsteps, and a little girl tripped into view, with a small, fluffy kitten cuddled in her arms. ...
— My Lady Caprice • Jeffrey Farnol

... was ailing you brought her a lot of pears off your own tree. Not one of 'em you didn't 'ave yourself that year, Miss Helen told me. And you brought back our kitten—the sandy and white one with black spots—when it strayed. So I was quite willing to come and meet you when so told. And knowing something of young gentlemen's peckers, owing to being in business once next door to a boys' school, I made ...
— The Magic City • Edith Nesbit

... to appear publicly in jerkin and galligaskins, to smoke tobacco in contempt of her sex, and to fight her enemies with a very fury of insolence. In stature she exceeded the limping clerk by a head, and she could pick him up with one hand, like a kitten. Yet he loved her, not for any grace of person, nor beauty of feature, nor even because her temperament was undaunted as his own. He loved her for that wisest of reasons, which is no reason at all, because he loved ...
— A Book of Scoundrels • Charles Whibley

... out of the family medicine case had been thrust between the teeth of this unlucky creature, when the thought struck Helen that a living patient would be more fun than a doll. So she hunted up a half-grown kitten that belonged ...
— Kristy's Rainy Day Picnic • Olive Thorne Miller

... old self again, and the two girls were laughing merrily over the antics of Eva's Angora kitten when the doorbell rang, and Eva, looking rather conscious, went ...
— Grace Harlowe's Senior Year at High School - or The Parting of the Ways • Jessie Graham Flower

... in their mutual position since yesterday; and Grandcourt had been rather ecstatically quiescent, while she turned his gentle seizure of her hand into a grasp of his hand by both hers, with an increased vivacity as of a kitten that will not sit quiet to be petted. She was really getting somewhat febrile in her excitement; and now in this drive through the park her usual susceptibility to changes of light and scenery helped to make her heart palpitate ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot

... somebody to tell me all about it; about that and many other things; somebody that would be fond of me, like my poor white kitten." ...
— The Little Lame Prince - Rewritten for Young Readers by Margaret Waters • Dinah Maria Mulock

... her rushes to the table, set down the butter-plate she was carrying, and said "There!" as though she had forgotten something. She stooped—it was perfectly amazing how spry she was—and pulled out from under the stove a half-grown kitten, very sleepy, yawning and stretching, and blinking its eyes. "There, Betsy!" said Aunt Abigail, putting the little yellow and white ball into the child's lap. "There is one of old Whitey's kittens that didn't get given ...
— Understood Betsy • Dorothy Canfield

... Elizabeth; 'it was no more folly than a kitten's play, and quite as much in the natural ...
— Abbeychurch - or, Self-Control and Self-Conceit • Charlotte M. Yonge

... Sir Isaac Newton's cat and kitten has often made you smile; but it is no smile of admiration: such absence of mind is simply ridiculous. If, indeed, you should refer to its cause you may by reflection ascertain that the concentration of thought secured by such abstraction, in his particular case, may have been of use ...
— The Young Lady's Mentor - A Guide to the Formation of Character. In a Series of Letters to Her Unknown Friends • A Lady

... anxiously at Margaret, who gazed back affectionately at her, at the round, rosy childish face, the little tilted nose, the fluffy, fair hair. It seemed the most natural thing in the world to stroke and pat Peggy as if she were a kitten, but no one would think ...
— Three Margarets • Laura E. Richards

... pantry fire of an evening; and he used to leap up in my lap and sit and look up at me with his big eyes, which were as full of knowingness at those times as they were stupid and slit-like at others. He was a great favourite of mine was Tom, and had been ever since I found him, a half-starved kitten in the area, and took him in and fed him till he grew up the ...
— Begumbagh - A Tale of the Indian Mutiny • George Manville Fenn

... had pushed a slip of paper over to Alice, on which she read—"'Forget-me-not, ladybird, linnet, kitten." I don't think I ever saw a linnet. Isn't it a little ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge

... had the supple softness, the velvet grace of a kitten; her laugh was clearer than the ring of silver and crystal; as she took her sire's cold hands and rubbed them, and stood on tiptoe to reach his lips for a kiss, there seemed to shine round her a halo of loving delight. The grave and reverend seignor looked ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte

... very much to the disadvantage of Maggie though a connoisseur might have seen "points" in her which had a higher promise for maturity than Lucy's natty completeness. It was like the contrast between a rough, dark, overgrown puppy and a white kitten. Lucy put up the neatest little rosebud mouth to be kissed; everything about her was neat,—her little round neck, with the row of coral beads; her little straight nose, not at all snubby; her little clear eyebrows, rather darker than her curls, to match hazel eyes, which ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot

... yellow eyes searched mine for sympathy; she wanted to tell me something and wouldn't understand! As I neared her she shivered and mewed twice. Then she limped painfully off—poor soul, she had but three feet!—to another tree, leaving behind her, unwillingly enough, a much-licked dead kitten. That was what she wanted to tell me then. As I was there, I deposited the garbage by the side of the little corpse, knowing she would resume her watch, and retired. My friend who had put up her parcels ...
— Earthwork Out Of Tuscany • Maurice Hewlett

... well be incarcerated in a prison, and be attended by a gaoler. It is sad enough to see dismal, doleful men and women, but it is a truly lamentable and unnatural sight to see a doleful child! The young ought to be as playful and as full of innocent mischief as a kitten. There will be quite time enough in after years for ...
— Advice to a Mother on the Management of her Children • Pye Henry Chavasse

... Jane Harding," he resumed, "I accept. It would astonish them as has only known H. H. on his financial side to see him agree to a reduction of profits like this without a kick. But I'm a man of impulse, I am. Get me on my soft side and a kitten ain't more impulsive than old H. H. And o' course the business of this expedition ain't jest business to me. It's—er—friendship, and—er—sentiment—in short, there's feelin's that is more than ...
— Spanish Doubloons • Camilla Kenyon

... then about eight years old, was sitting upon a stone outside of the gate, by the roadside, in a sort of corner that was formed between the wall and a great tree which was growing there. Malleville was employed in telling her kitten a story. ...
— Stuyvesant - A Franconia Story • Jacob Abbott

... of "silver-side," the silver should be carefully extracted and sent to the Mint. The choice of the vegetables must of course depend on the idiosyncrasies of the family. In the best families the prejudice against parsnips is sometimes ineradicable. But if chopped up with kitten meat and onions their intrinsic savour is largely disguised. Fried macaroni, as the P.M.G. chef remarks in an inspired passage, is delicious if properly prepared with hot milk and quickly fried in hot fat. But, on the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Jan. 15, 1919 • Various

... a worthless, wicked boy, Who seems but evil to enjoy. He often racks his naughty brain Inventing ways of giving pain. He loves to torture butterflies— To dust the kitten's tender eyes— To break the cricket's slender limb; And pain to them is sport ...
— The Youth's Coronal • Hannah Flagg Gould

