"Kitten" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the matter? Steady, old girl! steady!" There was a flash of the quick, penetrating eyes around the circle made by the arc-light. "Why, hello, Rosie! 'Pon my soul! Look scared as a stray kitten. Where you going?" ...
— The Side Of The Angels - A Novel • Basil King
... party (little Nat's motor horn included, as a last concession, and because he had hitherto forborne to play on it); and in the second, the five Fulmers, the bonne, who at the eleventh hour had refused to be left, a cage-full of canaries, and a foundling kitten who had murderous designs on them; all of which had to be taken because, if the bonne came, there would be nobody left to look ...
— The Glimpses of the Moon • Edith Wharton
... and a sample of guava jelly, which unfortunately upset on the way, to the great detriment of "The Wild Beasts of Asia and Africa." Jill promptly responded with the loan of a tiny black kitten, who emerged spitting and scratching, to Jack's great delight; and he was cudgelling his brains as to how a fat white rabbit could be transported, when a shrill whistle from without saved Jill ...
— Jack and Jill • Louisa May Alcott
... my aunt and I were, for a wonder, alone, when she dropped the cards with which she was playing, and said to me: "Hugh, there is something serious between that mischievous kitten and your cousin. They are much talked of. If you have a boy-fancy that way, get rid of it. I don't see through the man. He has been telling her about the fine house at Wyncote, and the great estate, and how some ...
— Hugh Wynne, Free Quaker • S. Weir Mitchell
... with its great 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 ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... was transformed by a very pleasant smile. There was something peculiar in Hilda Carew's smile, which came from the fact that her eyelashes were golden, while her eyes were dark blue. The effect suggested a fascinating kitten. In repose her face was almost severe in its refined beauty, and the set of her lips indicated a certain self-reliance which with years might become more prominent if trouble ...
— The Slave Of The Lamp • Henry Seton Merriman
... obedience. Whatever he said was absolute truth and 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
... habit of pressing the mammary glands and sucking during kittenhood." Mr. Wallace goes on to say that infantine habits are generally completely lost in adult life, and that it seems unlikely that they should persist in a few isolated instances.) 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, ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin Volume II - Volume II (of II) • Charles Darwin
... took a great fancy to this black creature. Sometimes he gambolled about and turned somersaults on her carpet like a kitten, or frolicked about on the bureau, the sofa, and ...
— The Memoirs of Madame de Montespan, Complete • Madame La Marquise De Montespan
... unbit the cable, and let it run out. Then another shall sing out that the vessel is going adrift. That will make a row. Then we will try to do something. You, Herman, and I, will offer to carry a line to another vessel—the ship, for instance. Carboy—who don't know any more about a vessel than a kitten does of the ten commandments—will tell you to do it. Then we three will jump into a boat, and carry off the line. We can carry it to the ship, or not, just as we think best; but you may bet your life we don't return to the Josephine! How does ...
— Down the Rhine - Young America in Germany • Oliver Optic
... inch apart, and make in this front side a door arranged so as to fall open when a wooden button inside is turned from a vertical to a horizontal position, we shall have means to observe such [learning by trial and error]. A kitten, three to six months old, if put in this box when hungry, a bit of fish being left outside, reacts as follows: It tries to squeeze through between the bars, claws at the bars, and at loose things in and out of the box, stretches its paws out between the bars, and bites at its confining ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman
... dedicated to President Wilson ("with all his faults he quotes me still") and this was the first indigenous work I read on American soil. Oliver Herford is perhaps best known by his "Rubaiyat of a Persian Kitten," and there is a kitten also ...
— Roving East and Roving West • E.V. Lucas
... 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
... talking some nonsense, you want to say something nasty. Be quiet, you stupid! Let me sit on your knee, Alyosha, like this." She suddenly skipped forward and jumped, laughing, on his knee, like a nestling kitten, with her right arm about his neck. "I'll cheer you up, my pious boy. Yes, really, will you let me sit on your knee? You won't be angry? If you tell me, I'll ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... 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 get what's ...
— 'Drag' Harlan • Charles Alden Seltzer
... astonished as if a fluffy little kitten had opened its mouth, and instead of gently mewing, had roared out, 'Cry havoc and let slip the dogs of war!' Luckily she was so busy sorting the papers and stuffing them back into pigeon-holes that she didn't see my face, or she couldn't have gone on in such a matter of course way to explain what ...
