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Feline   /fˈilˌaɪn/   Listen
Feline

noun
1.
Any of various lithe-bodied roundheaded fissiped mammals, many with retractile claws.  Synonym: felid.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Feline" Quotes from Famous Books



... feline friend! I think that will teach you a wholesome lesson; and as punishment is intended to be reformatory, you ought to be grateful to me for deigning to ...
— Cobwebs From an Empty Skull • Ambrose Bierce (AKA: Dod Grile)

... He had the feline foot, as they say. He moved about lightly and without sound in the dark. Almost at once he approached one of the two doors and put his ear to the panel. Running water. The fool had time to take ...
— The Drums Of Jeopardy • Harold MacGrath

... eyes tore away from the now dulled expression in the cat's eyes. He did not find it strange that this was so. He knew in some inner sense that the mighty life force in him had quelled the cat. Had stilled the fighting in its feline eyes. ...
— The Monster • S. M. Tenneshaw

... He was no longer deceived by her constant show of affection for himself, for she continued always to make it most manifest just when it prevented him from talking with Hermione. Alexander, too, treated him as he had not done before, with a deference and a sort of feline softness which inspired distrust. Two years ago Paul would have been the first to expect foul play from his brother, and would have been upon his guard from the beginning; but Paul himself was changed, and had grown more merciful in his judgment of others. He found it ...
— Paul Patoff • F. Marion Crawford

... he is ruffling his feathers, craning his neck inquisitively downward in all directions, before chancing to descend to earth and breakfast; nor need we see the panther skulking from his lair to know that he has stopped to lick his paw and pass it over his face—the feline morning ablution. Each creature has a particular mode of resurrection after its hours of mimic death; and so I, on a bed of whatsoever it may be, yawn hideously and stretch my arms and grumble: O, Lord, how I ...
— Wings of the Wind • Credo Harris

... the war frigate, and officers severe as were those of the Macedonian could not wholly curb the rollicking spirit of Terrence. His exuberance of spirits constantly got the better of any good intentions he might have formed. Any wholesome dread he may have entertained of that famous feline of nine tails, known to sailors of that day, was overcome by his love ...
— Sustained honor - The Age of Liberty Established • John R. Musick,

... at the pilot, startled. He turned the gain down to a whisper. Paresi left the bulkhead and stood behind Johnny. "What's the matter?" he asked. His voice was feline, ...
— Breaking Point • James E. Gunn

... and slender like his daughter, and walked with lithe, slightly feline movements. His face was oval, clear skinned, and with a pallid complexion made still paler by his dark hair and eyes and a tiny mustache, almost black and with waxed and pointed ends. He was good-looking as to features, ...
— The Pit Prop Syndicate • Freeman Wills Crofts

... almost naked under her transparent dress of gauze, which fell in straight folds as far as the gold bracelets on her slender wrists, with languor in her rich voice, and something undulating and feline in the rhythmical swing of her wrist and hips. Tatia Caroly was singing one of those sweet Creole songs which call up some far distant fairy-like country, and unknown caresses, for which ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume II (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant

... honour immense festivals were there held. Her name is found in the beginning of the pyramid times; but her main period of popularity was that of the Shishaks who ruled from Bubastis, and in the later times images of her were very frequent as amulets. It is possible from the name that this feline goddess, whose foreign origin is acknowledged, was the female form of the god Bes, who is dressed in a lion's skin, and also came in from the east (see ...
— The Religion of Ancient Egypt • W. M. Flinders Petrie

... moment, I understand his habits changed. From being a tolerably cheerful companion, he became a wretched hypochondriac; all his energies being directed to the avoiding a contact with any of the feline race. ...
— A Love Story • A Bushman

... breathings of disparagement, coarse jests as to her "old maid" condition, and other mean and petty calumnies, which, however, were all so much wasted breath on his part, as the Weircombe villagers were as indifferent to his attempted mischief as Mary herself. Even with the feline assistance of Mrs. Arbroath, who came readily to her husband's aid in his capacity of "downing" a woman, especially as that woman was so much better-looking than herself, nothing of any importance was accomplished in the way of either shaking Mary's established position in the estimation ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli

... was a cat. This unadorned statement would have wounded Omar Ben to the marrow of his pride, for he chanced to be a splendid tiger-marked feline of purest Persian breed, with glorious yellow eyes and a Solomon-in-all-his-glory tail. His pedigree could be traced directly back to Padisha Zim Yuki Yowsi Zind—a dignity, in itself, sufficient to cause an aristocratic ...
— A Night Out • Edward Peple

... but she herself spoke of herself as a 'good fellow,' who had no patience with ceremony of any sort; it was in those words that she characterised herself to Sanin. And at the same time this 'good fellow' walked by his side with feline grace, slightly bending towards him, and peeping into his face; and this 'good fellow' walked in the form of a young feminine creature, full of the tormenting, fiery, soft and seductive charm, of which—for the undoing ...
— The Torrents of Spring • Ivan Turgenev

... we have enumerated the names of Cowper and Dr. Johnson, of Thomas Gray and Isaac Newton, and, above all, of the tender-hearted and meditative Montaigne, the list is far from complete of those who have bestowed on the feline race some ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various

... on till he reached the quarter of the city inhabited by the descendants of the feline race; and as he had never before been in that part of the town, he was at first utterly confounded by the discordant cries. Instead, too, of the order prevailing in the canine portions, the inhabitants seemed to take delight in the wildest gymnastic demonstrations, and certainly seemed to ...
— The Adventures of a Bear - And a Great Bear too • Alfred Elwes

... type of these adventuresses, elegant, mature, and still beautiful. Charming feline creatures, you feel that they are vicious to the marrow of their bones. You find them very amusing when you visit them; they give card-parties; they have dances and suppers; in short, they offer you all the pleasures ...
— The works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 5 (of 8) - Une Vie and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant 1850-1893

... the Cat-Bird, from which his name is derived, has been the occasion of many misfortunes to his species, causing them to share a portion of that contempt which almost every human being feels towards the feline race, and that contempt has been followed by persecution. The Cat-Bird has always been proscribed by the New England farmers, who from the first settlement of the country have entertained a prejudice against many of the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly , Volume 2, No. 14, December 1858 • Various

... till the year 1819 that he first came to live at Sutton. His earliest recollection was, as he used to tell us, playing on the terrace with the great ginger- coloured tom-cat, "King George." We always supposed this feline magnifico to have derived from some stock imported by the first Sir Henry when he was Master of the Household to George III. As my readers will see, King George's successor, in the true "mode" of his race, sits in a purely detached manner in the middle of the polished oak floor near, but in no ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey

... beneath, are marked with spots of brilliant black, disposed in patterns according to the species; nor are these spots for ornament alone; as was remarked by one of the ablest of the writers in the "Quarterly," the different and characteristic markings of the larger feline animals, bear a direct relation to the circumstances under which they carry on their predatory pursuits. The tawny color of the lion harmonizes with the parched grass or yellow sand, along which he steals towards, or on which he lies in wait to spring upon, a passing prey; and a like relation ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various