... as rare as the born poet. Most men, and, it must be added, most women, are happier working. If holidays were the rule and work the exception the world would be a much less cheerful place than it is even to-day. Purposeful activity is as natural to man as playing is to a kitten. From a purely natural point of view, no one has ever given a better definition of happiness than Aristotle when he defined it as an activity of the soul in the direction of excellence in an unhampered life. By excellence, of course, in this famous definition, ...
— Progress and History • Various

... toothless, the eater of earth? I have followed him all day—at noon—in the white sunlight. I herded him as the wolves herd buck. I am Bagheera! Bagheera! Bagheera! As I dance with my shadow, so danced I with those men. Look!" The great panther leaped as a kitten leaps at a dead leaf whirling overhead, struck left and right into the empty air, that sang under the strokes, landed noiselessly, and leaped again and again, while the half purr, half growl gathered ...
— The Second Jungle Book • Rudyard Kipling

... might not know Phoebe. She'd hunt a hot brick for a sick kitten if I was freezing to death, and besides I need her in my business at this ...
— Andrew the Glad • Maria Thompson Daviess

... "Some man from New England came here recently with a letter to you. When he returned to his rural home he was asked if he had seen the great man. 'I don't know about the great' he replied; 'but he was as playful as a kitten.'" ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton

... To be a lever powerful enough to heave great masses of rock, and when sprung to the utmost power to succeed only in giving an affected woman a bump in the forehead—to be a catapult dealing ruin on a pole-kitten! To accomplish the task of Sisyphus, to crush an ant; to sweat all over with hate, and for nothing at all. Would not this be humiliating, when he felt himself a mechanism of hostility capable of reducing the world to powder! To put into movement all the wheels within wheels, to work ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo

... camera; in another corner leaned a tripod, rod, and a six-foot brass-edged measure specked with clay; and piled in a heap beyond the stove were a saddle, a pair of boots, chunks of pinon pine, and a discarded flannel shirt on which lay a gray cat nursing a kitten. Through the inner door, standing open, she had a glimpse of two cots with tumbled blankets. The place was the office and temporary home of a busy man, a rough board-and-tar-paper habitation that went forward on skids as the camp went forward, the workshop and ...
— The Iron Furrow • George C. Shedd

... four years old, and one of the first things I can remember is climbing up and looking over mother's footboard at Lovey, all speckled. Mother had let her slip on her new green roundabout over her nightgown, just to pacify her, and there she set playing with the kitten Reuben Granger had brought her. He was only ten years old then, but ...
— The Village Watch-Tower • (AKA Kate Douglas Riggs) Kate Douglas Wiggin

... stretched out in greeting. Mr Asplin looked at her critically. Was it Peggy? For a moment memory was baffled by the sight of the elegant young lady, but a second glance revealed the well-known features—the arched brows and kitten-like chin. For the rest, the hazel eyes were as clear and loving as ever, and the old mischievous gleam shone through ...
— More About Peggy • Mrs G. de Horne Vaizey

... me as weak as a kitten, sir," he said, preserving finely that air of unconsciousness as to anything but his business a helmsman should never lose. "And before I can pick up my strength that there hot fit comes along ...
— The Shadow-Line - A Confession • Joseph Conrad

... perhaps, for my long "harping" on my ward; but anyhow, don't misunderstand. It's not because she is pretty and engaging (one would say that of a kitten), but because of the startling contrast between the real girl and the girl of my imagination. I can't help thinking about her a good deal for this reason, and what I think of I have generally talked of or written of fully to you, my best and oldest friend. It's a habit nearly a ...
— Set in Silver • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson

... sitting on the grass with a little cat in her arms, which she is trying to put to sleep. But the kitten is not so accommodating as a doll would be, and just as Polly does not dare to move for fear of waking her, she makes up her mind that a run after a leaf and a play with any chance caterpillar which may be so unlucky ...
— Happy Days for Boys and Girls • Various

... to snare the thoughtless rabbit; Break the next-door neighbour's pane; Cultivate the smoker's habit On the not-innocuous cane; Leave the exercise unwritten; Systematically cut Morning school, to plunge the kitten In his ...
— Green Bays. Verses and Parodies • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... was determined to believe, were very humorous remarks. Jack did not hear many of them, but the few he did hear must have upset him a little, for he tried to explain himself by saying that he would jump into anything to save a kitten, which from the look of Nina did not seem to satisfy her much. In the end I don't believe she was as sorry for Jack to go as I was. She could not stand being a family joke, and I, having suffered in that way many times, could have sympathized with her if I had not ...
— Godfrey Marten, Undergraduate • Charles Turley

... a heartiness that would have won Thekla's heart, save that she remembered hearing Vera say, over the domestic cat in the morning, that M.A.'s were always devoted to cats. But, on the whole, the visit had done much to reconcile the young sisters to their new surroundings; books, bicycles, and kitten had reconciled them even to the intimacy ...
— Modern Broods • Charlotte Mary Yonge

... just know how to describe what Burton told me about his daughter in any other way. She wasn't an epileptic. That's a thing one goes down under; and her case was just the reverse. She was, as a rule, propped up in a chair, as weak as a kitten; but when these things took her, she grew immensely strong ...
— Ashton-Kirk, Criminologist • John T. McIntyre

... published a romance called Zastrozzi, and his first kitten-love, Harriet Grove, is said to have helped both in this performance and the poems. But Harriet was not mindful of the commandment against stealing, and when Stockdale came to examine the poems he found that she had taken one entire poem by Monk Lewis and ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 28. July, 1873. • Various

... grimly. But she reached out and put a cautious finger tip to the less lively end of 113-A. After a moment she said, "Hey!" She moved the finger lightly along the thing's surface. It had a velvety, smooth, warm feeling, rather like a kitten. "You know," she said surprised, "it feels sort of nice! It ...
— Legacy • James H Schmitz

... house there was a large dog-faced ape (chacma) named "Joe," whose friend and companion was a little white and black kitten. "Joe" called no living thing, except the cat, his friend; he had many acquaintances, but only one friend. He would tolerate me, and even invented a name for me, so the keeper declared, yet his friendship never ...
— The Dawn of Reason - or, Mental Traits in the Lower Animals • James Weir

... replenished from time to time: thus, without being ever absolutely intoxicated, he was usually in a state of elevation. This was really unfortunate, for he had a good heart, and was so playful that Madam de Warrens used to call him the kitten. Unhappily, he loved his profession, labored much and drank proportionately, which injured his health, and at length soured his temper. Sometimes he was gloomy and easily offended, though incapable of rudeness, or giving offence to any one, for never did he utter a harsh ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau

