"Tabby" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... meadow-brook Reading, and oh, it was too lovely; I never saw such a charming book." The charming book must have pleased her, truly, There's a happy light in her bright young eyes And she hugs the cat with unusual fervor, To staid old Tabby's intense surprise. ...
— Point Lace and Diamonds • George A. Baker, Jr.
... you not observed it?) I am altered of late!—I, that was ever light of heart, the very soul of gayety, brimfull of glee, am now demure as our old tabby—and not half as wise. Tabby had wit enough to keep her paws out of the coals, whereas poor I have—but no matter what. It will never come to pass, I see that. So many reasons for every thing! Such looking forward! Arthur, are not men sometimes ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown
... draught pumped the fire into violence, shaking the stove till it puffed and roared. I was so filled, that moment, with the domestic spirit that I thought a steaming kettle on the little stove would give me a tabby-like comfort. ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... mild and inoffensive giant. He adored the house-cat, and used to help her, in a ponderous way, with the care of her numerous family. Many a time have I seen him placidly extended before a fire, while puss used his shaggy body as a sleeping box, and once he was observed to help that anxious tabby-mother with the toilet of her kittens by licking them carefully all over. At every lick of Rufus's huge prehensile tongue a kitten was lifted bodily into the air, only, however, to descend washed ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 102, April 16, 1892 • Various
... the while thy wanton play, Applauses too thy pains repay: For then, beneath some urchin's hand With modest pride thou takest thy stand, While many a stroke of kindness glides Along thy back and tabby sides. Dilated swells thy glossy fur, And loudly croons thy busy purr, As, timing well the equal sound, Thy clutching feet bepat the ground, And all their harmless claws disclose Like prickles of an early rose, While softly from thy whiskered cheek Thy half-closed ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... crown'd in death his father's fun'ral pile. The loss of whom, in order to supply With true-born English nobility, Six bastard dukes survive his luscious reign, The labours of Italian Castlemain, French Portsmouth, Tabby Scott, and Cambrian; Besides the num'rous bright and virgin throng, Whose female glories shade them from my song. This offspring if our age they multiply, May half the house with English peers supply: There with true English pride they ...
— The True-Born Englishman - A Satire • Daniel Defoe
... heard Abner singing, as she knelt in front of the basket where the mother cat lay with her four blind kittens. "You see, Tabby," she said, "people still sing. A lot of them learned to sing in the war, and now they're home, they may as well sing as cry. Oh, Tabby, I wanted to sing, too . . . now ...
— Autumn • Robert Nathan
... Poll— A monkey too, what work he made! The sister introduced a Beau— My Susan brought a favorite maid. She had a tabby of her own, A snappish mongrel christen'd Gog— What d'ye think of that, my Cat? What d'ye ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... wore and said. I was told that Lady Caroline Lamb was there, enveloped in the folds of an ermine cloak, which she called a 'cat-skin,' and that she talked a great deal about a periodical she wished to get up, to be called 'Tabby's Magazine'; and with her was an exceedingly haughty, brilliant, and beautiful girl, Rosina Wheeler,—since well known as Lady Bulwer Lytton,—and who sat rather impatiently at the feet of her eccentric 'Gamaliel.' Miss Emma Roberts was one of the favored ladies, and Miss Spence ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 89, March, 1865 • Various
... did not begin until I took the Pretty Lady's mother. We had not been a week in our first house before a handsomely striped tabby, with eyes like beautiful emeralds, who had been the pet and pride of the next-door neighbor for five years, came over and domiciled herself. In due course of time she proudly presented us with five kittens. Educated in the belief that one cat was all that was compatible ...
— Concerning Cats - My Own and Some Others • Helen M. Winslow
... crumpled in his hand a half-sheet of paper on which young Munsey had been making some calculations, and flung it into the fire. Augustina sat cowering. The young man himself turned white, bowed, and said nothing. While Father Bowles, of course, like the old tabby that he was, had at once begun to ...
— Helbeck of Bannisdale, Vol. I. • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... watched her with the same uncritical delight that he might have bestowed on any wood creature had it suddenly appeared darting along the pavement. She reached the corner just in time to bump into the flower-seller, who was turning about like some old tabby to settle ...
— The Primrose Ring • Ruth Sawyer
... hay, Prime Ministers and such as they Grew like asparagus in May, And Dukes were three a penny: Lord Chancellors were cheap as sprats, And Bishops in their shovel hats Were plentiful as tabby cats - If possible, too many. On every side Field-Marshals gleamed, Small beer were Lords-Lieutenants deemed, With Admirals the ocean teemed, All round his wide dominions; And Party Leaders you might meet In twos and threes in ...
