A cat likes to hear you calling him. He sits in a bush a yard from your shoes - and listens.

For the sake of the sons - and even for the son's future wives - a woman must keep a part of her mind and heart entirely for herself. Every family is better off with a wife and mother who can astonish and occasionally dewilder.

We have become a society where the artist is regarded as a self-indulgent superfluity, and the person who juggles stocks and shares is an essential part of the economy.

Human beings are drawn to cats because they are all we are not — self-contained, elegant in everything they do, relaxed, assured, glad of company, yet still possessing secret lives.

If there is a heaven, it's certain our animals are to be there. Their lives become so interwoven with our own, it would take more than an archangel to detangle them.

Becoming a grandmother is wonderful. One moment you're just a mother. The next you are all-wise and prehistoric.

Dads are most ordinary men turned by love into heroes, adventurers, story-tellers, singers of songs.