... curled up in a great leather chair, in front of the open fire, playing with a white angora kitten, who climbed upon her shoulder and generally conducted himself like a white ball of animated yarn. It was too bad that there was no painter at hand to transfer to canvas so lovely a picture as this girl in her white frock made, sitting by the firelight ...
— 'Way Down East - A Romance of New England Life • Joseph R. Grismer

... had knocked,—it could be no other than he! She was up now, barefooted; she, so feeble for the last few days, had sprung up as nimbly as a kitten, with her arms outstretched to wind round her darling. Of course the Leopoldine had arrived at night, and anchored in Pors-Even Bay, and he had rushed home; she arranged all this in her mind with the swiftness of lightning. She tore the flesh off her fingers in her excitement to draw ...
— Great Sea Stories • Various

... whom to leave the puppies." "Yes, we rented our house to Mrs. S—— for less than we expected to get for it, because she is so fond of cats and promised to take good care of Pom Pom"—which recalls to my mind a dear little girl who had a white kitten that she was entrusting to a neighbor. The neighbor, a busy person with eight children, received the kitten without demonstration of any kind. Little Lydia looked at her for a few moments and then said, "Mrs. F——, that kitten must be loved." That is really the trouble, not only must they ...
— The Smiling Hill-Top - And Other California Sketches • Julia M. Sloane

... barn, and shows you the horse and the cow. Then she lets you look out of the barn-window. There you spy the kitten. ...
— The Nursery, Volume 17, No. 101, May, 1875 • Various

... given you for your own, as you were given to me. It is the delight of motherhood and fatherhood in one; and when I was allowed to take you away out of the room where you lay—I admit it was not a pleasant scene—I felt just like a child who is given a kitten for its very own." ...
— The Child of the Dawn • Arthur Christopher Benson

... in their vingers, Their grief wer their all. All unheeded wer zongs o' the birds, All unheeded the child's perty words, All unheeded the kitten a-rollen The ...
— Poems of Rural Life in the Dorset Dialect • William Barnes

... cover of the beehive, and rush into the house shrieking with wrath and terror over the result; Maggie might upset the milk, and John drag the kitten about the room by its tail,—no matter! the father of the family continued to sit unmoved as Brahma. But when Leonard entered the door, some appearance of life began to show itself in Michael. He untwisted his legs, moved a little to make room on the settle, and even went so far ...
— Flint - His Faults, His Friendships and His Fortunes • Maud Wilder Goodwin

... not if you're nicey to them," said Olly; who was just then very much in love with a white kitten, and thought there were no ...
— Milly and Olly • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... The kitten curled up on the hearth, and the little broken dog that lay tipped over in the corner, and good old Lucy, and the three dolls tucked up in mamma's basket, all heard the wish of the ...
— St. Nicholas, Vol. 5, No. 2, December, 1877 • Various

... Doctor and Nurse. Many tiny beads—called pills—and several drops from a bottle out of the family medicine case had been thrust between the teeth of this unlucky creature, when the thought struck Helen that a living patient would be more fun than a doll. So she hunted up a half-grown kitten that belonged to her ...
— Kristy's Rainy Day Picnic • Olive Thorne Miller

... away. They had just been taken by brigands, and as suddenly left alone on the road. Thus Jacqueline's company ever cost her many a tremor. Yet somehow one of those chevaliers de Missour-i needed only to appear, and she felt as secure as a kitten on the hearth rug. A chevalier de Missour-i had but now ridden up to the ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle

... inquiry my own provisional opinion is that, like a good many instincts of very early evolutionary origin, it can be satisfied by an avowed pretence; just as a kitten which is fed regularly on milk can be kept in good health if it is allowed to indulge its hunting instinct by playing with a bobbin, and a peaceful civil servant satisfies his instinct of combat and adventure at golf. If this is ...
— Human Nature In Politics - Third Edition • Graham Wallas

... stories of Pap Spooner. Even that bland old fraud, John Jacob Dumble, admitted sorrowfully that he was no match for Pap in a horse, cattle, or pig deal; and George Leadham, the blacksmith, swore that Pap would steal milk from a blind kitten. The humorists of the village were of opinion that Heaven had helped Pap because he had helped himself so freely out ...
— Bunch Grass - A Chronicle of Life on a Cattle Ranch • Horace Annesley Vachell

... have read your review with much interest, and I thank you sincerely for the very kind spirit in which it is written. I cannot say that I am convinced by your criticisms.[95] If you have ever actually observed a kitten sucking and pounding with extended toes its mother, and then seen the same kitten when a little older doing the same thing on a soft shawl, and ultimately an old cat (as I have seen), and do not admit that it is identically the same action, ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Marchant

... fat babies who struggled along after their mother, interrupting more or less effectually the business on which she was engaged. A pathetic-eyed yard or so of brown dachshund and a tortoise-shell kitten completed the party. Renata Aston was small and dark, gentle and deliberate of movement, and possessing an elf-like trick of shrinking her entrancing personality into comparative invisibility that bereft one of further vision. She moved from border to ...
— Christopher Hibbault, Roadmaker • Marguerite Bryant

... Late of Woolwich and Thames Ditton, Thinks his battery the hub Of the whole wide orb of Britain. Half a hero, half a cub, Lithe and playful as a kitten, Mr. Hawkins, Junior Sub., Late of Woolwich and ...
— Songs Of The Road • Arthur Conan Doyle

... same," says Nancy, when the moment passes, lifting a shoe with the concern of a kitten that has just discovered a thorn in its paw, "New York pavements are certainly ...
— Young People's Pride • Stephen Vincent Benet

... a rush at the strangers. I was rather taken aback, particularly when the master of the house told me not to be afraid, it was only a marcassin (small wild boar), who had been born on the place, and was as quiet as a kitten. I did not think the great tusks and square, shaggy head looked very pleasant, but the little thing was quiet enough, came and rubbed itself against its master's legs and played quite happily with the dogs. We ...
— Chateau and Country Life in France • Mary King Waddington

... little one was like a new discovery and toy to us, who had never been used to such a presence. She was not a commonplace child; but even if she had been, she would have been as charming a study as a kitten; and she had all the four of us at her feet, though her mother was constantly protesting against our spoiling her, and really kept up so much wholesome discipline that the little maid never exceeded the bounds of being charming to us. ...
— Chantry House • Charlotte M. Yonge

... have taxed the best of esper lockpicks. But there was a service entrance in back that was not locked and I took it. The elevator was a self-service job, and Rambaugh's back door was locked on a snaplatch that a playful kitten could have opened. I dug the place for a few minutes and found it clean, so I went in and ...
— Stop Look and Dig • George O. Smith

... delightful companion for both of us, but this creature—what was it? As I have already said, it was about the size of a full-grown cat, and it undoubtedly belonged to the cat tribe; but despite its size I judged it to be a mere kitten, and quite a young one at that. Its legs were much thicker and more muscular and its fur was shorter and not so fine as that of the domestic cat; and although I had seen a good many domestic cats I had never seen one marked like ...
— The Strange Adventures of Eric Blackburn • Harry Collingwood