— Songs of a Savoyard • W. S. Gilbert
... vase's side Where China's gayest art had dy'd The azure flowers, that blow; Demurest of the tabby kind, The pensive Selima reclin'd Gazed on ...
— Old Valentines - A Love Story • Munson Aldrich Havens
... the words before the housekeeper's large tabby cat, taking its noonday siesta in the looped-up fold of the curtain, leaped out and made ...
— Little Novels • Wilkie Collins
... returned the crystal tabby, "that I do not eat mice. Being transparent, so anyone can see through me, I'd look nice, wouldn't I, with a common mouse inside me? But the fact is that I haven't any stomach or other machinery that would permit me to eat things. The careless magician ...
— The Magic of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... tired to death of living in this cold, dark, windy, smoky, creaking, groaning, dismal old house. I shall feel like a younger man when we get into my splendid brick mansion, as, please Heaven, we shall by this time next autumn. You shall have a room on the sunny side, old Tabby, finished and furnished as best may suit your ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... Lucie came into the farm-yard crying— oh, she did cry so! "I've lost my pocket-handkin! Three handkins and a pinny! Have you seen them, Tabby Kitten?" ...
— The Tale of Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle • Beatrix Potter
... care not, but all shall out then. Look to it, nurse: I can bring witness that you have a great unnatural teat under your left arm, and he another; and that you suckle a young devil in the shape of a tabby-cat, by turns, I can. ...
— Love for Love • William Congreve
... half-hour had hardly passed, when one pup made a stir, And stretching out a lazy paw, just touched the tabby's fur; 'Twas nothing but an accident, yet, oh! the angry wail! The flashing in the tabby's eye, the ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
... lump. Miss Leigh, may I ask you to reach me a very pretty book of coloured animals I saw behind you? Now, Emma, there is a tabby cat, just ...
— Bluebell - A Novel • Mrs. George Croft Huddleston
... was a kitten, Tabby was a thief. Tabby tried to steal the cream, And so she came ...
— Cole's Funny Picture Book No. 1 • Edward William Cole
... at dinner sat, Did beckon to his hussar, And bid him bring his tabby cat For charming Nell ...
— Irish Wit and Humor - Anecdote Biography of Swift, Curran, O'Leary and O'Connell • Anonymous
... at breakfast, but she gave Shock cream; and she often made me carry him when I went out a-walking. For this reason I hated him, and when we were out of my aunts' hearing I used to pull his tail and his ears and make the poor little thing howl sadly. My Aunt Penelope had a large tabby cat, which I also hated and used ill. I remember once being sent out of the dining-room to carry Shock his dinner, Shock being ill, and laid on a cushion in my aunts' bedroom. As I was going upstairs I was so unfortunate ...
— The Fairchild Family • Mary Martha Sherwood
... the farmer, gently, as he rose and went to carry the milk-pails into the pantry, calling coaxingly, as he did so, "Kitty! kitty! You had your milk? Don't you joggle, now!" For one eager tabby rose on her hind legs, in purring haste, and hit her nose ...
— Meadow Grass - Tales of New England Life • Alice Brown
... were worried. It is no wonder that she was anxious about Sandy and Peter and Pan, for, to begin with, she had had four fine children, and the very first night they were out of their nest, the darlings, a terrible prowling animal named Tom or Tabby had killed ...
— Bird Stories • Edith M. Patch
... myself. In the middle watch of this night, our two cats—have I told you that we brought two cats from England with us?—as was their wont, were skylarking and cutting capers on the hammock nettings and davits, when tabby the lesser, instead of jumping on something palpable, made a leap on space with the natural result, for he lighted on water and was rapidly whirled astern by the inky waters of the Tartar gulf. Poor ...
— In Eastern Seas - The Commission of H.M.S. 'Iron Duke,' flag-ship in China, 1878-83 • J. J. Smith
... cities near by to gather specimens. I go to the sea-shore every summer together with my two little sisters. We pick up lovely stones and shells. My pets are twenty little black and white chickens, and a nice kitty named Tabby Gray. I made a doll's cake by Puss Hunter's recipe. It was very ...
— Harper's Young People, June 15, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... speakin' mod'rate, he quits winner. He travels back to Sni-a-bar as tame as tabby cats in persooance with Enright's commands, an', once thar, old man Parks an' the rest of 'em whistles him through the marital chute a heap successful. When he shows up among us, his blushin' Peggy bride on his arm, he's wearin' all the brands an' y'ear marks of a thor'ughly married man; to ...