— Mary Ware's Promised Land • Annie Fellows Johnston
... Barkilphedro 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 wheels, to work in the darkness ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... it wasn't all that. 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
... journey, chatting incessantly, ignoring any change 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 newly. Was it at the novelty simply, or the almost incredible fulfilment ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... want to, just for an idea. It will make a noise, and I don't feel sure enough. There had better be a kitten. I'll tell you the rest to-morrow morning." And Ruth was up on her two little feet, and had given Stephen a kiss, and was back into the house, and round again to the balcony, before ...
— We Girls: A Home Story • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... it 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 ...
— The Children's Book of London • Geraldine Edith Mitton
... four o'clock when, with her aunt, she arrived at Colonel Hetherton's and found the family assembled upon the broad piazza, the doctor dutifully holding the skein of worsted from which Miss Fanny was crocheting, and Lucy playing with a kitten, whose movements were scarcely more graceful than her own, as she sprang up ...
— The Rector of St. Mark's • Mary J. Holmes
... mayor looked 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
... the test of this is whether a man can write an inscription. I say "Can he name a kitten?" And by this test I am condemned, for ...
— The Note-Books of Samuel Butler • Samuel Butler
... rite and old Si said he wood give father 40 dolars and father said she was worth 50 but as Si was a nabor he wood like to acomodate him. well old Si was counting out the money when he said he bet she was a kicker father said she is kind as a kitten and dont bite or kick dont she Harry and i said she cant kick becaus she always holds up one leg in the stall, and old Si said whats that and i told him how she coodent kick becaus she held up one leg, and then Gimmy and Shep and Charlie Fifield and old Mister ...
— 'Sequil' - Or Things Whitch Aint Finished in the First • Henry A. Shute
... apoplexy, epilepsy, hysterics, plague, and a number of other disorders, consists, as it were, in imperceptible vapours.—Blood-stone (Lapis Aetites) fastened to the arm by some secret means, is said to prevent abortion. Sydenham, in the iliac passion, orders a live kitten to be constantly applied to the abdomen; others have used pigeons split alive, applied to the soles of the feet, with success, in pestilential fevers and convulsions. It was doubtless the impression that relief might be obtained by ...
— Thaumaturgia • An Oxonian
... 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 ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley
... 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 ...
— The Adventures of Akbar • Flora Annie Steel
... sick bar quicker'n you could wink. An' he piled into the thicket while I was goin' down after another shell.... It shore was funny. Thet old Jasper never heard the racket, an' if he heard it he didn't care. He had a bed in thet sunny spot an' he was foolin' around, playin' with himself like a kitten. Playin'! An' Edd reckoned he was dyin' an' I come shore near bein' fooled. The old Jasper! ...
— Tales of lonely trails • Zane Grey
... young themselves, and always took part in their children's joys and sorrows, for there were sorrows sometimes. Think of poor little Freddie getting shut up all alone in a big store with only a little black kitten, "Snoop," to keep him from being scared to death; that was told of in the first book, for Freddie went shopping one day with his mamma, and wandered off a little bit. Presently he found himself in the basement of the ...
— The Bobbsey Twins in the Country • Laura Lee Hope
... poor 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
... 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' ...
— The Two Story Mittens and the Little Play Mittens - Being the Fourth Book of the Series • Frances Elizabeth Barrow
... to be a remarkable work [Pg xviii] for a child, remarkable even in its length and completeness, for when children turn author they usually stop in the middle, like the kitten when it jumps. The pencilled MS. has been accurately reproduced, not a word added or cut out. Each chapter being in one long paragraph, however, this has been subdivided for the reader's ...
— The Young Visiters or, Mr. Salteena's Plan • Daisy Ashford
... see her wretched and weep. It was when a kitten which she had insisted on bringing with her, sprang out of the litter and vanished into some bush where it could not be found. Even when she was soon consoled and dried her tears, when Hans explained to her in a ...