... captors would get a firm grip on the back of his neck. If the squirrel proved to be a young one, they would put on a collar and little chain, that they had always ready, and keep him to train for a pet. Once Paul caught a gray squirrel kitten so small and young that he had to feed it on milk and crushed walnuts. He called it May. The tiny creature lived in his pocket and desk and shared his bed at night. It would sit on the off page of his book whilst he studied and comb its little whiskers and ...
— The Story of Paul Boyton - Voyages on All the Great Rivers of the World • Paul Boyton

... Partnership, where the Cat has the face to play upon the credulity of the poor housekeeper Mouse, who always "stayed at home and did not go out into the daytime." Returning home from his ventures abroad he named the first kitten Top-Off, the second one Half-Out, and the third one All-Out; while instead of having attended the christening of each, as he pretended, he secretly had been visiting the jar of fat he had placed for safe-keeping in ...
— A Study of Fairy Tales • Laura F. Kready

... a very productive bed it turned out," responded the squire. "Fluff was like a ball then, wasn't she?—all curly locks, and dimples, and round cheeks, and big blue eyes like saucers! The merriest little kitten—she plagued me, but I confess I liked her. How old would ...
— Frances Kane's Fortune • L. T. Meade

... was of the salt of the earth. He was very old, but bright and strong, and as full of fun as a kitten. Old age seemed to improve him, as it does wine, and ...
— Ben Comee - A Tale of Rogers's Rangers, 1758-59 • M. J. (Michael Joseph) Canavan

... wish I had somebody to tell me all about it; about that and many other things; somebody that would be fond of me, like my poor white kitten." ...
— The Little Lame Prince - Rewritten for Young Readers by Margaret Waters • Dinah Maria Mulock

... lad that was crooning over his gun when I saw him this morning, like a cat over her undrowned kitten, just disappeared." ...
— No Man's Land • H. C. McNeile

... and took French leave one fine morning with Madam Cookey, having previously strangled the young lady's favourite cat, just about to kitten, and having the night before he absconded told the young lady he had made a famous nest for pussy to kitten in, and that if she went to the cellar in the morning, she would find the cat ...
— Canada and the Canadians, Vol. 2 • Richard Henry Bonnycastle

... his whimpering, bothered him. It was a sniffling, wild-beast whine. That's the way a wolf or a tiger would sound, outside the circle of a fire's glow, unable to help its kitten or cub. But it annoyed him just the same—took his mind off important things. And what had English to cry over anyway? The roof hadn't fallen ...
— Winner Take All • Larry Evans

... am glad to ask no more. When you and Gretel had the fever last winter, and our bread was nearly gone, and I could earn nothing, for fear you would die while my face was turned, oh! I tried then! I smoothed his hair and whispered to him soft as a kitten, about the money—where it was, who had it? Alack! He would pick at my sleeve and whisper gibberish till my blood ran cold. At last, while Gretel lay whiter than snow, and you were raving on the bed, I screamed to him—it seemed as if he MUST ...
— Hans Brinker - or The Silver Skates • Mary Mapes Dodge

... of dirty, dark-skinned humanity I never before had the ill-luck to travel with. The mother of the flock was the most extraordinary being that I ever beheld. She must have been very near a hundred years old, as black and wrinkled as a singed hide, yet active and playful as a kitten. She was a very bad sailor, however, and dived down into the bottom of the boat the moment a puff of wind arose. Indians have a most extraordinary knack of diminishing their bulk, which is very convenient sometimes. Upon this occasion it was amusing to watch them ...
— Hudson Bay • R.M. Ballantyne

... area-bell for a dog that was waiting at another man's gate (an office which the charitable are often called upon to perform in the streets of London for dogs and cats alike), and then to pick up a bony black kitten and take it on his arm to his own door, where he delivered it to a servant, with injunctions to feed and comfort the starveling. From which facts it may be seen that Mr. Caspar Brooke, in spite of all ...
— Brooke's Daughter - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant

... Nero; and my brother had a young kangaroo, which hopped in and out with the utmost confidence, coming up to any one who happened to be eating, and insisting upon having pieces of bread given to it. Full of fun and spirits, it would sport about as playfully as a kitten; and it was very amusing to see how it would tease the dogs, pulling them about with its sharp claws, and trying to roll them over on the ground. The dogs, who were in the daily habit of killing kangaroos, never attempted to bite Minny, who sometimes teased them so heartily, ...
— The Bushman - Life in a New Country • Edward Wilson Landor

... on their heads and leading three or four half-naked children, to cultivated, delicately nurtured, English-speaking ladies, wading through the mud in bedraggled white gowns, carrying nothing, perhaps, except a kitten or a cage of pet birds. Many of them were so ill and weak from dysentery or malarial fever that they could hardly limp along, even with the support of a cane, and all of them looked worn, exhausted, and emaciated ...
— Campaigning in Cuba • George Kennan

... is, and she never thinks of such a thing any more than a genuine kitten; but Ralph ...
— Six Girls - A Home Story • Fannie Belle Irving

... the party was arranged: the Blisses because "we owe them a dinner; and I think the Judge will be amused by Jimmy;" the Worthingtons—make-weights; but "She's a soft pink woman, like a Persian kitten." ...
— Love and Lucy • Maurice Henry Hewlett

... from you. Let me go to sleep for a little.' An old servant who had followed her came up and said in astonishment, 'Well, young sir, you may be proud of yourself, the child is generally so wild and rough, and with you she is as tame as a kitten.' I learned from her that little Sonia lived in the neighborhood, and that her aunt had come to look for her in our house. She would not go away from me, and the old servant had to call her mother, who only ...
— The Malady of the Century • Max Nordau

... country doctor, Charles Tupper by name. In 1852 he had demanded to be heard at one of Howe's meetings. 'Let {132} us hear the little doctor by all means,' said Howe, with contemptuous generosity. 'I would not be any more affected by anything he might say than by the mewing of yonder kitten.' So vigorous was Tupper's speech that a bystander muttered that 'it was possible Joe would find the little doctor a cat that would scratch his eyes out.' In 1855 the prophecy was fulfilled. In his own county of Cumberland Howe was defeated by Tupper, and throughout ...
— The Tribune of Nova Scotia - A Chronicle of Joseph Howe • W. L. (William Lawson) Grant

... old man opened the bag. First he pulled out a pretty little kitten with her mother, ...
— The Old Man's Bag • T. W. H. Crosland

... might be the key. Gregory might have found out that he had started for Norada and warned him. Then, if that were true, this man was Clark after all. But if he were Clark he wouldn't be there. It was like a kitten after its tail. It whirled in a circle and ...
— The Breaking Point • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... turnip solemnly points to 10-1/2, G.F.F.F.S. puts her number eights on the mantel, looks reflectively at a sore-eyed kitten, and falls ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 22, August 27, 1870 • Various