— Faro Nell and Her Friends - Wolfville Stories • Alfred Henry Lewis
... marbled; pepper and salt, paned, dappled, clouded, cymophanous^. mosaic, tesselated, plaid; tortoise shell &c n.. spotted, spotty; punctated^, powdered; speckled &c v.; freckled, flea-bitten, studded; flecked, fleckered^; striated, barred, veined; brinded^, brindled; tabby; watered; grizzled; listed; embroidered &c v.; daedal^; naevose^, stipiform^; strigose^, striolate^. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... among the neat, knickerbocker "sissies" who were foolish enough to cross them. Dress, Mrs. McArdle declared, was now a real trial. The girls had to be "in trim all the time," and the boys were as violently in contrast to their fellows as a litter of brindle barn-kits beside a well-groomed tabby-cat's family. "I'm clean worn out with it, Mart," she confessed. "We've been here two weeks the day, and the children howlin' the whole time to go back and McArdle workin' himself to the figger of a spoon with a mind to polish the lawn and ...
— Money Magic - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... it all when we're settled down at—where was it?—Torquay or somewhere—in our villa, like two old tabby-cats sitting in the sun? No time to think it all over then? No, only all the hours of every day!" He paused and then added in a low hard voice, "I'm damned if I'll do it. I may have to die, but I'll die standing." His eyes gleamed now, and for the first time they turned from her and roamed over the ...
— Quisante • Anthony Hope
... captain learned that the Dey was greatly annoyed by rats, and loaned him the cat. The rats disappeared so rapidly that the Dey wished to buy the cat, but the captain would not sell until a very high price was offered. With the purchase-money was sent a present of valuable pearls for the owner of Tabby. When the ship returned the sailors were greatly astonished to find that the boy owned most of the cargo, for it was part of the bargain that he was to bring back the value of his cat in goods. The London ...
— Architects of Fate - or, Steps to Success and Power • Orison Swett Marden
... these ideas from books, and great trouble I found myself in one day for playing at tiger-hunting in the garden at home with Buzzy, my aunt's great tabby tom-cat; and for pretending that Nap was a lion in the African desert. But I'll tell you that in a chapter to itself, for these matters had a good deal to do with the alteration ...
— Nat the Naturalist - A Boy's Adventures in the Eastern Seas • G. Manville Fenn
... that ribbon—I was playing out in the yard— She said to me most expressly: "Here's a ribbon for Hildegarde." And I went and put it on Tabby, and Hildegarde saw me do it; But I said to myself, "Oh, never mind, I don't ...
— The Canadian Elocutionist • Anna Kelsey Howard
... the sparrows were busy washing, sending up tiny iridescent jets and fountains from their swiftly fluttering wings. It was delicious to Dominic. He felt very safe, very gay. Only a heavy ill- favoured tabby cat came from nowhere. It had designs upon the sparrows. Twice it climbed stealthily up the broken bricks and gas clinkers. Twice the little boy drove it away. It was not a nice cat. It had a broad white face, deceitful little eyes, and grey ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet
... temperature, should wear light colours. Light colours are far the best for sporting purposes, as they are usually much less conspicuous than black or rifle-green. Almost all wild beasts are tawny or fawn-coloured, or tabby, or of some nondescript hue and pattern: if an animal were born with a more decided colour, he would soon perish for want of ...
— The Art of Travel - Shifts and Contrivances Available in Wild Countries • Francis Galton
... throbbed in her quavering voice. Hers could be a violent tongue, too, as the several men who accosted us on our dark way discovered at their first approach to familiarity; and on one occasion, when a drunken sailor leered up to my side, Mrs. Bridget spat at him like an angry tabby-cat. Somehow, I no longer felt afraid under her protection ...
— The Long Day - The Story of a New York Working Girl As Told by Herself • Dorothy Richardson
... last Tuesday I'd be begging to-day, Emma," interrupted a young man from across the stream of water which ran down the centre of Main Street. "I'm sitting on your aunt Tabby's trunk." The girl gave a cry, half of pained remembrance, half of pleasure. "Oh, my dear Aunt Tabby!" she cried, and, rushing across the rivulet, she threw herself across the battered leather trunk—sole surviving relic of Aunt Tabby; but Aunt Tabby and ...
— The Johnstown Horror • James Herbert Walker
... of the wood. Upon our first entering Sir ROGER winked to me, and pointed at something that stood behind the door, which, upon looking that way I found to be an old broomstaff. At the same time he whispered me in the ear to take notice of a tabby cat that sat in the chimney-corner, which, as the old Knight told me, lay under as bad a report as Moll White herself; for, besides that Moll is said often to accompany her in the same shape, the cat is reported to have spoken twice or thrice ...