... firmly disbelieve, myself, that our human experience is the highest form of experience extant in the universe. I believe rather that we stand in much the same relation to the whole of the universe as our canine and feline pets do to the whole of human life. They inhabit our drawing-rooms and libraries. They take part in scenes of whose significance they have no inkling. They are merely tangent to curves of history the beginnings and ends and forms of which pass wholly beyond their ken. So we are tangents to the wider ...
— Pragmatism - A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking • William James

... previously been so afraid. She found out also that they could neither run swiftly nor walk silently, and they could be approached easily even by a tiger that cracked a twig with every step. It simplified the problem of living immensely; and just as any other feline would have done, she took the line of least resistance. If there had been plenty of carrion in the jungle, Nahara might never have hunted men. But the kites and the jackals looked after the carrion; and they were much swifter and keener-eyed than ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 • Various

... first. He barked furiously, trying to frighten off the invaders, then his barks suddenly changed to an anguished howl as a new voice joined in the racket. It was a feline voice, ...
— The Electronic Mind Reader • John Blaine

... along the bed of the stream. How cool it is! He looks up the dark, silent defile, hears the solitary voice of the water, sees the decayed trunks of fallen trees bridging the stream, and all he has dreamed, when a boy, of the haunts of beasts of prey—the crouching feline tribes, especially if it be near nightfall and the gloom already deepening in the woods—comes freshly to mind, and he presses on, wary and alert, and speaking to ...
— Locusts and Wild Honey • John Burroughs

... touching it without your order, sir," said she quietly, and shot him a feline glance ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade

... what I want. You know what I'm going to get ... some day," he purred in his slow, feline way. ...
— Man Size • William MacLeod Raine

... allowed to earn a quarter of a dollar by transporting the luggage to that destination. The procession at once set forth, including Dave, who strolled in the rear, softly whistling, and apparently totally unconcerned, yet all the while alive with feline watchfulness. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 23, September, 1859 • Various

... captain, sternly tapping the note with his forefinger. "I see the cunning of insanity, the suspicion of insanity, the feline treachery of insanity in every line of this deplorable document. There is a far more alarming reason, sir, than I had supposed for Mrs. Lecount's behavior to my niece. It is clear to me that Miss Bygrave resembles some other lady who has seriously offended your housekeeper—who has ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins

... shuffling dancers padded something on four feet. The canine-feline creature was more than just a head; it was a loose-limbed, graceful body fully eight feet in length, and the red eyes in the prick-eared head were those of a killer.... Words issued from between those curved fangs, words ...
— Voodoo Planet • Andrew North

... cannot bring himself to do. He must have that touch of nature, and of humour, which makes the whole world kin. He must introduce the quarrelling cat and dog into the office scene between West and Goodchild, or the feline visitant whose apparition through the chimney disturbs Thomas Idle's unhallowed slumbers; he must accentuate the gormandising guests in the Sheriff's banquet, and the humours of the crowd even in a Tyburn execution. ...
— The Eighteenth Century in English Caricature • Selwyn Brinton

... copious wife for her determined babble of generalities, well-knowing that she was bursting with suppressed excitement under the knowledge that Alice had come to try and patch up a lost cause. He chuckled at the feline manners of the little lady whom they had all known so long as Mrs. Edgar Lee Reeves, her purring voice, her frequent over-emphasis of exuberant adjectives, her accidental choice of the sort of verb that had the effect of smashed crockery, her receptiveness to the underlying drama of the situation ...
— Who Cares? • Cosmo Hamilton

... Robespierre is not wanting, now when the brunt of battle is past; in a stealthy way the seagreen man sits there, his feline eyes excellent in the twilight. Also understand this other, a single fact worth many: that Marat is not only there, but has a seat of honour assigned him, a tribune particuliere. How changed for Marat; lifted from his dark cellar ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle

... come home to the hearth-rug. But there is very little mental exhilaration in a hearth-rug. Lots of comfort, but little humor. The real excitement of life, at least to a cat, is when in a morning stroll abroad she goes out of her sphere—the hearth-rug—and meets some feline friend to whom she extends a claw, playful or otherwise; or possibly meets some merry puppy which induces her to move rapidly up the nearest tree with an agility which you never would believe the mother of a family could boast if you had not been an eye-witness ...
— From a Girl's Point of View • Lilian Bell

... like placed sentinels awaiting some procession which tarried long. At a point under him where the road was torn up there stood a red light, and at the corner two men were talking in leisurely repose, as if sunning themselves at noonday. Lovers of a feline disposition, who were never seen by daylight, joked and darted at each other in and ...
— The Well-Beloved • Thomas Hardy

... rockaway on one side and the bay shattered the swingletree on the other with the forewheel of our buggy. The old plow-horses plunged feebly, then lowered their heads in native dejection, while the Brocks shrieked, root and branch. Never have I seen such a look of feline ferocity upon the human countenance as when Brother Brock scrambled down from his seat into the road and, with his mouse-catching eyes, added William Asbury Thompson, preacher, to Charles Jason Weaver, loafer, drunkard and horse racer, and placed the sum ...
— A Circuit Rider's Wife • Corra Harris

... approaching necessity, and the weeks grew to months. He was never idle, for his tastes were strong, and he had delight in his pen; but so sensitive was his social skin, partly from the licking of his aunt's dry, feline tongue, that he shrunk from submitting anything he wrote to Harold Sullivan, who, a man of firmer and more world-capable stuff than he, would at least have shown him how things which the author saw and judged from the inner side of the web, must appear on the other side. ...
— Home Again • George MacDonald

... carefully kept in each maternal breast, it is needless to relate. Ces dames are not confidential upon such matters between themselves. When they have scented their game they stalk him, and if possible bag him in a feline solitude which has no fears for stout, ambitious hearts. The fear is that some other prowling mother of an eligible maiden may hit upon the ...
— The Sowers • Henry Seton Merriman

... but which were widely believed to exist. It possesses all the traditional attributes of the griffin. It is fearless and heartless: its horrible claws strike out to wound in every direction, and the whole body vibrates with feline elasticity, as well as the agile movement of a bird. Regarding it purely as a composition, we see how admirably Donatello used the space at his command: his economy of the shield is masterly. It is occupied at every angle, but nowhere crowded. The spaces which are left ...
— Donatello • David Lindsay, Earl of Crawford

... all its fiery passions, was refined, shy and tremulous. A dimple in her chin and a small sensitive mouth gave her an expression at once timid and childlike. Her footstep had feline grace, delicacy and distinction. She had a figure almost perfect, erect, lithe, with small hands and feet and tiny wrists. Her voice was a soft contralto, caress-ing and full of feeling, with a touch of the languor and delicate sensuousness ...
— The One Woman • Thomas Dixon

... pardon my frankness, messire," continued the male ghost, "but you cannot have moved widely in noble company if you are indeed unable to distinguish between members of the feline species and of the reigning ...
— Jurgen - A Comedy of Justice • James Branch Cabell

