"My pretty little puss", So often people are praised to the skies who are worth far less than you", wrote a last-century author, " it is time for me to pay you the tribute you deserve. You are made to be painted: your tiger coat has the most delicate shades of color, your eyes are lively, yet gentle, your glance is velvet, your tail is of enviable beauty; your agility, grace and suppleness are admirable, the virtues of your character even more so, so let us enumerate them. First you love me less than a slice of meat or a chicken leg, but that is very simple: I am your master, and a slice of meat is better than one master or worth two times more than two masters. You have a lot of intelligence ,and the best kind, because the kind you have is useful to you, any other kind of intelligence would appear to be stupidity to you. Nature has given you nails, which we very politely call claws, and they are admirably constructed, well sheathed in a membrane; they go out and in like fingers in a glove, so you can have a velvet paw or threatening claws. You well know that you don't have them in order to use them, but that you use them because you have them. You do not believe in final causes; my dear cat, you are a great philosopher.
Source: The Most Beautiful Cat by Pola Weiss, Translated by Gerald Jones, A Pierre Waleffe Book, Minerva ⓒ 1970.