— The Coverley Papers • Various
... sister tabby saw the cord, And interposed a happy word: "In every age and clime we see Two of a trade cannot agree; Each deems the other an encroacher, As sportsman thinks another poacher. Beauty with beauty vies in charms, And king ...
— Fables of John Gay - (Somewhat Altered) • John Gay
... gentleman. 'Puss, Kit, Tit, Grimalkin, Tabby, Brindle! Whoosh!' with which last sound, uttered in a hissing manner between his teeth, the old gentleman swung his arms violently round and round, and at the same time alternately advanced on Mrs Nickleby, and retreated ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... the weather was determined on some kind of storm, but had not yet made up its mind for snow, rain, or hail. Now the wind roared in the chimney, and started out of her sleep a great tortoise-shell cat, that lay on the rug which Aunt Kindly had made for her. Tabby opened her yellow eyes suddenly, and erected her smellers, but finding it was only the wind and not a mouse that made the noise, she stretched out a great paw and yawned, and then cuddled her head down so as to show her white throat, and went to ...
— Two Christmas Celebrations • Theodore Parker
... in, introduced him to her mother, and ran off in search of the cat, returning in a few minutes with a very playful-looking tabby. ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall
... spiteful vexation. "A mine o' wealth, an' no chance to work it! Ef we only had the ship by us now, we could put a good thousan' dollars' worth o' thar pelts into it. Jest see how they swarm out yonder! An' tame as pet tabby cats! There's enough of 'em to supply seal-skin jackets fur nigh all the women ...
— The Land of Fire - A Tale of Adventure • Mayne Reid
... sitting sideways at the window, dreamily stroking a tabby kitten, who, purring and blinking, nestled on her lap, and with great satisfaction held up her little nose into the rather hot spring sunshine. Olga Ivanovna was wearing a white morning gown, with short sleeves; her bare, pale-pink, girlish shoulders and arms were a picture of freshness ...
— The Jew And Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... Mrs. Goodwin might box my ears for the impertinence; she has boxed them before. I grew up around here, remember. The first acquaintance I made with this house was when I shied an apple at the family tabby as it sat sunning itself on the well-curb, and bowled it in. Naturally, I hadn't meant to hit it; the beast stepped forward just as I fired. I nearly fell in, myself, trying to get it out, but the well was deep and I couldn't ...
— From the Car Behind • Eleanor M. Ingram
... masculinity are expressions of the interplay of all the internal secretions. It used to be said by smart cats and accepted by the tabby cats, that a woman was a woman because of her ovaries alone. It is being said by some great discoverers of the day that man is a man because of his testes alone. Neither of these dogmas is true. There are individuals with ...
— The Glands Regulating Personality • Louis Berman, M.D.
... presented himself before Pharaoh, who said to him, "O Haykar, what of the stallion of thy lord which, when he neigheth in Assyria and Nineveh, his voice is heard by our mares in this place so that they miscarry?"[FN74] Hereat Haykar left the King and faring to his place took a tabby-cat and tying her up fell to flogging her with a sore flogging until all the Egyptians heard her outcries and reported the matter to the Sovran. So Pharaoh sent to fetch him and asked, "O Haykar, for what cause didst thou scourge this cat and beat her with such beating, ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... horses was exaggerated to impossibility, and made to extend to all India. Thus a Persian historian, speaking of an elephant that was born in the stables of Khosru Parviz, observes that "never till then had a she-elephant borne young in Iran, any more than a lioness in Rum, a tabby cat in China (!), or a mare in India." (J.A.S. ser. III. tom. iii. ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... a lofty vase's side, Where China's gayest art had dyed The azure flowers that blow, Demurest of the tabby kind, The pensive Selima, reclined, Gazed ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... but being aware that a pert answer turneth away pleasant invitations, said nothing. She nodded and went off to her game, and informing Mr. Petherbridge that Lady Bruce was a platitudinous old tabby, flirted with him up to the nice limits of his parsonical dignity. But Marmaduke ...
— The Rough Road • William John Locke
... a journey long enough to give him a good appetite, which made him draw near the table, where the very smell of such viands was agreeable and refreshing. The princess had a curious tabby-cat, for which she had a great kindness. This cat one of the maids of honour held in her arms, saying, "Madam, Bluet is hungry!" With that a chair was presently brought for the cat; for he was a cat of quality, and had ...