— She and Allan • H. Rider Haggard
... when the two parted that day she carried with her a sweet, satisfying sense of being beloved by the "best man on the earth" even as she loved him; while he whistled cheerily over his net-mending, thinking "what a sweet little thing it was!" "how pretty its eyes were!" and "how kitten-like its ways!" and only checked his whistling once in a while to wonder whether the day would ever really come when "Sairy would feel herself better than him," and to think it also a little hard that old Thomas Macy was "so sot ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - February, 1876, Vol. XVII, No. 98. • Various
... sisters, but we are together almost as much as if we were. We each have a pet. One is a little English pug named Pickles, and the other a cunning little Maltese and white kitten, and we call her Pinafore. It is very pretty in this little village where we live in the summer. There is a very fine military school here, and when it is warm enough for the cadets to drill on the parade-ground, it makes ...
— Harper's Young People, May 25, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... lovely as ever, the cheeks as smooth. All the lines of last night had disappeared. Only at the outer corners of her eyes, between the eye and the temple, were the faintest indications of a future attack—mere kitten scratches that playfully hinted where one day the cat would claw her. He studied her without any embarrassment. Last night everything had been awkward; but now, as he held her hands, a kind of harmony came between ...
— Song of the Lark • Willa Cather
... as much like me as a lily is like a cactus. No thorns about her. She's cuddlier than a kitten. Eyes bluer than forget-me-nots, Jack; hair yellow as corn silk. She's only eighteen and ...
— Bloom of Cactus • Robert Ames Bennet
... made this observation, we heard what sounded like the mew of a kitten, just under the window. We instantly jumped up, and I let down our line. I ...
— Manco, the Peruvian Chief - An Englishman's Adventures in the Country of the Incas • W.H.G. Kingston
... up sum moonlite nite, at a back winder, armed with a 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 ...
— The Bad Boy At Home - And His Experiences In Trying To Become An Editor - 1885 • Walter T. Gray
... The kittens were three times larger than the squirrels. Even had they been the same size, did I think the old three-colored cat could be fooled? that she might not know a kitten of hers from some other mother's—squirrel? I was desperate indeed. Calico was a hunter. She had eaten more gray squirrels, perhaps, than I had ever seen. She would think I had been foraging for her—the mother of seven green kittens!—and would take my charges ...
— Roof and Meadow • Dallas Lore Sharp
... 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 showed itself, ...
— Rataplan • Ellen Velvin
... for the first time in my theatrical life, knew what true pleasure is. I have known enough of notoriety to pity the poor devils who are called favorites of the public. I would rather be a kitten in the arms of a spoiled child, to be one moment petted and pampered, and the next moment thumped over the head with the spoon. I smile, too, to see our leading actors, fretting themselves with envy and jealousy about a trumpery renown, ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving
... 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 ...
— Robbery Under Arms • Thomas Alexander Browne, AKA Rolf Boldrewood
... to hear it," I replied, laying down the newspaper on the breakfast-table, at which I still lingered; and indeed I was sorry. Dundee had been our household cat from the earliest days of our married life, from the time when he was a tiny kitten the colour of marmalade, which ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, January 21st, 1920 • Various
... truth, and nothing but the truth," she acknowledged. "Well, what's the Kitten's news? What colour is her ...
— The Moon out of Reach • Margaret Pedler
... cry like a kitten's mew and Rose-Ellen lugged her out, balanced on her hip. Mrs. Albi's Michael was the same age, but he would have made two of Sally. Above Sally's small white face her pale hair stood up thinly; her big gray eyes and little pale mouth ...
— Across the Fruited Plain • Florence Crannell Means
... to those girls? Biology is, no doubt, a great science in the hands of great men, but it is not for all. I myself have got along very well without it. I am sure I can learn more of what I want to know from a kitten on my knee than from the carcass of a cat in the laboratory. Darwin spent eight years dissecting barnacles; but he was Darwin, and did not stop at barnacles, as these college girls are pretty sure to stop at cats. He dissected and put together again in his mental laboratory ...
— Time and Change • John Burroughs
... 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 ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 4, February, 1858 • Various
... 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 crouching close to ...
— Probable Sons • Amy Le Feuvre
... Kate—an added insult. But, to compensate, there was a whole orange from Aunt Anne, a bag of Chinese nuts from Wong, and from Split and Sissy (a separate donation from each) an undivided half-interest in the white kitten known as Spitfire. ...
— The Madigans • Miriam Michelson
... body of a kitten is made very much like the body of a child. It has just the same organs that a child has, and they do the same kind of work. Doctor Hodge, a well-known scientist of Massachusetts, therefore concluded that alcohol would act on kittens in the same way as it ...