... a hundred feet under ordinary circumstances, but that scream brought me here on the run. Now that the excitement is over I feel weak as a kitten," Charley answered. ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely

... tiny little rabbit strayed from home away; Far from woodland haunts she wandered, little rabbit gray. Our old Tabby cat, whilst sitting at the kitchen door, Thought she saw her long-lost kitten home returned once more. ...
— Harper's Young People, February 3, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various

... proud of her French scholarship, had proposed to read to Doria, who having just returned from France was supposed to be the latest authority on the language. I noticed that the severity of this intellectual communion was mitigated by Susan's favourite black kitten, who, sitting on its little haunches, seemed to be turning over pages rather rapidly. Then all of a sudden, from nowhere in particular, there stepped into the landscape (framed, you must remember, by the jambs of my door) a huge ...
— Jaffery • William J. Locke

... out his arms, however, a girl's head appeared above the wall. With singular agility the damsel had availed herself of the trunk of a mulberry-tree, and climbed aloft like a kitten. The ease and certainty with which she moved showed that she was familiar with this strange spot. In another moment she was seated on the coping of the wall. Then Silvere, taking her in his arms, carried her, though not without ...
— The Fortune of the Rougons • Emile Zola

... happier than thou hast ever been before, only thou must promise to give me the young thing which has just been born in thy house." "What else can that be," thought the miller, "but a young puppy or kitten?" and he promised her what she desired. The nix descended into the water again, and he hurried back to his mill, consoled and in good spirits. He had not yet reached it, when the maid-servant came out of the house, and ...
— Household Tales by Brothers Grimm • Grimm Brothers

... of the party things went badly from the first. There was an evident intention among the worst of the Free Religious Group to embarrass us at every turn. We opened the exercises with the Lord's Prayer, which this element loudly applauded. A live kitten was hung high on the Christmas tree, where it squalled mournfully beyond reach of rescue, and the young men of the outside group threw cake at one another across the hall. Finally tiring of these innocent ...
— The Story of a Pioneer - With The Collaboration Of Elizabeth Jordan • Anna Howard Shaw

... the strange creature yet. She might be like a kitten that submits to be petted while lying in wait for its chance to spring. But this kitten might lie in wait as long as it liked. The chance to spring wouldn't come. By and by the kitten would discover that fact if the hope were in its mind, for he ...
— Winnie Childs - The Shop Girl • C. N. Williamson

... odorous handkerchief; her sash, which she hung over her arm; her pockets full of candy; under one arm the wonderful doll; under the other, the live kitten. ...
— Connor Magan's Luck and Other Stories • M. T. W.

... anything like this before, and my wonder at it almost drove the pain away. Mother and I always chased rats and birds, and once we killed a kitten. While I was puzzling over it, one of the boys cried out, "Here ...
— Beautiful Joe • Marshall Saunders

... the old man, vehemently. "Tom shall be a brigadier general if the war lasts one year more. I should feel like a whipped kitten if that ...
— The Soldier Boy; or, Tom Somers in the Army - A Story of the Great Rebellion • Oliver Optic

... his head. And the little William lies there, and for this I am to blame. We were schoolfellows in the Franciscan monastery, and were playing on that side of it where the Dussel flows between stone walls, and I said, 'William, fetch out the kitten that has just fallen in'—and merrily he went down on to the plank which lay across the brook, snatched the kitten out of the water, but fell in himself, and was dragged out dripping and dead. The kitten lived to a good old age. . . . Princes in that ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot

... intellectual activity, and the imaginary demands of this Journal, which continued to the end of his life. The very last pages of his Journal, a year previous to his death, are filled with minute accounts of the ordinary behavior of kittens, not one item novel or unusual, or throwing any light on the kitten. But it kept his mind busy, and added a page ...
— The Last Harvest • John Burroughs

... care of a farm, or the building of a house; she could work, she could order, plan, regulate, and execute; but what to do with a baby? There it lay, helpless, soft, incapable, not to be scolded, or worked, or made responsible in any way, the most impracticable creature possible: a kitten she could have put into a basket at night, and set in the shed; a puppy she could and would have drowned; but a baby, an unlucky, red, screeching creature, with a soul, was worse than all other evils. However, she couldn't let it die; so she went ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 37, November, 1860 • Various

... only as fables wherewith to pass the time, yet in her heart admitting, for detached instants, a possibility of their deeper truth. And thus, for hours after he had left her, her reason flirted with her fancy as a kitten will sport with a dove, pleasantly and smoothly through easy attitudes, but disclosing its cruel ...
— Desperate Remedies • Thomas Hardy

... uttered a sudden cry of rapture—on the floor, with its leaves temptingly open, lay a gaily-painted picture-book, and curled up in a soft fluffy ball by its side was a white Persian kitten asleep. ...
— A World of Girls - The Story of a School • L. T. Meade

... and Susy are three sisters who are very fond of fairy stories, as most little girls are. Laura is the oldest, and reads the stories aloud to the others, while Humpty-Dumpty, the kitten, sits near and listen—or, at least, he seems ...
— Dear Santa Claus • Various

... cat and her daughter, and when the mother had several kittens and the daughter had but one, the grandmother stole the daughter's kitten, and though the young mother cried piteously she never regained possession of her child. Again, once when our brother was ploughing he overturned a rabbit's nest, and taking the young rabbits therefrom ...
— Holiday Stories for Young People • Various

... had received a message to say that her eldest kitten was ill with chilblains on his feet and was ...
— Pinocchio - The Tale of a Puppet • C. Collodi

... alone as if the house had been empty. Sometimes he read to her in a whisper; sometimes he pointed slowly along the lines in silence, and the wise little eyes from above followed intently. All questions and explanations were saved till the next morning, when Draxy, still curled up like a kitten, would sit mounted on the top of the buckwheat barrel in the store, while her father lay stretched on the counter, smoking. They never talked to each other, except when no one could hear; that is, they ...
— Saxe Holm's Stories • Helen Hunt Jackson

... some molasses and ginger," suggests the faint noon voice. Sometimes there sits the brother who follows the sea, their representative man; who knows only how far it is to the nearest port, no more distances, all the rest is sea and distant capes,—patting the dog, or dandling the kitten in arms that were stretched by the cable and the oar, pulling against Boreas or the trade-winds. He looks up at the stranger, half pleased, half astonished, with a mariner's eye, as if he were a dolphin within cast. If men will believe it, sua si bona norint, there are no more quiet Tempes, nor ...
— A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers • Henry David Thoreau