— The Fairy Book - The Best Popular Stories Selected and Rendered Anew • Dinah Maria Mulock (AKA Miss Mulock)
... eyes garnished with Solomon's spectacles about you, cannot but have perceived on the parlour-tables and book-shelves of your fair friends—by whose firesides you are courted even as the good knight, and the Spectator, by the Lady Lizards of the days of Anne—a sudden inundation of tabby-bound volumes, addressed, in supergilt letters, to the "Wives of England"—the "Daughters of England"—the "Grandmothers of England." A few, arrayed in modest calf or embossed linen, address themselves to the sober latitudes ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 55, No. 340, February, 1844 • Various
... not wisely but too well." And they all poured out happily into the corridor—that is, all of them except Caput and the two ladies, who remained seated upon their bench gazing fiercely and disdainfully at each other like two tabby cats on ...
— By Advice of Counsel • Arthur Train
... looked out on the stable-yard; but in the evening, when the fire burned clear and the blinds were drawn, it was a pleasant place. Deborah and Martha used to sit in the brown Windsor chairs knitting, with Puff, the great tabby cat, beside them, and the firelight would play on the red brick floor and ...
— Esther - A Book for Girls • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... from her birth, Who joined in all her harmless youthful mirth; But, when they went for holidays to roam, Shut-to the door of what had been her home, And thoughtless left to die upon the mat, Their faithful but forgotten Tabby-cat." ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 103, August 6, 1892 • Various
... let drowsing dogs lie, he'll stir up the tabby sleeping Tom— In fact, he is the model of a modern ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 102, January 30, 1892 • Various
... out well. They had occasion to enter one of the unoccupied huts down there and found a wild cat a little more than half grown, which they caught and carried home with them. He was of the usual tabby colour and by no means fierce, quickly yielding to the coaxing treatment of his captors. He made himself quite at home in the Shack, and we looked forward to a display of his ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson
... this same mark on the forearms of domestic cats in India. Mr. Blyth states that domestic cats coloured nearly like F. chaus, but not resembling that species in shape, abound in {45} Bengal; he adds, "such a colouration is utterly unknown in European cats, and the proper tabby markings (pale streaks on a black ground, peculiarly and symmetrically disposed), so common in English cats, are never seen in those of India." Dr. D. Short has assured Mr. Blyth[92] that at Hansi hybrids between ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Vol. I. • Charles Darwin
... through, I see most clearly poor Miss Loo, Her tabby cat, her cage of birds, Her nose, her hair—her muffled words, And how she'd open her green eyes, As if in some immense surprise, Whenever as we sat at tea, She made some small remark ...
— Georgian Poetry 1911-12 • Various
... the outer door softly behind her, the girl's heart throbbed in response to the old woman's sorrow. While she sat on the bench to lace her shoes the cat, old Tabby, came rubbing and purring about her skirts. Muffled, as though from a great distance, a rooster vented a questioning crow as though he doubted that it was yet time to announce the ...
— Sheila of Big Wreck Cove - A Story of Cape Cod • James A. Cooper
... wore a scarlet tabby negligee,—a sort of undress, or sack, then much in vogue,—which suited her to admiration, and upon her head had what was called a fly-cap, with richly-laced lappets. Mrs. Maggot was equipped in a light blue riding-habit, trimmed with silver, a hunting-cap and a flaxen peruke, and, instead of ...
— Jack Sheppard - A Romance • William Harrison Ainsworth
... of the North American flowers into her stories. The Tabby-striped Arum, or Jack-in-the-Pulpit (as it is called in Mr. Whittier's delightful collection of child-poems[30]), appears in "We and the World," where Dennis, the rollicking Irish hero, unintentionally raises himself in the estimation of his sober-minded Scotch companion Alister, by ...
— Juliana Horatia Ewing And Her Books • Horatia K. F. Eden
... Norwegian women were even more than the women of other lands votaries of the old-fashioned ideal of femininity, 'the domestic angel,' the 'gentle and refining influence' sort of thing. Now these sedentary fireside tabby-cats of Norway have been trained, they say, by the snow-shoes into lithe and audacious creatures, for whom no night is too dark or height too giddy, and who are not only saying good-bye to the traditional feminine pallor and delicacy of constitution, ...
— Talks To Teachers On Psychology; And To Students On Some Of Life's Ideals • William James
... coroner—but her own breast invariably. None of us can teach her anything as to washing her kitten, or keeping it warm. She can even play with it and so educate it, in so far as it needs education. There are mothers in all classes of the community who should be ashamed to look a tabby cat in ...