... I fell victim to their feline charm. The children were pets, but you didn't feel like patting the adults on their big grinning heads. Personally I didn't like the one I knew best. He was called—well, we called him Charley, and he was the ethnologist, ambassador, contact man, or whatever you like ...
— Accidental Death • Peter Baily

... a Frenchwoman of two and thirty, from somewhere in the southern country about Avignon and Marseilles, a large-eyed brown woman with black hair who would be handsome but for a certain feline mouth and general uncomfortable tightness of face, rendering the jaws too eager and the skull too prominent. There is something indefinably keen and wan about her anatomy, and she has a watchful way of looking out of the corners of her eyes without turning her head which could be pleasantly ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens

... from the table. His eyes were all but invisible. There was no ursine clumsiness in his movements, as he walked to and fro in the bar-room. As became a feline, he walked in silence and on his toes. He was thinking of many a shady incident in his past career, and he knew that with the greater number of his shaded spots Zephyr was more or less familiar. With which of them was Zephyr most familiar, and was there any one by means of which Zephyr could ...
— Blue Goose • Frank Lewis Nason

... operation of the Reading Club. As far as I can judge, it is a great institution for the discussion of apples and chestnuts, but is quite innocent of the pleasures of literature. It, however, brings the young people together, and promotes sociability and conversation. Our feline companions are flourishing. Young Baxter is growing in gracefulness and favour, and gives cat-like evidences of future worth. He possesses the fashionable colour of 'moonlight on the water,' apparently a dingy hue of the kitchen, and is strictly aristocratic in appearance and conduct. ...
— Recollections and Letters of General Robert E. Lee • Captain Robert E. Lee, His Son

... tenderness for them both, as though the deadly bark were to destroy them as it had killed Pascualo. But when prosperity came, and the memory of the tragedy grew dim with the years, sina Tona showed unmistakable fondness for Tonet, a child of feline shrewdness, who treated everybody with imperious petulance, but for his mother always had the speculative fondness ...
— Mayflower (Flor de mayo) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez

... an almost feline tread, quite in contrast with the bluster of Murtha. I felt for the first time a sort of sinking sensation, as I began to realize the varied character of the ...
— The Ear in the Wall • Arthur B. Reeve

... thirsty all night and begs for water at short intervals. At last the demand is too much for the poor agonized mother—she takes refuge in silencing unworthy, and to which one feels her gentleness must be forced. "Hark! The cat will get you, Letty! See that cat?" And the feline horror in nameless form, evoked in an awe-inspiring whisper, controls the little creature, ...
— The Woman Who Toils - Being the Experiences of Two Gentlewomen as Factory Girls • Mrs. John Van Vorst and Marie Van Vorst

... thirty yards. I knew it was neither bear nor deer that they were running after, and as I had observed a path through the canes, I leaped upon my saddle, and followed the chase, wondering what it could be, as, had the animal been any of the smaller feline species, it would have kept to the briars, where dogs have never the least chance ...
— Monsieur Violet • Frederick Marryat

... Her professional name was pretty enough,—Eos Vach Morganwg,—"The Little Nightingale of Glamorgan." Her renderings of some simple Welsh melodies were delicious; they as far excelled the outpourings of the other singers as the compositions of Mendelssohn or Bellini surpass a midnight feline concert. I have heard Chinese singing, and have come to the conclusion, that, next to it, Welsh prize-vocalism is the most ear-distracting ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 5, March, 1858 • Various

... for a space. He had, she reflected, a most disconcerting trick of silence, of ignoring quite without embarrassment leads, which in her code imperatively called for return. Annoyance stirred within her, and the eternal feline which is a component part of ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams

... city of Caneville, I lately drew the materials of a Bear's Biography. From the same source I now derive my "Adventures of a Dog." My task has been less that of a composer than a translator, for a feline editoress, a Miss Minette Gattina, had already performed her part. This latter animal appears, however, to have been so learned a cat—one may say so deep a puss—that she had furnished more notes than there was original matter. Another peculiarity which distinguished her labours was the obscurity ...
— The Adventures of a Dog, and a Good Dog Too • Alfred Elwes

... her sinuous tail was also white, ending with black rings; the overpart of her dress, yellow like burnished gold, very lissome and soft, had the characteristic blotches in the form of rosettes, which distinguish the panther from every other feline species. ...
— A Passion in the Desert • Honore de Balzac

... deer hound, fox hound, otter hound; harrier, beagle, spaniel, pointer, setter, retriever; Newfoundland; water dog, water spaniel; pug, poodle; turnspit; terrier; fox terrier, Skye terrier; Dandie Dinmont; collie. [cats—generally] feline, puss, pussy; grimalkin^; gib cat, tom cat. [wild mammals] fox, Reynard, vixen, stag, deer, hart, buck, doe, roe; caribou, coyote, elk, moose, musk ox, sambar^. [birds] bird; poultry, fowl, cock, hen, chicken, chanticleer, partlet^, rooster, dunghill cock, barn door fowl; feathered ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget

... his hand to Christine, she pushed it aside with a scream of rage; she flashed at him, and with both hands made a feline pass at the face he bent toward her. He sprang back, and after an instant of stupefaction he pulled open the door behind him and ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... So the feline beauty took it, with courtesies and 'thankees,' smiling still, and hid it away as if she stole it, and looked on my open palm still smiling; and told me, to my surprise, that there was somebody I liked ...
— Uncle Silas - A Tale of Bartram-Haugh • J.S. Le Fanu

... and told him not to play the fool. I said, "I want a room." He looked at me stolidly, but suddenly I discovered my portmanteau in a corner. I claimed it at once and mounted the stairs, the waiter following with his curiously feline footsteps, and murmuring at intervals, "Well, I am———!" He said it with great conviction, but he took me to the bath room nevertheless. I got a shave, changed my suit, and, as I was something of a dandy ...
— Recollections • David Christie Murray

... walked over to the table and began the work of investigation. Mr. Linden came too. "If you are to make feline discoveries, I must stand by you, ...
— Say and Seal, Volume II • Susan Warner

... and small towns I have found the nests of humble-bees more numerous than elsewhere, which I attribute to the number of cats that destroy the mice." Hence it is quite credible that the presence of a feline animal in large numbers in a district might determine, through the intervention first of mice and then of bees, the frequency of ...
— On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection • Charles Darwin

... Persimmon Sneed. He was a little, slim, wiry man, with light, sleek hair, pink cheeks, high cheek-bones, and a bony but blunt nose. He had a light eye, gray, shallow, but inscrutable, and there was something feline in his aspect and glance, at once smooth and caressing ...
— The Mystery of Witch-Face Mountain and Other Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock

... on the road. Even now, however, it was difficult to associate one with the other; for whereas the dimly-seen figure had resembled that of a man (or, more closely, that of a woman) the eyes had looked out upon me from a point low down near the ground, like those of some crouching feline. ...
— The Green Eyes of Bast • Sax Rohmer