— Health Lessons - Book 1 • Alvin Davison
... never known her to be busy with her canari for more than an hour; yet everything is kept in perfect order. When she is not working, she is quite happy in sitting at a window, and amusing herself by watching the life of the street,—or playing with a kitten, which she has trained so well that it seems to understand everything ...
— Two Years in the French West Indies • Lafcadio Hearn
... laughed Levins, scornfully; "'Firebrand' ain't no pussy-kitten fighter which depends on women standin' between him an' trouble. I'm tellin' you on my own hook, so's that big stiff Corrigan won't get swelled up, thinkin' he's got a chance to hitch up with you in the matrimonial wagon. That guy's got murder ...
— 'Firebrand' Trevison • Charles Alden Seltzer
... over them. There were only five in the bed now, for Mary had taken up one and packed it in paper to carry with her. A big tear hopped down her nose and splashed into the middle of the yellow pansy, her favorite of all. It turned up its bright kitten-face just the same. None of them minded Mary's going away. Flowers are sometimes so unkind ...
— Nine Little Goslings • Susan Coolidge
... 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 ...
— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend
... 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. Foresight could ...
— Four Months Besieged - The Story of Ladysmith • H. H. S. Pearse
... without treading on a Prince of Wales or Duke of Cumberland. The company is universal: there is from his Grace of Grafton down to Children out of the Foundling Hospital- from my Lady Townshend to the kitten—from my Lord Sandys to your humble cousin ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... to Nashta, and the King chid the girl, and sent her forth lean with his shifted displeasure, as a kitten slinks wet from a fish-pond where it had thought to catch a great fish. Then Bhanavar exclaimed, 'There was a change in thy manner to me before ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... small round intent, Like sportive kitten with its tail; While no sick-headache they bewail, And while their host will credit give, Joyous and free from care ...
— Faust Part 1 • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
... heavy heart, and he and the girl together went to and fro among men; their new fear of death behind them. First they laughed at a naked baby attempting to thrust its fat toes into its foolish pink mouth; next they laughed at a kitten chasing her own tail; and then they laughed at a boy trying to steal a kiss from a girl, and getting his ears boxed. Lastly, they laughed because the wind blew in their faces as they ran down a hill-side together, and broke panting and breathless into a knot of villagers at the bottom. The villagers ...
— Kipling Stories and Poems Every Child Should Know, Book II • Rudyard Kipling
... all; but I was 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 of all ...
— A Grandmother's Recollections • Ella Rodman
... up with the clock and dinner, while he, on the contrary, appeared really in love, and tried to rouse his wife's spirits and affections by little endearments, and such caresses as one bestows on a kitten. He ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume III (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... something wake up in his brain them years he was away. He had a queer look in his eyes one night when he said to me—where Vida couldn't hear: "Yes, other women have loved me, but she—she knows me and loves me!" It's the only thing I ever heard him utter that would show he might be above a pet kitten in intellect. ...
— Ma Pettengill • Harry Leon Wilson
... kitten, by any means, so I went up to my shark friends and struck one of them for enough to carry me up to Broken Bow and back. He was a big winner and came right up with the twenty. They wanted to let me in the game again on 'tick,' but then I had sense enough to ...
— Tales of the Road • Charles N. Crewdson
... 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 in ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... smile on you one 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 headache, to ...
— Little Ferns For Fanny's Little Friends • Fanny Fern
... 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 harmony. But it was ...
— Far Away and Long Ago • W. H. Hudson
... more street, and then go home, thou art so tired, little one. Come; let me wipe thy face, and give me thy hand here in my jacket pocket; there it will be as warm as any kitten;' and kind Tommo brushed away the drops which were not all rain from Tessa's cheeks, tucked the poor hand into his ragged pocket, and led her carefully along the slippery streets, for the boots ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag • Louisa M. Alcott
... fear the wind as it fumbles around the porch and plays like a kitten with the awning cords? Bless you, he has become a playmate of the children of the night—the swaying branches, the stars, the swirl of leaves—all the romping children of the night. And if there was any fear at ...
— Journeys to Bagdad • Charles S. Brooks
... 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
... Bobby takes him. But Holy Joe likes it: fairly laps it up like a kitten, poor old dear. Well, ...