— Woman and Womanhood - A Search for Principles • C. W. Saleeby
... throng a bulk comes rolling vast! Thumps, kicks,—no manner of use!—spite of them rolls at last Into the midst a ball which, bursting, brings to view Publican Black Ned Bratts and Tabby his big wife too: Both in a muck-sweat, both ... were never such eyes uplift At the sight of yawning hell, such nostrils—snouts that sniffed Sulphur, such mouths a-gape ready to swallow flame! Horrified, hideous, frank ...
— Browning's England - A Study in English Influences in Browning • Helen Archibald Clarke
... to a new area in London, appears to me to be obliged to fight till he gains undisturbed possession of it; at least so it has been the case with my cats. A very fine, bold, powerful tabby, did this twice with perfect success; but after repeated combats, although victorious, the struggle made him fierce and occasionally sullen. Another who was a very beautiful creature, but much weaker, used to come in with his handsome ears slit, his cheeks ...
— Anecdotes of the Habits and Instinct of Animals • R. Lee
... order by a very inferior cat to yourself; and after all, you are cherished here chiefly because it was Lily's wish. Peggy can easily find another kitten; and you know she has often said that white cats were not to her taste, and she should much prefer a tabby." ...
— Cat and Dog - Memoirs of Puss and the Captain • Julia Charlotte Maitland
... never know when they are well off. It is a complaint which afflicts cats, you may have noticed, and gets them into much trouble that their contemptuous temper might otherwise leave them free from. The silver tabby would have done better if she had remained asleep upon Miss Somebody's arm-chair, instead of squatting, still as marble, out in a damp field on a damp night, watching a rabbits' "stop"—which is vernacular for a bunnies' nursery—and thinking how nice ...
— The Way of the Wild • F. St. Mars
... venerable signor of a cat. Tabby. Cat's no good if it isn't tabby. Cat I'm going to have, and a canary! Didn't think of that before, but a cat and a canary seem to go, you know. Summer weather I shall sit at breakfast in the little room behind the shop, sun streaming in the window to ...
— The History of Mr. Polly • H. G. Wells
... reflection I was about to shut my window, when suddenly I perceived, in a spot of sunshine on my right, the shadow of two pricked-up ears; then a paw advanced, then the head of a tabby-cat showed itself at the corner of the gutter. The cunning fellow was lying there in wait, hoping the crumbs would bring him ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... go elsewhere. This declaration, which must be admitted to have been more remarkable for frankness than civility, made, however, no ill impression on Mrs. Sally. To the farmer's she went, and at his house she lives still, with her little maid, her tabby cat, a decrepit sheep-dog, and much of the lumber of Court Farm, which she could not find in her heart to part from. There she follows her old ways and her old hours, untempted by matrimony, and unassailed (as far as I hear) by love or by scandal, with no other grievance than an occasional ...
— Our Village • Mary Russell Mitford
... a garret, and that his wife, "poor wretch," was used to make the fire while Samuel lay abed, and that she washed his "foul clothes"—that by degrees he came to be wealthy and rode in his own yellow coach—that his wife went abroad in society "in a flowered tabby gown"—that Pepys forsook his habits of poverty and exchanged his twelve-penny seat in the theatre gallery for a place in the pit—and that on a rare occasion (doubtless when he was alone and there was but one seat to buy) he arose to the extravagance ...
— There's Pippins And Cheese To Come • Charles S. Brooks
... is, Jud. I've seen our tabby cat do that when crouching to spring on a sparrow. The beast is ready to jump as soon as we come within range. ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts Snowbound - A Tour on Skates and Iceboats • George A. Warren
... the world. 9. Noah and his family outlived all the people who lived before the flood. 10. Solomon was wiser than all men. 11. This State exports more cotton than all the states. 12. A cowboy is the most picturesque of any men. 13. Tabby has the worst temper of any cat I know. 14. He thinks Gettysburg has the prettiest girls of any town of its size. 15. The proposed method of Mr. F.G. Jackson, the English arctic explorer, appears to be the most practical and business-like ...
— Practical Exercises in English • Huber Gray Buehler
... up the act music. The curtains parted, and revealed the brightly polished miniature gymnasium I had seen at Anastasius's cattery; the row of pussies at the back, each on a velvet stand, some white, some tabby, some long-furred, some short-furred, all sitting with their forepaws doubled demurely under their chests, wagging their tails comically, and blinking with feline indifference at the footlights; a cage in a corner in ...