... than he expected; but this didn't prevent her suddenly becoming aware that she was faint with fatigue and must take her way back to the house by the shortest cut. She professed that she hadn't the strength of a kitten and was a miserable wreck; a character he had been too preoccupied to discern in her while he wondered in what sense she could be held to have been the making of her husband. He had arrived at a glimmering of the answer when she announced that she must leave him, though this perception was of course ...
— The Lesson of the Master • Henry James

... buoyed up by the fact that the telephone had been put in, and my friend, the grocer's boy, had brought me reinforcements in the shape of plates, tumblers, pots, pans, brooms, buckets, and supplies, and had further completed my rapture by promising me a kitten. ...
— At Home with the Jardines • Lilian Bell

... Justice Woodcock with his gouty limbs—rifle the flowers of the Della Cruscan school, and give you in their stead, as models of a pleasing pastoral style, Verses upon Anna—which you may see in the notes to the Baviad and Maeviad. All this is like the fable of 'The Kitten and the Leaves.' But when they get their brass collar on and shake their bells of office, they set up their backs like the Great Cat Rodilardus, and pounce upon men and things. Woe to any little heedess reptile of an ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt

... electric pause. Four pairs of startled, questioning, fearful eyes were on the basket while Billy fumbled at the knot of the string. The next moment, with a triumphant flourish, Billy lifted from the basket and placed on the floor a very small gray kitten with a very large ...
— Miss Billy • Eleanor H. Porter

... they rest and indulge their appetites for tid-bits, they advance, in the brief space of four hours, from a simple diet of peanuts and bubbles of greasy pastry to such epicurean dishes as pickled duck, salted eggs, and fricasseed kitten! ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens

... not very much. She asked questions about Mary's home and her parents, and Mary answered these interrogations in monosyllabic gasps. It appeared that Mary had a kitten, and that this kitten was a central fact of Mary's existence. ...
— The Golden Scarecrow • Hugh Walpole

... quality known to the common observer. The cat is pleasing in aspect, graceful in movement, nice in personal habits, and of amiable disposition. No cause of offence is obvious, and yet there are many persons who cannot abide the presence of the most innocent little kitten. They can tell, in some mysterious way, that there is a cat in the room when they can neither see nor hear the creature. Whether it is an electrical or quasi-magnetic phenomenon, or whatever it may be, of the fact of this strange influence there are too many well-authenticated ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... along the street, it happened that some small boys had got hold of a kitten and were tormenting it. And he felt ...
— Russian Fairy Tales - A Choice Collection of Muscovite Folk-lore • W. R. S. Ralston

... for some minutes after nurse's departure, then her quick eyes noticed a poor wretched little kitten mewing pitifully as she vainly tried to shelter herself from the violent blasts by ...
— Probable Sons • Amy Le Feuvre

... I was in my room, and my two little girls, aged six and eight, were standing at the window watching a kitten in the garden, when suddenly the ...
— Animal Ghosts - Or, Animal Hauntings and the Hereafter • Elliott O'Donnell

... hail stones with the other. I know her. Many's the time she has coaxed me out of a good, warm bed, wheedled me into the fields in a white dress and thin shoes, and then sent me home wet as a drowned kitten, with a snapping headache, to a ...
— Little Ferns For Fanny's Little Friends • Fanny Fern

... a council of war and decided to drown Scraggs out. Dan Hicks ran up on deck and returned dragging the deck fire hose behind him. He thrust the brass nozzle into the shaft alley entrance and invited Scraggs to surrender unconditionally or be drowned like a kitten. Scraggs, knowing his own fire hose, defied them, so Dan Hicks started the pump while Flaherty turned on the water. Instantly the hose burst up on deck and Scraggs's jeers of triumph filled the engine room. The enemy was about to draw lots to see which ...
— Captain Scraggs - or, The Green-Pea Pirates • Peter B. Kyne

... squatting down on the middle of the floor with a blind kitten just three days old in her lap. The kitten squalled frightfully, and Babs kept on calling it 'poor, pretty darling.' I thought badly of the kitten's future prospects, but well of its nurse's; ...
— A Young Mutineer • Mrs. L. T. Meade

... the dark and damp would surely kill the poor thing, in spite of your attentions. You must make up your mind to separation from your pets, excepting the kitten.' ...
— Beechcroft at Rockstone • Charlotte M. Yonge

... of the accomplices cried, 'Willy! Willy! prithee stop! enough in all conscience! First thou divertedst us from our undertaking with thy strange vagaries, thy Italian girls' nursery sigh, thy Pucks and pinchings, and thy Windsor whimsies. No kitten upon a bed of marum ever played such antics. It was summer and winter, night and day with us within the hour; and in such religion did we think and feel it, we would have broken the man's jaw who gainsaid ...
— Citation and Examination of William Shakspeare • Walter Savage Landor

... "I'd grind a kitten," put in Rosy, "a white one, just like my Snowdrop. Snowdrop has runned away. I don't know where ...
— Eyebright - A Story • Susan Coolidge

... lifted her in strong arms, put her gently down on the bed, and Libbie rolled up like a little kitten, tucked one hand under her cheek ...
— Betty Gordon at Boarding School - The Treasure of Indian Chasm • Alice Emerson

... the unpleasing, coarse features of Sidsel, with the image which his memory faintly retained of his little sister. She seemed to him as a delicate creature with large eyes. He had not forgotten that the people about them had spoken of her as of "a kitten that they could hardly keep alive." How then could she now be this square-built, singularly plain being, with the eyebrows growing together? "I must speak with Heinrich," resolved he; "she cannot be my sister! so heavily as that God ...
— O. T. - A Danish Romance • Hans Christian Andersen

... wrong bias, spleen Some recommend the bowling-green; Some, hilly walks; all, exercise; Fling but a stone, the giant dies. Laugh and be well. Monkeys have been Extreme good doctors for the spleen; And kitten, if the humour hit, Has harlequined ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum

... anything, master never so much as looks at it. But if you takes a thing, and eats with a relish, why first he waits, and then he looks, and by-and-by he smells; and then he finds out as he's hungry, and falls to eating as natural as a kitten takes to mewing. That's the reason, miss, as I gave you a nudge and a wink, which no one knows better nor me ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell

... threatening the village people with ill fortune if they have done anything he thinks wrong or unkind. The child was awfully upset the other day because he discovered that the Tenchers had drowned a half-grown kitten." ...
— What Timmy Did • Marie Adelaide Belloc Lowndes

... Adeline thinks you reproach her for leaving Colin. I told her you were too intelligent to do anything of the sort. You'll agree it's the best thing she could do for him. She's no more capable of looking after Colin than a kitten. She wants to be looked after herself, and you ought to be grateful to me for relieving you of ...
— Anne Severn and the Fieldings • May Sinclair

... ordinarily successful in the higher strains, they nearly equal the most exalted efforts of the tom-cat; and then, again, in the execution of the lower notes and more pathetic passages, we are brought nigh unto tears by an inimitable imitation of the wailings of a very young and sick kitten. ...
— The Citizen-Soldier - or, Memoirs of a Volunteer • John Beatty