— Fanny's First Play • George Bernard Shaw
... Cathedral Library. His 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 ...
— The Case of Richard Meynell • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... 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 ...
— Phemie Frost's Experiences • Ann S. Stephens
... into Russia. However, she herself 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 ...
— Nelka - Mrs. Helen de Smirnoff Moukhanoff, 1878-1963, a Biographical Sketch • Michael Moukhanoff
... sitting room after tea; the mother and her daughters engaged at needlework; the father and his eldest son, George, reading the newspapers, while Frederick, the younger, was reclining upon a sofa. An infant of a year old was sleeping in a cradle; a little kitten was nestling at its feet, and purring as if trying to soothe the dreamy slumbers of its ...
— The Black-Sealed Letter - Or, The Misfortunes of a Canadian Cockney. • Andrew Learmont Spedon
... called again, "Biddy! 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 here ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 92, June, 1865 • Various
... at this point by the sudden appearance on the scene of two strangers—a kitten and ...
— Charlie to the Rescue • R.M. Ballantyne
... indeed, 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 as many ways ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... would have done at the same season, if your mother's cat had but kitten'd, though yourself had never ...
— King Henry IV, The First Part • William Shakespeare [Hudson edition]
... 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
... player writes, "I planted a kitten; what came up?" The paper is handed to the next player, who writes, ...
— Games for the Playground, Home, School and Gymnasium • Jessie H. Bancroft
... when a clotted cake of red clay let go, sliding greasily into the current. At dawn the sun struck the half-stunned world insensible once more; no birds stirred even at sunset; all the little creatures of the field seemed dead; her kitten ...
— Special Messenger • Robert W. Chambers
... their ponies, nor do they caress them in any way; consequently, the animals do not enjoy being petted and are prone to kick and bite. My pony, Kublai Khan, was an extraordinary exception to this rule and was as affectionate and gentle as a kitten—but there are few animals like Kublai Khan ...
— Across Mongolian Plains - A Naturalist's Account of China's 'Great Northwest' • Roy Chapman Andrews
... 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 ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Number 9, July, 1858 • Various
... 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 knew ...
— Six Little Bunkers at Aunt Jo's • Laura Lee Hope
... glad, very glad, you are going away; and I hope Miss Livesay will keep you a very long time,' added nurse, while Fred, not daring to explode, on account of his aunt's being so near, vented his passion on the poor kitten by kicking it violently from under the stool, where he had ...
— Aunt Mary • Mrs. Perring
... she had a fence war on her hands at the least; but what she wanted me to do was to take care of a gentle old pair o' hosses, milk a cow, tend a garden, cut the grass, an' help around the house. By the time she finished the program, I felt like a fightin' bulldog when a week-old kitten spits at him. Here I was, willin' to leave my hide tacked up on her barn, an' all she wanted was a kind of lady-gardener. I just sort o' wilted down on the steps, an' I must 'a' turned pale, 'cause she said to me, "Why, you must be hungry. ...
— Happy Hawkins • Robert Alexander Wason
... been designated a little boy by this superior damsel, saw his opportunity to silence her. "Cat's fur for kitten breeches," he retorted—without any evidence of originality, we must confess. Whereat she stung him to the heart with a sweet smile and promptly sang for him this ancient ballad ...
— The Valley of the Giants • Peter B. Kyne
... her voyages from China, the Pitt, East Indiaman, had on board, among her passengers, a young tiger. He appeared to be as harmless and playful as a kitten, and allowed the utmost familiarity from every one. He was especially fond of creeping into the sailors' hammocks; and while he lay stretched on the deck, he would suffer two or three of them to place their heads on his back, as upon a pillow. Now and then, ...
— The Junior Classics Volume 8 - Animal and Nature Stories • Selected and arranged by William Patten
... the old man, who had been of great service to the gunner at the market-tent, another iron pot, some hatchets and bills, and a piece of cloth. I also sent the queen two turkies, two geese, three Guinea hens, a cat big with kitten, some china, looking-glasses, glass-bottles, shirts, needles, thread, cloth, ribbands, pease, some small white kidney beans, called callivances, and about sixteen different sorts of garden seeds, and a shovel, besides a considerable quantity ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 12 • Robert Kerr
... 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 ...