... upon the progress of the human understanding, having its origin in the mystical schools of the Egyptian priests, and evidently an illustration of the worship rendered at Thebes and Memphis to those feline quadrupeds of which they make both religious symbols and ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... necessary to say that there are no lions in America. The Spaniards must accordingly have given this name to the cougar, now called the panther by the North Americans, a very inferior species of the feline race.—E.] ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 5 • Robert Kerr

... Casino. She felt again the powerful influence of the place, but in a different way. The pleasant, kindly animal to which she had likened the Casino was now a mighty monster, who must be approached with caution and even fear, whose gentle, feline purring was the purr of a tiger sitting with claws in sheath. How the great golden beast could strike and tear sometimes, the desperate face of her companion told. Mary feared for his sake that people might read the lines of misery, and whisper ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson

... again, while his limbs are growing, our number is decaying. Besides, Dindika cannot be seen for these eight days.' Hearing these words, the mice ran away in all directions. And that cat also of wicked soul returned to whence he came. O thou of wicked soul, thou too art a practiser of such feline behaviour. Thou behavest towards thy kinsmen after the manner of the cat (in the story) towards the mice. Thy speech is of one kind, and thy conduct is of another. Thy (devotion to) scripture and thy peacefulness of behaviour are only for display before men. Giving up this ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli

... the very cat I wanted. I made his acquaintance in the area, and followed it up on the knife-boy's board. And then I had the most happy privilege of saving him from a tail-pipe. Thus my entrance was secured into this feline Eden; and the lady was so well pleased that she gave me an order for nine full-length cat portraits, at the handsome price of ten guineas apiece. And not only this, but at her demise—which followed, alas! too speedily—she left me L150, as a proof ...
— George Bowring - A Tale Of Cader Idris - From "Slain By The Doones" By R. D. Blackmore • R. D. Blackmore

... was very indignant at the political condescendence of his superior officer towards the priest; and every day he was beseeching the Commander to let him do once, just once, "Ding-dong! Ding-dong!" merely for the sake of having a little fun. And he begged for it with feline gracefulness, the cajolery of a woman, the tenderness of voice of a beloved mistress craving for something, but the Commander did not yield, and to console himself, Mademoiselle Fifi exploded mines in ...
— Mademoiselle Fifi • Guy de Maupassant

... cat with indescribable terror; and she leapt back. The blast of a trumpet, the smash of a pile of crockery, or a pistol-shot fired by her ear would not have dismayed the feline to such an extent. All her ornithological notions ...
— My Private Menagerie - from The Works of Theophile Gautier Volume 19 • Theophile Gautier

... on the veranda of his house, stretched out on a chair and suffering greatly. He received me fairly well. At first he examined me silently, piercing me with his two feline eyes; then a kind of malicious smile spread over his features, which were rather hard. Finally he declared to me that all the attendants he had ever engaged in his service hadn't been worth a button, that they slept too much, were impudent and spent their time courting ...
— Brazilian Tales • Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis

... Magazine of Art, M. H. Spielman, in an article on the Royal Academy Exhibition, 1903, writes: "What the dog is to Mr. Riviere, to Madame Ronner is the cat. With what unerring truth she records delightful kittenly nature, the feline nobility of haughty indifference to human approval or discontent, the subtlety of expression, and drawing of heads and bodies, the exact quality and tone of the fur, the expressive eloquence of the tail! With all her ...
— Women in the fine arts, from the Seventh Century B.C. to the Twentieth Century A.D. • Clara Erskine Clement

... fox-terrier always knew its feline friend in the dark, and was always able to distinguish it from other cats. These, when they appeared, were always ferociously charged and driven away; and one day, in its eagerness to get at a strange cat, the dog nearly hurt its little companion. It happened in this way. The two ...
— Harper's Young People, November 11, 1879 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various

... advantage of our position, we began to me-ouw Homerically, so that Whisky and his family might be accused and convicted in our stead. Then we made for the window of Sidonie, who did not welcome us. The poor child was practicing on the piano, and paying no attention to the feline howls vaguely striking her ear. She was delicate and nervous, very gentle, and quite incapable of understanding what pleasure we could find in roaming over roofs. As she sat playing, her back was turned to the window; and ...
— Short Stories and Selections for Use in the Secondary Schools • Emilie Kip Baker

... suffer less. Yet one walks toward it, barefooted, on the heated pavement, heedless of the heat. The motives which led Boleslas to choose the French novelist as the one from whom to obtain his information, demonstrated that the feline character of his physiognomy was not deceptive. He understood Dorsenne much better than Dorsenne understood him. He knew him to be nervous, on the one hand, and perspicacious on the other. If there was an intrigue between Maitland and Madame Steno, Julien had surely observed it, and, approached ...
— Cosmopolis, Complete • Paul Bourget

... fearsomely Celtic in its hideousness, resembling the gargoyles which peer down upon the traveller from the carven 'top-hamper' of so many Breton churches. Black and menacing of countenance, these demon-folk are armed with feline claws, and their feet end in hoofs like those of a satyr. Their dark elf-locks, small, gleaming eyes, red as carbuncles, and harsh, cracked voices are all dilated upon with fear by those who have ...
— Legends & Romances of Brittany • Lewis Spence

... feet of the wolf pack, were long since out of the way. But yonder a mountain sheep had been killed by a puma, or other big feline, and the wolves had picked its bones after the Master of the Chase ...
— On a Torn-Away World • Roy Rockwood

... defenceless a creature as might at first sight be imagined by considering his small toothless mouth and slow motions. His mode of defence is that which has been described, and which is quite sufficient against the tiger-cat, the ocelot, and all the smaller species of feline animals. No doubt the old female would have proved a match for the puma had she not been thrown off her guard by his seizing upon her young. It is even asserted that the great ant-bear sometimes hugs the jaguar to death; but this I believe to be a mistake, as the latter is far too ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid

... keepers are liable, and it is the law of zoological gardens and parks that every wolf bite means a quick application of anti- rabies treatment at a Pasteur institute. Personally, I would be no more scared by a wolf-bite than by a feline bite, but the verdict of the jury is,—"it is best to be on ...
— The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals • William T. Hornaday

... kept it back to the last, as well to multiply the chances of eliciting confessions of guilt, as for the sake of the vividness of the stage play. He admired greatly his own ingenuity, and his courtiers applauded enthusiastically. Of the detestable feline cruelty he and they had no shame. Ralegh's window in the Castle overlooked the scaffold. He would be sensible of the interruption of the proceedings. He could not have seen Gibb. He must, says Carleton, 'have had hammers ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing

... which eventually decided the battle, and as the fierce feline shuddered convulsively and rolled over upon its side the youth and the ape rose and faced one another across the prostrate carcass. Korak jerked his head in the direction of the little girl in ...
— The Son of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... made an assignation with Tom Tortoiseshell, the feline phenomenon, they two sit curmurring, forgetful of mice and milk, of all but love! How meekly mews the Demure, relapsing into that sweet under-song—the Purr! And how curls Tom's whiskers like those of a Pashaw! The point of his ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 484 - Vol. 17, No. 484, Saturday, April 9, 1831 • Various