... had been longing for a walk, but had crushed down the desire as something unnatural, and disrespectful to dear mamma, but of course if Primrose suggested it it was all right. Her face brightened visibly, and as to Daisy, she sat down and began to play with the kitten on ...
— The Palace Beautiful - A Story for Girls • L. T. Meade

... She's like a mother puss with her kitten. One minute she pets him to foolishness, the next she gives him a mental slap that reduces him to the humblest, most timid mood. Well, I'm glad the burro business is settled, though it's odd how Fayette covets that animal; and the exercise of going up and down to his work, the ...
— Reels and Spindles - A Story of Mill Life • Evelyn Raymond

... breast and he became quiet, simply purring like a happy little kitten. The beneficent source had begun to flow once more, as if it were inexhaustible. The trickling milk murmured unceasingly. One might have said that it could be heard descending and spreading, while Mathieu on his side continued opening his trench, ...
— Fruitfulness - Fecondite • Emile Zola

... have picked out could I have had my choice. You see, I've never owned a line watch. I guess it was just as well, too, for I never appreciated watchmaking until Mr. McPhearson told me what a really good watch meant. Now I'd as soon starve a kitten as not ...
— Christopher and the Clockmakers • Sara Ware Bassett

... dropped the subject. But he was sorry for her; she made him think of a beaten kitten. "You must take care of that wrist," he said, his blue eyes full of sympathy. When he went away he told himself he had spotted the big man as a brute the minute he saw him. The "kitten" seemed to him so pathetic that he forgot Eleanor's exquisiteness, and told her about the bruised wrist and ...
— The Vehement Flame • Margaret Wade Campbell Deland

... rather long and fantastic nose, which wrinkled up and moved at the tip as she talked, with little fractious pouts and shrugs; rebellious hair; a pretty little face, rather sallow complexion, dabbed with powder; heavy, rather thick features: altogether she was like a plump kitten. ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland

... a time have I seen him placidly extended before a fire, while puss used his shaggy body as a sleeping box, and once he was observed to help that anxious tabby-mother with the toilet of her kittens by licking them carefully all over. At every lick of Rufus's huge prehensile tongue a kitten was lifted bodily into the air, only, however, to descend washed and unharmed to the ground. But out of doors, in the society of Flick, Rufus's whole nature seemed to change. He became a demon-exterminator of cats. Led on by ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 102, April 16, 1892 • Various

... this fact. Not only has every house in Kittery its cat, but every house seems to have its half-dozen cats, large, little, old, and young; of divers colors, tending mostly to a dark tortoise-shell. With a whole ocean inviting to the tragic rite, I do not believe there is ever a kitten drowned in Kittery; the illimitable sea rather employs itself in supplying the fish to which "no cat's averse," but which the cats of Kittery demand to have cooked. They do not like raw fish; they say it plainly, and they prefer ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... The shop is a miracle of taste. The white and gold are worthy of Marie Antoinette's bedroom at St. Cloud—occupied, by the way, by our English queen, when she was the guest of the French Emperor in 1855. The front of the shop is ornamented with rich and rare caskets. A white kitten lies upon a rosy satin cushion; lift the kitten, and you shall find that her bed is a ...
— The Cockaynes in Paris - 'Gone abroad' • Blanchard Jerrold

... It is very comical to see such a little creature assume these responsibilities, and take such pride in them. He says that he is ten, but his face is perfectly infantine; and he is a baby too in his plays. He rolls and tumbles about like a young dog or kitten. If it rains, he seems like a wild duck, he is so pleased with it; and then, when the sun comes out, he hardly knows how to express his enjoyment of it; he looks at me with such a radiant face, saying, "Oh, nice sun, nice!" I feel ready at that moment to forgive him for every ...
— Life at Puget Sound: With Sketches of Travel in Washington Territory, British Columbia, Oregon and California • Caroline C. Leighton

... elicited the information that he was at quite the wrong end of the street for the number he wanted. Micky was rather glad. He felt that he needed time in which to collect his thoughts, and yet when at last he reached his destination he felt as nervous as a kitten and strongly inclined to go back. But he went on and up the bare strip of garden which led to the front door of the house. It wasn't such a bad-looking house, he thought. Not nearly as bad as he had expected from the girl's description. In fact, once upon a time it must have been rather a palatial ...
— The Phantom Lover • Ruby M. Ayres

... all about pleasing ourselves with him as if he were a kitten,' said Angel, gravely; 'you see things so quickly, ...
— Two Maiden Aunts • Mary H. Debenham

... time ago, when Thomas was just emerging from the kitten stage, that his Private History really began. It started one evening when mother was reading the children the story of the White Cat in front of the nursery fire before they went to bed. Thomas, who had ...
— More Tales in the Land of Nursery Rhyme • Ada M. Marzials

... in the lower berth and Father was believed to be asleep in the upper he slipped on his coat and trousers and kitten-footed out of the state-room to a dark corner of the deck. For, very secretly, Father was afraid of the water. He who had insouciantly reassured Mother had himself to choke down the timorous speculations of a shop-bound clerk. While the sun was fair on the water and there were obviously no leviathans ...
— The Innocents - A Story for Lovers • Sinclair Lewis

... probable that I had for some time been familiar with that tree, and all my surroundings, for I had been breathing two and a half years, and had made some progress in the art of reading and sewing, saying catechism and prayers. I knew the gray kitten which walked away; knew that the girl who brought it back and reproved me for not holding it was Adaline, my nurse; knew that the young lady who stood near was cousin Sarah Alexander, and that the girl to whom she gave directions about putting bread into a brick oven was Big Jane; ...
— Half a Century • Jane Grey Cannon Swisshelm

... have been so much of a surprise had anybody known of his conversation, a few weeks before, with Eltje Vanderveer, the railroad president's only daughter. She was a few months younger than Rod, and ever since he had jumped into the river to save her pet kitten from drowning, they ...
— Cab and Caboose - The Story of a Railroad Boy • Kirk Munroe

... applied at the right age, produce such immediate and often surprising development of lung capacity, utterly fail with boys of twelve, because this nascent period has not yet come. Donaldson showed that if the eyelid of a young kitten be forced open prematurely at birth and stimulated with light, medullation was premature and imperfect; so, too, if proper exercise is deferred too long, we know that little result is achieved. The sequence in which the maturation of levels, nerve areas, and bundles of fibers develop may be, as ...
— Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene • G. Stanley Hall

... hands lying between his, they stood confronting one another in the golden light. She might easily have brought the matter to an end; and why she did not, she knew no more than a kitten waking to ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers

... his arm to announce his position before creeping down to the grass. Holden answered the signal, and rose to be ready for emergencies. But, as he moved his right foot, he stepped upon something soft, whereupon he was startled by a cry like that of a kitten. He gave a swift glance downwards, and saw that he had inadvertently trodden on something small and furry which was now expressing pain by means of shrill ...
— The Fiery Totem - A Tale of Adventure in the Canadian North-West • Argyll Saxby

... she lowered the kitten which she had carried clasped to her bosom. The mite was bewildered and scared. It ...
— The Trespasser • D.H. Lawrence

... officer who gives his days and strength and brains to the service of his country. Then they packed the few articles that they felt most necessary to their comfort, gave away ten guinea pigs, eight white rats, four pigeons and a kitten, crated Bill's collie and the Major's Airdale, and started off for their first post, Fort Sill, where the Major was stationed at the School of Fire ...
— Battling the Clouds - or, For a Comrade's Honor • Captain Frank Cobb

... lines on 'The Character of the Happy Warrior,' and a chivalrous legend on 'The Horn of Egremont Castle,' which, without being very good, is very tolerable, and free from most of the author's habitual defects. Then follow some pretty, but professedly childish verses, on a kitten playing with the falling leaves. There is rather too much of Mr Ambrose Philips here and there in this piece also; but ...
— Early Reviews of English Poets • John Louis Haney

... have more energy than that. I'm just ready to fly to bits," declared Delia, prancing down the passage like a playful kitten. ...
— The Jolliest School of All • Angela Brazil

... time Wishie's fright was a little gone off; and being always rather pertly inclined, she plucked up courage, and remarked that she did not see how it was to hurt her. Now it was very rude in a little good-for-nothing kitten like Wishie, to speak so saucily; and the Fairy looked very angry, as well she might; however, she only said, 'You will know better, perhaps, at some other time. Hear me, Wishie, I am going to bestow a wonderful gift upon you; for this day you shall have everything you wish for. But I warn ...
— Tales From Catland, for Little Kittens • Tabitha Grimalkin

... he admitted. "The poor little beast turned around and looked at me rather plaintively as though hoping I'd pick him up and be kind to him—he was really just a kitten—and before he knew it a big foot launched out at him and caught his ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald

... they were men who when at home manifested the most gentle and wide-reaching feelings; most of them could not by any possibility have slapped a kitten merely for the prank and yet all of them who had seen an unknown man shot through the head in battle had little more to think of it than if the man had been a rag-baby. Tender they might be; poets they might be; but they were all horned with a provisional, temporary, but absolutely essential callouse ...
— Active Service • Stephen Crane

... at the receipt of customs, for he had obtained a modest appointment, I sat by a little desk, where my portfolio lay open. A pen was near, which I took up, and it began to write, wildly like "Planchette" upon her board, or like a kitten clutching a ball of yarn fearfully. But doing it again—I could not say why—my mind began upon a festival in my childhood, which my mother arranged for several poor old people at Thanksgiving. I finished the sketch in private, and gave it the title of "A Christmas ...
— The Morgesons • Elizabeth Stoddard

... her satisfaction, the raccoon returned to a deep hole in the sycamore, and hastily touched with her pointed nose each in turn of her five, blind, furry little ones. Very little they were, half-cub, half-kitten in appearance, with their long noses, long tails, and bear-like feet. They huddled luxuriously together in the warm, dry darkness of the den, and gave little squeals in response to their mother's touch. In her absence they ...
— The Watchers of the Trails - A Book of Animal Life • Charles G. D. Roberts

... which she continually carried about. Her kindness, however, did not go so far as to share her food with her adopted offspring, at which Brehm was surprised, as his monkeys always divided everything quite fairly with their own young ones. An adopted kitten scratched this affectionate baboon, who certainly had a fine intellect, for she was much astonished at being scratched, and immediately examined the kitten's feet, and without more ado bit off the claws.[60] In the Zoological ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)

... makes a spectacle, to some extent, of himself. Exactly between the uncle and the nephew, on a low stool, sits the cat—the cat, par excellence—Mr Shirley's cat, a creature which he has always been passionately fond of since it was a kitten, and to which, after Ned's departure for California, he had devoted himself so tenderly, that he felt half-ashamed of himself, and would not like to have been asked how much he ...
— The Golden Dream - Adventures in the Far West • R.M. Ballantyne

... after I found out that she cared. It was only at first that I didn't dare. I haven't told you, but she went out for her daily walk and brought me home a Christmas card, the prettiest one she could find, she said. I was propped up on pillows, as weak as a kitten. I looked at it and looked at it, and when I saw that it was this room, the old fireplace and mother's picture, and the Hessian soldier andirons, when I realized there was a face at the window and that the door was ajar,—everything just ...
— The Romance of a Christmas Card • Kate Douglas Wiggin

... stare at us. Sir S. actually admired their red hair. He exclaimed suddenly, "By Jove, it's worth crossing the ocean to see that glorious stuff again! It's the hair of Circe." I don't know when anything has made me feel so much like a kitten that purrs over a dish of cream. For you know the hair he loved was just my colour, not a bit less scarlet. What would ...
— The Heather-Moon • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson

... and make it go the other way. They turned up their heads sidewise and blinked at the sky, all blue and calm and infinite, with white clouds sailing over it like swans on a limpid lake; and one stood up on his hind legs and reached up both paws, like a kitten, to pull down a cloud to play with. Then the wind stirred a feather near them, the white feather of a ptarmigan which they had eaten yesterday, and forgetting the big world and the sail and the ...
— Northern Trails, Book I. • William J. Long

... the middle of the family. We had thought and dreamed of it; I had seen him in my mind's eye, my darling child, playing with a hoop, pulling my moustache, trying to walk, or gorging himself with milk in his nurse's arms like a gluttonous little kitten; but I had never pictured him to myself, inanimate, almost lifeless, quite tiny, wrinkled, hairless, grinning, and yet, charming, adorable, and be loved in spite of all-poor, ugly, little thing. It was a strange impression, and so singular that it is impossible ...
— Monsieur, Madame and Bebe, Complete • Gustave Droz

... in shorts. He soon afterwards began to crawl and show his legs; indeed, so indecorously, that it was evident that he had imbibed no modesty with Sarah's milk, neither did he appear to have gained veneration or benevolence, for he snatched at everything, squeezed the kitten to death, scratched his mother, and pulled his father by the hair; notwithstanding all which, both his father and mother and the whole household declared him to be the finest and sweetest child in the universe. But if we were to narrate all the wonderful events of Jack's ...
— Mr. Midshipman Easy • Captain Frederick Marryat

... to Richmond, where I gave her tea at the Star and Garter and was relieved to see her drink normally from the cup, instead of lapping from the saucer like a kitten. She was much more intelligent than during our first drive on Tuesday. The streets have grown more familiar, and the traffic does not make her head ache. She asks me the ingenuous questions of a child of ten. The tall guardsmen we ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke









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