— Active Service • Stephen Crane
... got them! You have got them!" And now, assured that such was the case, Sprigg could find it in his heart to hug and kiss his father, which he did as sleekly and lovingly as any he-kitten. But Sprigg paid for this bit of selfishness, and that dearly, too. Having laid Black Bess in the rifle-hooks over the fireplace, and hung his bearskin cap on the hook to the left and his ammunition pouch and ...
— The Red Moccasins - A Story • Morrison Heady
... have 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," ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... 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 his yelping little friend, he chased them fiercely to their ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 102, April 16, 1892 • Various
... wild animals are very common and very troublesome to the farmer. The skunk, which looks like a pretty black and white kitten with a bushy tail, and also the weasel, destroy all the chickens and eggs they can reach, and they are so cunning that it is hard to keep them out of the hen-house. That little pest, the gopher, we are all well acquainted with, since he gnaws the pinks and roses off at their roots in your city ...
— Stories of California • Ella M. Sexton
... night butterfly awakened in broad daylight, like a rare and surprising moth, the dancing-girl from the other compartment, the child who wore the horrible mask. No doubt she wishes to have a look at me. She rolls her eyes like a timid kitten, and then all at once tamed, nestles against me, with a coaxing air of childishness, which is a delightfully transparent assumption. She is slim, elegant, delicate, and smells sweet; she is drolly painted, white as plaster, with a little circle of rouge marked ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... statement, coming from a small person with a grasp about as powerful as that of a week-old kitten, was too much for the ...
— Peggy • Laura E. Richards
... 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 a new object, and none better for the purpose than a book. For ...
— Selected English Letters (XV - XIX Centuries) • Various
... 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 with, ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... courtyard of the tavern when, in the afternoon, the whirling and stamping began. Her beauty would doubtless have made her the most popular partner among the girls, had not the lads felt a certain fear of her. A purring kitten among her girl companions, ready to give and take practical jokes, she was all claws and teeth against men, and many a bold youth who, after the dance, attempted to take the usual liberties, met with so ...
— How Women Love - (Soul Analysis) • Max Simon Nordau
... is a lonely little body, you know, and custom was so rigid in the time of the Princess Madge that she had no one to talk to excepting Pussy Willow, the royal kitten. She had no brother, no sister, no cousin, and no dearest friend. She didn't even have a chance to speak freely to her own father and mother. It is true, she took breakfast with them every morning at eleven in the great breakfast-room, but the butlers and waiters and pages and ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf (Vol 2 of 17) - Folk-Lore, Fables, And Fairy Tales • Various
... 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 ...
— On the Edge of the War Zone - From the Battle of the Marne to the Entrance of the Stars and Stripes • Mildred Aldrich
... whichever it happened to be, with all the philosophic composure of Helen of Troy. She was so soft and sunny and equable, that it was no more trouble to care for and amuse her than if she had been a bird or a kitten; and, as Rose remarked, it was "ten ...
— What Katy Did Next • Susan Coolidge
... 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, trying to keep it in ...
— Aylwin • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... about sixteen) was published in St. Nicholas. She has a habit of transplanting four-footed friends in her stories under their own names—as where, in the Jack-in-the-Box series, one finds Pincushion, Miss Taggart's own plump grey kitten. ...
— When Winter Comes to Main Street • Grant Martin Overton
... with lightning rapidity, through the whole pretty little book. How she nearly drowns her bosom friend, and afterwards saves her by a very remarkable display of little-girl courage. How she gets left by a train of cars, and loses her kitten and finds it again, and is presented with a baby sister 'come down from heaven,' with lots of ...
— Prudy Keeping House • Sophie May
... noise," said Jastrow the Granite Jaw, threatening to dangle him head downward. "Lay off, or I'll drown you like a kitten!" ...
— Humoresque - A Laugh On Life With A Tear Behind It • Fannie Hurst
... taking the youth's hand between both his plump palms, and smoothing it caressingly as he would have quieted a kitten, for he felt all the chill that was in her voice. Where else should our ...
— The Old Homestead • Ann S. Stephens
... to 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 government, ... pride, haughtiness, ...
— The Man Shakespeare • Frank Harris
... quasi-patriotic duties to perform, for, in 1542, she again became the mother of a little daughter—Isabella Romola they called her, in compliment to beloved Spain. She was, like Francesco, a healthy child, and she was fair, as "playful as a kitten," and thoroughly Medici ...