... deep was the moat they had just crossed, where the last of them nearly broke his neck by rolling almost from top to bottom, they reached the outermost, the brick gate, and so left the awful region of enchantment and feline fury commingled. Not until the castle was out of sight, and their leader had sunk senseless on the turf by the roadside, did they dare a backward look. The moment he came to himself they started again for home, at ...
— St. George and St. Michael • George MacDonald

... the rickety stairway and looking out beyond the crazy little court and over the drowsy Square, you will have a great deal of difficulty in believing that you left your cable car about a minute and a half before. Pass on up the stairs. You may nearly fall over the black-and-white feline which belongs to no one in any of the buildings, but which haunts them all like an unquiet ghost, and which is known by everyone as the Crazy Cat; so to the door of the studio-workshop where the toys ...
— Greenwich Village • Anna Alice Chapin

... narrow; the face neither broad nor sharp, perhaps rather sharp than broad; the nose was almost delicate; the eyes were grey, with an expression in which there was sternness blended with something approaching to feline; his complexion was exceedingly pale, relieved, however, by certain pockmarks, which here and there studded his countenance; his form was athletic, but lean; his arms long. In the whole appearance of the man there was a blending of the bluff and the sharp. You might have supposed him a bruiser; ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow

... their backs, often raise the basal part of the tail, and erect their hair, for the same purpose. The lynx, when attacked, is said to arch its back, and is thus figured by Brehm. But the keepers in the Zoological Gardens have never seen any tendency to this action in the larger feline animals, such as tigers, lions, &c.; and these have little cause to be afraid of ...
— The Expression of Emotion in Man and Animals • Charles Darwin

... impression," was the rejoinder, "but we have never noticed any attempts at hibernation here. Bears are unusually lively during the cold months, and demand their food as regularly as do the lions and other feline animals. I don't know that any observations of value on this question have ever been made on animals in confinement. I have had some experience with outside animals, and a great many go through what ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 324, March 18, 1882 • Various

... was accustomed to write in a closet on the third story. Beside him sat his estimable wife, and on his knee his favourite cat; this feline affection he entertained in common ...
— Heads and Tales • Various

... secrecy from his wife. She felt herself bound—doubly bound, after what she had now discovered—to respect the confidence placed in her; and this at the time when she had betrayed herself to Stella! With a woman's feline fineness of perception, in all cases of subterfuge and concealment, she picked a part of the truth out of the whole, and answered harmlessly without ...
— The Black Robe • Wilkie Collins

... the body still clinging tenaciously to the web, I next turned my attention to the screaming, frantically struggling creature at my feet. A single glance sufficed to show that it was obviously feline, about as big as a full-grown cat; and it had somehow become entangled in the bottom meshes of the web. It was fighting desperately but ineffectually to free itself; indeed its struggles seemed to have but the ...
— The Strange Adventures of Eric Blackburn • Harry Collingwood

... Lady Ysolinde, deeper taught in the mysteries of existence, more conscious of power, not so beautiful, but oftentimes giving the impression of beauty more strongly than her fairer rival, compact of swift delicate graces, half feline, half feminine (if these two be not the same). All these passed like clouds over the unquiet sea of her nature, reflecting the changing skies of circumstance, and were fitted to produce a fascination ever on the verge of repulsion even when it was strongest. Ysolinde ...
— Red Axe • Samuel Rutherford Crockett

... after poem it is the tenderness, the purity, the delicacy of women, which draws and allures him. Their more feline, more raptorial attributes are only alluded to in the verses where he is obviously objective and impersonal. In the excessive gentleness of his eroticism Verlaine becomes, among modern poets, strangely original; ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys

... considerable something! Parliament too has its tasks, if thou wilt look; fit to wear-out the lives of toughest men. The celebrated Kilkenny Cats, through their tumultuous congress, cleaving the ear of Night, could they be said to do nothing? Hadst thou been of them, thou hadst seen! The feline Heart laboured, as with steam up—to the bursting point; and death-doing energy nerved every muscle: they had a work there; and did it! On the morrow, two tails were found left, and peaceable annihilation; a neighbourhood ...
— Past and Present - Thomas Carlyle's Collected Works, Vol. XIII. • Thomas Carlyle

... temperament like his, and with nobody near him to take him by the hand, he made great mistakes. His wife and he cared nothing for one another, but she was jealous to the last degree. I never saw such jealousy. It was strange that, although she almost hated him, she watched him with feline sharpness and patience, and would even have killed any woman whom she knew had won his affection. He, on the other hand, openly avowed that marriage without love was nothing, and flaunted without ...
— Mark Rutherford's Deliverance • Mark Rutherford

... and dropped lazily into a chair near the desk, stretching his legs comfortably. He had observed in Stafford's manner certain signs of a subdued excitement, and while he affected not to notice this, there was a glint of feline humor in ...
— The Two-Gun Man • Charles Alden Seltzer

... said was later evidenced; for when Thomas Cathcart Blake entered the front door of his residence that night and started up the stairs, he was met by an excited feline, followed by three equally excited children. And the cat, on seeing him, its cosmogony disrupted to such an extent that it felt itself no longer able to distinguish friend from foe, tried to turn back with the result ...
— A Fool There Was • Porter Emerson Browne

... would have gone, but the elder restrained her. Janet did not wish the girl to go at all. She knew Angela had asked for her, and doubtless longed to see her; and now, having administered her feline scratch and made Kate feel the weight of her disapproval, she was quite ready to promote the very interview she had verbally condemned. Perhaps Miss Sanders saw and knew this and preferred to worry Miss Wren as ...
— An Apache Princess - A Tale of the Indian Frontier • Charles King

... of dust, rearing, lashing out with hind legs and striking with fore, catching imaginary things in his teeth and shaking them to pieces. When the fury diminished he began to glide up and down the fence, and there was something so feline in the grace of those long steps and the intentness with which the brute watched Cordova that the girl remembered a new-brought tiger in the zoo. Also, rage had poured him full of such strength that through the dust cloud she caught again ...
— Alcatraz • Max Brand

... bushy tail, and grayish hair. It takes to the water, for the one we saw at Tabatinga was caught while crossing the Amazon. Fawn-colored pumas, spotted jaguars, black tigers, tiger-cats—all members of the graceful feline family—inhabit all parts of the valley, but are seldom seen. The puma, or panther, is more common on the Pacific side of the Andes. The jaguar[177] is the fiercest and most powerful animal in South America. It is marked like the leopard—roses of black spots on a yellowish ...
— The Andes and the Amazon - Across the Continent of South America • James Orton

... left in the ring were the Moorish hound—a creature full of feline grace and suppleness, with silky drop-over ears and a tufted tail—an exceptionally fine cross-bred collie, the Stone bulldog, a Dandie Dinmont, and a Welsh terrier, the last extraordinarily small, bright, shapely, and ...
— Jan - A Dog and a Romance • A. J. Dawson