— Simon the Jester • William J. Locke
... the other element in his soubriquet is not so easy to say. There is a Cornish (and probably British) word “Tab,” which means turf (“Archæol. Journ.” vol. ii., No. 3, p. 199), and that would suit this dweller on the heath; but it is more likely that “Tab” had a reference to the cat, “Tabby” being the term for a brindled cat. And Bishop Harsnet, in his curious book on “The Superstitions of the Day” (1605), says a witch, or elf, “can take the form ...
— Records of Woodhall Spa and Neighbourhood - Historical, Anecdotal, Physiographical, and Archaeological, with Other Matter • J. Conway Walter
... does Tabby do? Have you weaned her yet? Don't she ever feel sorry, now I am away, that she used to nurse so much more than her share? She needs to have you cuff her ears now and then, that Tabby. She never had ...
— Little Ferns For Fanny's Little Friends • Fanny Fern
... exhibited in a magnificent shrine to public admiration. Every knee was bent, every hand strewed flowers or poured incense, and grimalkin was treated in all respects as the god of the day. But on the festival of St. John, poor tom's fate was reversed. A number of the tabby tribe were put into a wicker basket, and thrown alive into the midst of an immense fire kindled in the public square by the bishop and his clergy. Hymns and anthems were sung, and processions were made by the priests and people ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 398, November 14, 1829 • Various
... this Mrs. Billings wasn't happy at home? We'll say she and her husband didn't gee worth a cent. They've got incompatibility to burn. The things she likes, Billings wouldn't have as a gift with trading-stamps. It's Tabby and Rover with them all the time. She's an educated woman in science and culture, and she reads things out loud at meetings. Billings is not on. He don't appreciate progress and obelisks and ethics, and things of that sort. Old Billings is simply a blink when it comes to such things. The lady ...
— Whirligigs • O. Henry
... her much of the detail of ordering her own clothing, and we find him sending for "A Salmon-colored Tabby of the enclosed pattern, with satin flowers, to be made in a sack," "1 Cap, Handkerchief, Tucker and Ruffles, to be made of Brussels lace or point, proper to wear with the above negligee, to cost ...
— The True George Washington [10th Ed.] • Paul Leicester Ford
... we go to bed," said Snowdrop and Thistledown, the youngest children of Tabby, the cat, "till we have once more looked at Baby Ray? He lets us play with his blocks and ball, and laughs when we climb on the table. It is bedtime now for kitties and dogs and babies. Perhaps we shall find him asleep." And this is what ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf; a Practical Plan of Character Building, Volume I (of 17) - Fun and Thought for Little Folk • Various
... of the church appearance of the Puritan goodmen and goodwives. Priscilla Alden in a Quakeress' drab gown would doubtless have been pleasant to behold, but Priscilla garbed in a "blew Mohere peticote," a "tabby bodeys with red livery cote," and an "immoderate great rayle" with "Slashes," with a laced neckcloth or cross cloth around her fair neck, and a scarlet "whittle" over all this motley finery; with a "outwork quoyf or ciffer" (New England French for coiffure) with "long wings" at the side, and a ...
— Sabbath in Puritan New England • Alice Morse Earle
... comes creeping down-stairs, like an old tabby-cat out of the ash-hole; and she kind o' doubts and reckons whether or no she had better try to git any breakfast, bein' as she 's not much appetite this mornin'; but she goes to the leg of bacon and cuts off a little slice, reckons sh'll ...
— The Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe • Charles Edward Stowe
... dawned, the shower of kittens began. Some were white and some were tabby, and all were about the same loathsome age. Three were on his hearth-rug, three in his bath-room, and the other six turned up at intervals among the visitors who came to see the prophecy break down. Never ...
— Indian Tales • Rudyard Kipling
... blue eyes and sleek fair hair; and as weak physically as he was strong mentally. In his neat clerical garb, with a slight stoop and meek smile, he looked a harmless, commonplace young curate of the tabby cat kind. No one could be more tactful and ingratiating than Mr Cargrim, and he was greatly admired by the old ladies and young girls of Beorminster; but the men, one and all—even his clerical brethren—disliked and distrusted him, although there was no apparent ...