— The Tragedies of the Medici • Edgcumbe Staley
... fifth parliamentary report shows that systematic gymnastics, which, if 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, ...
— Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene • G. Stanley Hall
... hairdresser, cut off a long lock of her hair where it will not be missed—-and she looks so lovely under the smart of Cupid's arrow that we are frantically jealous of the irresistible warrior for whom the jetty tress is destined. In short, she is innocence and liveliness and health incarnate—a human kitten. ...
— Social Pictorial Satire • George du Maurier
... 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
... whippersnapper, whiffet [U.S.], schoolboy, hobbledehoy, hopeful, cadet, minor, master. scion; sap, seedling; tendril, olive branch, nestling, chicken, larva, chrysalis, tadpole, whelp, cub, pullet, fry, callow; codlin, codling; foetus, calf, colt, pup, foal, kitten; lamb, lambkin^; aurelia^, caterpillar, cocoon, nymph, nympha^, orphan, pupa, staddle^. girl; lass, lassie; wench, miss, damsel, demoiselle; maid, maiden; virgin; hoyden. Adj. infantine^, infantile; puerile; boyish, girlish, childish, babyish, kittenish; baby; newborn, unfledged, new-fledged, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... 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 ...
— Dear Santa Claus • Various
... walked over to one of the long mirrors and studied her own vigorously handsome image, then turned her head and regarded Flavia with the perfect complacency and mischievous malice of a young kitten. ...
— From the Car Behind • Eleanor M. Ingram
... immensely, and he went away, laughing. "It seems to me," Dot said, seriously, to Tess, "that it don't take so much to make grown-up people laugh. Is it funny for a kitten ...
— The Corner House Girls at School • Grace Brooks Hill
... are later than I thought. If I stay to see this illumination of the basilica, I shall not be in time to receive my guests for to-night's banquet. Besides, this inestimable kitten of the breed most worshipped by the ancient Egyptians has already taken cold, and I would not for the world expose the susceptible animal any longer than is necessary to the dampness of the night-air. Drive on, ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins
... the garden, in the still summer dusk. Teddy rioted among the bushes, as alert and strategic as was his gray kitten. John sat silent beside Martie, and whenever she glanced at him she met his deep smile. Lydia preserved a forbidding silence, but Malcolm's suspicions of his younger daughter were pleasantly diverted by the novelist. Dean Silver was probing ...
— Martie the Unconquered • Kathleen Norris
... Susan's children with us for a fortnight while she goes away for a rest, and they have been a good deal of care. I think mother is getting tired of them now, though she was very eager to have a visit from them at first. She said this morning that the little girl was worse than a kitten in a fit, and she did hope that Susan wouldn't think it best ...
— A Country Doctor and Selected Stories and Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... wrists, caught her up in his arms as if she had been a kitten, and leaped into the shadow of the trees that leaned over the road from the yard. The rifle rang out again, and the little ball whistled venomously overhead. Harkless ran along the fence and turned in at ...
— The Gentleman From Indiana • Booth Tarkington
... to have some one 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 ...
— The Child of the Dawn • Arthur Christopher Benson
... It seemed to her that all Rebecca Mary's meals in one meal would not have kept a kitten alive—and that reminded her. She would try a kitten. The minister's wife had said a rooster or a cat. A white kitten, she decided, though she could ...
— Rebecca Mary • Annie Hamilton Donnell
... of the Morning Watch made a motion with an enormous freckled paw as if stroking an invisible kitten. "I ain't sayin' nothin' against 'em. Nothin' at all. What I says is, 'Wait an' see.' I ain't a bettin' man, not meself. But if anyone was to fancy an even ...
— The Long Trick • Lewis Anselm da Costa Ritchie
... as, Hawthorne's Doctor Dolliver; and he also had a son, a bright enterprising boy,—too bright and spirited to suit Boston commercialism,—who went westward in 1858 to seek his fortune, nor have I ever heard of his return. The child Pansie, frisking with her kitten —a more simple, ingenuous, and self-centred, but also less sympathetic nature than the Pearl of Hester Prynne—may have been studied from Hawthorne's daughter Rose. There also lived at Concord in Hawthorne's time a man with the title of Colonel, a pretentious, ...