... in the deep recesses of the forests of Maine, evidently belonging to the feline race, which, on account of its ferocity, is significantly called "Indian Devil"—in the Indian language, "the Lunk Soos;" a terror to the Indians, and the only animal in New England of which they stand in dread. You may speak ...
— Thrilling Adventures by Land and Sea • James O. Brayman

... that Eden of straw The evilest Feline that ever you saw! She pounced on that cricket with rare promptitude And she tucked him away where he'd do the most good; And then, reaching down to the nethermost house, She deftly expiscated little Miss Mouse! And, as for the Swallow, she shrieked and withdrew— ...
— Songs and Other Verse • Eugene Field

... (that awful night at the Beach) she had expelled him from her presence like a schoolboy. Naturally he had been annoyed and offended—stung even into the rudeness of abandoning her in a summer-house to an entire stranger. How could you possibly wonder (unless feline) that he, great unsocial at best, had thereafter remained ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison

... Ozma, I pray you not to judge this feline prisoner unfeelingly. I do not think the innocent kitten can be guilty, and surely it is unkind to accuse a luncheon of being a murder. Eureka is the sweet pet of a lovely little girl whom we all admire, and gentleness ...
— Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz • L. Frank Baum.

... now goaded to courage by the loss of his papers, and she, finding herself in a cul-de-sac, turned at bay, launched the cat at his head, and attempted to spring past him. But he caught the whirling feline in one white-gloved hand and barred her way with the other; and she turned once more in desperation to seek an egress ...
— The Gay Rebellion • Robert W. Chambers

... the tent, dressed wonderfully in white panne, with a barbaric mottle of black and white civet-skins flung over one shoulder, and a tight-drawn cap of the fur, apparently held in place by the great claws of some feline mounted in heavy gold. She wore circles of fretted gold in her ears, and carried a tall ebony stick with a gold handle, Louis Quatorze fashion. From her huge civet muff a gold purse dangled. She looked at once more conventional and more dynamic than Mary had seen her, and her rich ...
— The Nest Builder • Beatrice Forbes-Robertson Hale

... fills the quiet hall, If on her back a feline rival fall! And oh, what noises shake the tranquil house If old Self-interest cheats ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... him; he had neither cup nor flask, but he filled the pail and held it with great dexterity to her lips. She drank a little, extracted a lace handkerchief from some hidden pocket, dipped its point in the water, and wiped her face delicately, after a certain feline fashion. Then, catching sight of some small object in the fork of a bush above her, she quickly pounced upon it, and with a swift sweep of her hand under her skirt, put on HER FALLEN SLIPPER, and stood on her ...
— From Sand Hill to Pine • Bret Harte

... in of her lips that was feline. Then she glared; then she looked about her and approached nearer to me by ...
— The Mill Mystery • Anna Katharine Green

... illness, forced to odd resorts for amusement, he knitted a pair of stockings for the cat who reigned in the household at the time. When tired of reading, he diverted himself with constructing houses of books for the same feline pet, building walls for her to leap, and perhaps erecting triumphal arches for her to pass under. In this period he must have taken a considerable range in literature, for his age; and one would almost say ...
— A Study Of Hawthorne • George Parsons Lathrop

... thought afterward that Major Marchand must possess the eyes of a cat. And his sense of locality was as highly developed as that of a feline as well. ...
— Ruth Fielding at the War Front - or, The Hunt for the Lost Soldier • Alice B. Emerson

... encounter his eyes cleared to triumph and gayety, and he smiled—a smile curiously feline, ironic, for all its intended ingratiation—a conqueror's smile, winged to ...
— The Fortieth Door • Mary Hastings Bradley

... interesected in different parts by the beds of ancient rivers; and prodigious herds of certain antelopes, which require little or no water, roam over the trackless plains. The inhabitants, Bushmen and Bakalahari, prey on the game and on the countless rodentia and small species of the feline race which subsist on these. In general, the soil is light-colored soft sand, nearly pure silica. The beds of the ancient rivers contain much alluvial soil; and as that is baked hard by the burning sun, rain-water stands in pools in some of them for several ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone

... Grimalkin, who, though the youngest of the feline family, degenerates not in ferocity from the elder branches of her house, and though inferior in strength, is equal in fierceness to the noble tiger himself, when a little mouse, whom it hath long tormented in sport, ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding

... been unusually capricious and wicked on this day. She had been insolent to her mother; savage with little Frank; odiously impertinent in her behaviour to the boy's governess; and intolerably cruel to Pincott, her attendant. Not venturing to attack her friend (for the little tyrant was of a timid feline nature, and only used her claws upon those who were weaker than herself), she maltreated all these, and especially poor Pincott, who was menial, confidante, companion (slave always), according to the caprice of ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray

... the proverb 'a cat may look at a king' and adopt the realistic view that the king's being is independent of the cat's witnessing. This assumption, which amounts to saying that it need make no essential difference to the royal object whether the feline subject cognizes him or not, that the cat may look away from him or may even be annihilated, and the king remain unchanged,—this assumption, I say, is considered by my ingenious colleague to lead to the absurd practical consequence that the two beings can never ...
— A Pluralistic Universe - Hibbert Lectures at Manchester College on the - Present Situation in Philosophy • William James

... mustachios, and dark eyes, were attributes by no means exclusive to her lover, but were occasionally seen among other less favored and even equally dangerous Americans, Dona Rosita assented with less objection than Joan anticipated. "Besides, dear," said Joan, eying her with feline watchfulness, "it is four years since you've seen him, and surely the man has either shaved since, or else he took a ridiculous vow never to do it, and then he would be more ...
— The Argonauts of North Liberty • Bret Harte

... sort of relish in torturing her, which resembled the feline cruelty of a wild beast playing with its prey. "Ah! it was a delightful letter, that; what a pity it was that I was out of Paris that night, and never received it till, alas! it was too late to rush to ...
— Vera Nevill - Poor Wisdom's Chance • Mrs. H. Lovett Cameron

... stench of sulphur amid black powder, of burned stuffs and calcined earth which roams in sheets about the country, all the menagerie is let loose and gives battle. Bellowings, roarings, growlings, strange and savage; feline caterwaulings that fiercely rend your ears and search your belly, or the long-drawn piercing hoot like the siren of a ship in distress. At times, even, something like shouts cross each other in the air-currents, with curious variation of tone that make the sound human. The country ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse

... bound the elegant savage gained its liberty; and, though enraged by darkness, confinement, and hunger, it seemed almost playful as it leaped and turned about. At last it caught sight of its prey. All its feline cunning and cruelty seemed to return and to conspire together in animating the cautious and treacherous movements of its velvet-clothed frame. The whole amphitheater was as silent as if it had been a hermit's cell, while every eye was intent, watching the stealthy ...
— Journeys Through Bookland - Volume Four • Charles H. Sylvester

... insolently over her and take stock of his prey, in the same feline way of a cat with a mouse, gloating over her distress and the details of her young good looks. His tainted gaze got the faint pure touch of color in her face, the reddish tinge of her wavy brown hair, ...
— A Texas Ranger • William MacLeod Raine