— The Bishop's Secret • Fergus Hume
... clouded, cymophanous[obs3]. mosaic, tesselated, plaid; tortoise shell &c. n. spotted, spotty; punctated[obs3], powdered; speckled &c. v.; freckled, flea-bitten, studded; flecked, fleckered[obs3]; striated, barred, veined; brinded[obs3], brindled; tabby; watered; grizzled; listed; embroidered &c. v.; daedal[obs3]; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... Smith had drained a champagne-glass, bottle in hand, and was priming the successor to it. He cocked his eye at Mr. Redworth's quick stare. 'Malkin!' And now we'll see whether the interior of him is grey, or black, or tabby, or tortoise-shell, or any other colour of ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... of the camp-fire all the more comfortable. Under the moonlight the sharper bark of the coyote swells a chorus from the cliffs, and the rich note of the night-storm is accentuated by the long screech of the puma prowling on the heights. In daylight his brother, the wild-cat, reminds one of Tabby at home by the fireside. There is the lynx, too, among the rocks; and on the higher planes the deer, elk, and bear have their homes. In Green River Valley once roamed thousands of bison. The more arid districts have ...
— The Romance of the Colorado River • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh
... on female diseases, near the end of the seventeenth century,—who felt compelled by the extreme modesty of the people in this particular—but who, outside of medicine, were about as virtuous as the average Tabby or Tom cats in the midnight hour—to write the chapter touching on nymphomania in Latin, so as not to shock the morbidly sensitive modesty of the French nobility, who then enjoyed Le Droit de cuissage,—down through to Bienville, who wrote the first extended work on nymphomania, ...
— History of Circumcision from the Earliest Times to the Present - Moral and Physical Reasons for its Performance • Peter Charles Remondino
... cat still sitting on a chair watching the tortoise-shell cat outside the window, and on the hearth-rug lay a tabby one, with its head on the ...
— The Little Clown • Thomas Cobb
... this moment to thrust off from shore with his paddle. The impetus took her at unawares, and she fell forward; her basket struck against the boat's gunwale, its cover flew open, and forth from it, half-demented with fright, sprang her tabby cat, Methuselah. The poor brute lit upon the parrot's cage, which happened to be balanced upon an unstable pile of cooking utensils at the end of Nicky Vro's thwart. Cat, cage and parrot, a gridiron, two cake tins, a bundle of skewers, and ...
— Shining Ferry • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... events, I am not going to marry any woman inferior to the type I have created with my pencil—what the public calls the 'Carden Girl.' And now you see that your discovery of this living type comes rather late. In two days I must be legally married if I want my Aunt Tabby's legacy; and to-day for the first time I hear of a girl who, you assure me, compares favorably to my copyrighted type, but who has a mission and an aversion to men. So you see, Mr. Keen, that the matter is ...
— The Tracer of Lost Persons • Robert W. Chambers
... Sweet Tabby cat of mine; 6 months of age has passed o'er thee, And I would not resign, resign The pleasure that I find in you. Dear ...
— Samantha at Saratoga • Marietta Holley
... and take delight, Doubt not, sufficient will be left at night. 'Tis but a just and rational desire To light a taper at a neighbour's fire. There's danger too, you think, in rich array, 140 And none can long be modest that are gay. The cat, if you but singe her tabby skin, The chimney keeps, and sits content within: But once grown sleek, will from her corner run, Sport with her tail, and wanton in the sun: She licks her fair round face, and frisks abroad To show her fur, and ...
— Poetical Works of Pope, Vol. II • Alexander Pope
... with Primrose to exhibit to Thekla the tame menagerie, where a mungoose, called of course Raki raki, was the last acquisition. She was also shown the kittens of the beloved Begum, and presented with Phoebus, a tabby with a wise face and a head marked like a Greek lyre, to be transplanted to the Goyle ...
— Modern Broods • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... it!" Miss Milray triumphed. "I always knew that she was a dreadful old tabby. I wish you were safely out of her clutches. Come and live with me, my dear, when Mrs. Lander gets tired of you. But she'll never get tired of you. You're just the kind of helpless mouse that such an old tabby would make her ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... grave faces was I received. The two antiquities only bowed their tabby heads; making longer faces than ordinary; and all the old lines appearing strong in their furrowed foreheads and fallen cheeks; How do you, Cousin? And how do you, Mr. Lovelace? looking all round at one another, as who should say, do you speak first: ...
— Clarissa, Volume 7 • Samuel Richardson
... beast, with arched back and purring like a contented tabby, rubbed his sides against the ape-man, and then at a word from the latter sprang lightly to his former place in the ...
— The Beasts of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... a tense, vibratory tone. "Speak to me!"—and she glowered upon him. "I am no kitten, like Amy. I am no tame tabby, like Carolyn, sending out written invitations. Throw a few poor words ...
— Bertram Cope's Year • Henry Blake Fuller
... on. "How is this, Sally, dear?— 'A handsome orange male Persian cat, also a tabby, immense coat, brushes and frills, is offered in exchange for an electro-plated revolving covered dish or an ...
— Penelope's English Experiences • Kate Douglas Wiggin |