— The Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne • Frank Preston Stearns
... expressive of distrust, and observant of every movement which takes place near it. When treated kindly, however, as it generally is in the houses of the natives, it becomes very tame and familiar. I once saw one as playful as a kitten, running about the house after the negro children, who fondled it to their hearts' content. It acted somewhat differently towards strangers, and seemed not to like them to sit in the hammock which was slung in the room, leaping ...
— The Naturalist on the River Amazons • Henry Walter Bates
... novels of Hall Caine and Marie Corelli—the operation for appendicitis upon her dollie, while very successful indeed, had left poor Flaxilocks without a scrap of sawdust in her veins, and therefore unable to play; and worst of all, her pet kitten, under the new city law making all felines public property, had grown into a regular cat and appeared only at mealtimes, and then in so disreputable a condition that he was not thought to be fit company for a ...
— Alice in Blunderland - An Iridescent Dream • John Kendrick Bangs
... eyes as she sprang to her feet, took several steps toward the door, and stopped. A wordless cry rose within her and came out as a miserable little kitten whimper. ...
— Ten From Infinity • Paul W. Fairman
... murmurs the driver in the softest tones of admiration; "she don't mean anything by it, she's just like a kitten." ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... she had been presented with a handsome glass pitcher, which she of course greatly prized. One day it stood upon the stand in her room, where Willie was also playing with some spools which Lenora had found and arranged for him. Malta, the pet kitten, was amusing herself by running after the spools, and when at last Willie, becoming tired, laid them on the stand, she sprang toward them, upsetting the pitcher, which was broken in a dozen pieces. On hearing the crash Mrs. Hamilton hastened toward the room, ...
— Homestead on the Hillside • Mary Jane Holmes
... practical, Kitty, it's difficult to make you understand; but I feel quite sure we'll all make a pet of it, and when you once hear it purr, you'll think it a prettier sound than any kitten ...
— Marjorie's Maytime • Carolyn Wells
... to say good-bye, he told them to choose whatever they liked in his study to 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 (to which Jacob was going); and next ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf
... day long pale and silent in the office; Sabine evince a tendency to blush in her brother's presence, which never appeared before; sit silent for hours over her work, then silently start up and rush through the house, playful as a kitten after a ball of twine; the merchant himself keep constantly looking at Anton, and growing more and more merry from day to day, so that at last he positively rallies the cousin without ceasing—all ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag
... 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 in ...
— Caves of Terror • Talbot Mundy
... streamed down her cheeks. Deacon Pitts was real put out, for him, an' the parson tried not to take no notice. But it went so fur he couldn't help it, an' so he says, 'Miss Isabel, I'm real pained,' says he. But 't was jest as you'd cuff the kitten ...
— Tiverton Tales • Alice Brown
... Mrs. Mark," he exclaimed, "but they have got an offspring apiece in their embrace and several trailers. Somebody ought to remonstrate with Nell Morgan or have the firmness to apply the superfluous blind kitten treatment every spring. Three children are patriotic, but five are populistic and ought to be frowned upon," and Billy grumbled all the while the Morgans were flocking up the front walk. When they came to the steps the Jaguar descended and held out his clerically befrocked ...
— The Heart's Kingdom • Maria Thompson Daviess
... and what do you think he found? Why, right under a vase of the pussy willows, on a cushion, was a dear, sweet, little white kitten. Yes, sir, as true as I'm telling you! And so soon as Lulu saw it she cried: "It's mine! One of my pussy willows has turned into a kittie! Oh, how glad ...
— Lulu, Alice and Jimmie Wibblewobble • Howard R. Garis
... passed away, and little Deb grew from a kitten into a full-sized cat. Many a weary hour was passed in her corner. At length Deb arrived at the conclusion that if she could manage to make the knocker sound a rap-a-tap-tap on the door, the noise would summon the servant, and she would gain admittance as well as the guests who ...
— Stories of Animal Sagacity • W.H.G. Kingston
... 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. . . ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot
... of affection is such a normal and essential part of human life that it seeks to find expression at every opportunity. A warm-hearted child will lavish it on a kitten, or a rag doll; or will show it for a mongrel dog. If the kitten, or the dog is hurt, or sick, or even hungry, the girl or boy will be distressed by its trouble and want ...
— Heart and Soul • Victor Mapes (AKA Maveric Post) |