... nearer, became nothing less than terrible to both household and garrison. True, their conquerors would be of their own people, but battle and bloodshed and victory, and, worst of all, party-spirit, the marquis knew, destroy not nationality merely, but humanity as well, rousing into full possession the feline beast which has his lair in every man—in many, it is true, dwindled to the household cat, but in many others a full-sized, only sleepy tiger. To what was he about to expose his men, not to speak of his ladies and ...
— St. George and St. Michael • George MacDonald

... manner vanished and she leaned slightly forward while her eyes got hard. Indeed, there was something feline in her alert pose. Now she had, so to speak, unsheathed her claws, he was glad the advantage was heavily on his side. For all that, he did not ...
— Carmen's Messenger • Harold Bindloss

... the bob-cat's feline heart. Here was no opponent; but a mere item of prey. And, with fury, stirred long-unsatisfied hunger; the famine hunger of mid-winter which makes the folk of the wilderness risk capture or death by ...
— Further Adventures of Lad • Albert Payson Terhune

... for the Kabyle of more vulgar position, take away his haik and his bornouse, trim the points of his beard, and we have a perfect German head. Beside these we set a representative Arab head, sketched in the streets of Algiers. See the feline characteristics, the pointed, drooping moustache and chin-tuft, the extreme retrocession of the nostrils, the thin, weak and cruel mouth, the retreating forehead, the filmed eye, the ennui, the terrestrial ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Volume 11, No. 26, May, 1873 • Various

... them to go further. Mr. Forstermann was no shikari, but he felt himself called upon to uphold the cause of science and the honour of England at this juncture. In great agitation he went for that feline, and, in short, its skin still adorns Mrs. Sander's drawing-room. Thus it happened that on a certain Thursday a small pot of C. Spicerianum was sold, as usual, for sixty guineas at Stevens's; on the Thursday following all the world could buy ...
— About Orchids - A Chat • Frederick Boyle

... nothing about fine cooking till Sarah formed his palate with her cunning sauces, and, after all, cared as little what he ate as any other healthy young man, boasted of his housekeeper continually by skilful allusions, till the honest wives of his fathers and brethren were outraged and grew feline, as any natural woman will if a servant is flung in her face in ...
— Kate Carnegie and Those Ministers • Ian Maclaren

... blackness, these slippery little savages of Titan, their half naked bodies crowding him and stifling him with their sweaty nearness. Again and again Carr struck out, but it was like fighting a horde of squirming and clawing feline creatures that swarmed over him and bore him down by sheer weight of numbers. They dragged Ora from his arms and quickly overpowered him. Thongs of rawhide twisted deeply into the flesh of his wrists and he was hauled forth ...
— Creatures of Vibration • Harl Vincent

... long beautifully soft fur, is striped alternately with brown and yellow, the ground being a sort of silver-grey. The head resembles that of the lion, but without the mane, and is prolonged into a face and snout more like those of the wild boar. Its limbs are less unlike those of the feline genus than any other Earthly type, but have three claws and a hard pad in lieu of the soft cushion. The upper jaw is armed with two formidable tusks about twelve inches in length, and projecting directly forwards. A blow from the claw-furnished tail would plough up the thigh ...
— Across the Zodiac • Percy Greg

... to find a feline pleasure in seeing how far he could taunt me to go. He held me on the knife-edge of irritation, and perillous as was the experiment he enjoyed seeing whether he could not drive ...
— A Daughter of Raasay - A Tale of the '45 • William MacLeod Raine

... had no words to answer. As for Jess, she did not even colour; she simply withdrew with the quickness and feline grace which were characteristic of her, without a flush or a tremor. It was not on such occasions that her heart stirred. When she was gone she felt that things had gone well, ...
— The Lilac Sunbonnet • S.R. Crockett

... called Katzenbuckel, and doubting that your German may not be able to cope with this quite simple compound, he proceeds to illustrate. He squats in the middle of the street, arching his back like a cat in a strong emotion, uttering lively miaowings and hissings. Then he springs, like the feline in fury, and leaps to his feet roaring with mirth. "You see?" he cries. "A cat, who all ready to spring crouches, that is of our beautiful little mountain ...
— Plum Pudding - Of Divers Ingredients, Discreetly Blended & Seasoned • Christopher Morley

... confirmation can be obtained of the startling rumor that The Spectator has been purchased by the proprietors of The Kennel Gazette, and will henceforth be devoted to the interests of our four-footed friends, the supplements being restricted to purely feline amenities. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, April 23, 1919 • Various

... cover a continent. We have learned what the boasted philanthropy of England is worth when put to the test of sacrifice, and also how the British lion can put forth the sharpest and most venomous of feline claws when an opportunity presents itself of ruining a possible rival. More than this, we have learned to be self-reliant, to take greater and more elevated views of political duty, and to be heroic without being extravagant. Since we were a republic no one ...
— Continental Monthly - Volume 1 - Issue 3 • Various

... character. We shall immediately see that horses occasionally exhibit a tendency to become striped over a large part of their bodies; and as we know that stripes readily pass into spots and cloudy marks in the varieties of the domestic cat and in several feline species—even the cubs of the uniformly-coloured lion being spotted with dark marks on a lighter ground—we may suspect that the dappling of the horse, which has been noticed by some authors with surprise, is a modification or vestige of ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Vol. I. • Charles Darwin

... Huk!" They urged the dogs gently. Arranging themselves instinctively in single file, the traces slackening, the wonderful dogs, with feline caution, crept ahead. Lowering their bodies, each behind his sledge, Ootah and Koolotah began moving stealthily downward. With one hand each clung to the rough icy projections of the slope; with the other ...
— The Eternal Maiden • T. Everett Harre

... orthography. For instance: "Le dit jour et an que decus."—"Orloger."—"Lecture d'une lettre du comite de surte general de la convention qui invite le comite a se transporter de suites chez le citoyen Louis Feline rue Baubourg, a leffets de faire perquisition chez lui et dans tout ces papiers, et que ceux qui paraitrons suspect lon ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 3 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 2 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine

... high-bred looking cat, either perched upon the back of the horse, dozing and blinking, or curled up in the straw at his feet, fast asleep. The grooms told us that the horses were really very fond of their feline companions, and ...
— Stories and Legends of Travel and History, for Children • Grace Greenwood

... visible mark of repeated injections. Esther sponged a fresh spot and the doctor shot in the long needle with a casual indifference. Simultaneously the woman on the couch closed her eyes and stretched out her limbs with a feline luxurious movement. Esther was tempted to believe she enjoyed the stabbing pain. There were people who took a sensual delight in suffering, or at least she had heard that there were. She watched curiously the sort of rapturous twist of the patient's ...
— Juggernaut • Alice Campbell

... a reaction from the strain of the past hours, and Lieutenant McGuire found the serious questioning in polyglot tongues and the unchanging feline stare of that hideous face too much for his mental restraint. He held his sides, while he shook and roared with laughter beyond control, and the figure before him glared with ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, November, 1930 • Various

... styled the king of beasts, but I think he is an usurper allowed to remain on the throne by public opinion and suffrage, from the majesty of his appearance. In every other point he has no claim. He is the head of the feline or cat species, and has all the treachery, cruelty, and wanton love for blood that all this class of animals have to excess. The lion, like the tiger and the cat, will not come boldly on to his prey, but springs from his concealment. It is ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)

... to the conclusion that she was being made a fool of, for she got up, stretched herself lazily, with arched back and bared claws, and yawned a bored feline yawn. And even as she did so she was aware of a sudden final flourish of thuds, and then dead-silence. Next moment, in that same dead-silence, she distinctly heard something coming towards her, and that something was taking no ...
— The Way of the Wild • F. St. Mars

... the house. They noticed others who approached on foot, but who did not enter, obviously men who did not dare to enter unless asked. Among them was a thin, middle-aged Natchez Indian, whose extraordinary, feline face had won for him the name of The Cat. Henry particularly observed this man, whose manner was in accordance with his appearance and name. Like those they had seen in the canoes he had a hangdog, shiftless look, different from the bold warrior ...
— The Free Rangers - A Story of the Early Days Along the Mississippi • Joseph A. Altsheler

... is altogether different from the fierce glare seen in the eyes of many of our animals, especially the feline race, which seems to enlarge the eyes to enormous orbs of brilliant light. In the Martians it is simply a colourless, soft, and liquid glow which has a different effect on eyes of different colours; but it is ...
— To Mars via The Moon - An Astronomical Story • Mark Wicks

... "That a lion generally lurks and lies in wait to seize his prey is certain, but this is the general characteristic of the feline tribe, of which he may be considered as the head; and it is for this mode of hunting ...
— The Mission • Frederick Marryat

... house the fine-bodied, feline lady with nictitating eyes, drew aside the curtain, even while the dying man above was in frigid waters, that she might slowly raise and drop her ambrosial lids, and express a refined but not less marked ...
— Bohemian Days - Three American Tales • Geo. Alfred Townsend

... near Boston invented the cat language, so called because its object was to admit of free intercourse with cats, to whom it was mostly talked, and by whom it was presumed to be comprehended. In this tongue the cat was naturally the chief subject of nomenclature; all feline positions were observed and named, and the language was rich in such epithets, as Arabic contains a vast number of expressions for lion. Euphonic changes were very arbitrary and various, differing for the same termination; ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain

... kind and considerate to me now in my old age that I plead for the others, the less fortunate ones of my species—and I also pray that all who read these simple annals of my life will find it in their hearts to remember their faithful feline friends and never under any circumstances be tempted ...
— The Nomad of the Nine Lives • A. Frances Friebe

... beyond the shadow of the monument, when a dog belonging to one of the workmen pounced upon her and killed her, she, of course, not being in her best running trim, after performing such an extraordinary feat. One of the men procured the body of the dead feline, smoothed out her silky coat, and turned the remains over to a representative of the Smithsonian Institution, who mounted the skin and placed it under a glass case. The label on the case tells this wonderful story in a few words: "This ...
— True Stories of Wonderful Deeds - Pictures and Stories for Little Folk • Anonymous

... out of the heart's red blood, for all that makes life worthy to be lived? He may have tried. He never could succeed. He lacked the sympathy, the sex. He lacked the sex. Ah, well—Schwamm drueber, as the Norwegians say. Ouida, for all her femininity, was more than this feline and ...
— Alone • Norman Douglas

... the top of the wall, which in their excitement of escape looked at once indispensable and unattainable, like the wall of heaven. Here, however, it was MacIan's turn to have the advantage; for, though less light-limbed and feline, he was longer and stronger in the arms. In two seconds he had tugged up his chin over the wall like a horizontal bar; the next he sat astride of it, like a horse of stone. With his assistance Turnbull vaulted to the same perch, and the two began cautiously to shift along the wall in the direction ...
— The Ball and The Cross • G.K. Chesterton

... sewing and sat near the window facing the station platform. Occasionally she would look up from her work and gaze at the woods, or at the long line of rails, but everything seemed deserted and silent. Finally, unable to sit still any longer, she arose and began to pace around the table with a soft, feline step, smiling and repeating to herself: "I will get him, I will get him! At last I will find a little rest in my life, my wanderings will ...
— The Comedienne • Wladyslaw Reymont

... wild gasp of terror and ran back to the chair—like a frightened feline creature, swift and silent—and sank into it, still gasping, her whole body shaken now as with fever, her ...
— A Bride of the Plains • Baroness Emmuska Orczy

... This feline ecclesiastic came forward with bent head and joined hands, vouchsafing no reply to Margery's salutation of "Good even, father," nor to Alice's humble request for his blessing. He sat down on a chair, and for some minutes stared at Margery ...
— Mistress Margery • Emily Sarah Holt

... cares not if all the world knows that his belly is empty. It has something strangely horrible in its tone, for it speaks of that cold-blooded, dispassionate cruelty which is only to be found in perfection in the feline race. These sleek, smooth-skinned, soft-footed, lithe, almost serpentine animals, torture with a grace of movement, and a gentleness in strength which has something in it more violently repugnant to our natures than any sensation with which the thought of the blundering ...
— In Court and Kampong - Being Tales and Sketches of Native Life in the Malay Peninsula • Hugh Clifford

... well. I am yours for life," says Marie Berard. The two women's eyes meet. They understand one another. Feline, prehensile nerves. ...
— The Little Lady of Lagunitas • Richard Henry Savage

... highway, he came straight on the flank of a travelling menagerie. It was one of some size, and Clare saw at a glance that its horses were in fair condition. The front part of the little procession had already gone by, and an elephant was passing at the moment with a caravan—of feline creatures, as Clare afterwards learned, behind him. He drew it with absolute ease, but his head seemed to be dragged earthward by the weight of his trunk, as he plodded wearily along. A world of delight woke in the heart of the boy. He had read much about strange beasts, but had never ...
— A Rough Shaking • George MacDonald

... one or two men whom she observed at the soiree musicale; but she would never have felt moved to any kittenish display to attract their notice—to any feline or feminine wiles to express herself toward them. Their personality attracted her in an agreeable way. Her fancy selected them, and she was glad when a lull in the music gave them an opportunity to meet her and talk with her. Often ...
— The Awakening and Selected Short Stories • Kate Chopin

... works of piety inclined, Then recreation might have claimed his mind. The harmless game that shows the feline greed To cinch the shorts and make the market bleed[A] Is better sport than victimizing Creed; And a far livelier satisfaction comes Of knowing Simon, autocrat of thumbs.[B] If neither worthy work ...
— Black Beetles in Amber • Ambrose Bierce

... author who expressed unpleasant sentiments in regard to Walton was Leigh Hunt. Here, again, I fancy that partizan prejudice had something to do with the dislike. Hunt was a radical in politics and religion. Moreover there was a feline strain in his character, which made it necessary for him to scratch somebody now and then, as a relief to ...
— Fisherman's Luck • Henry van Dyke



Words linked to "Feline" :   family Felidae, cat, true cat, felid, paw, big cat, Felidae, carnivore



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