Try throwing a ball just once for a dog. It would be like eating only one peanut or potato chip. Try to ignore the importuning of a Golden Retriever who has brought you his tennis ball, the greatest treasure he possesses!

A cat knows how to be comfortable, how to get the people around it to serve it. In a tranquil domestic situation, the cat is a veritable manipulative genius. It seeks the soft, it seeks the warm, it prefers the quiet and it loves to be full. It displays, when it gets its own way in these matters, a degree of contentment we would all like to emulate.

Cats virtually always underestimate human intelligence just as we, perhaps, underestimate theirs.

I am as confounded by dogs as I am indebted to them.

It's our mortality that terrifies us, because what we're really seeking is immortality - that is, after all, a fool's errand.

We derive immeasurable good, uncounted pleasures, enormous security, and many critical lessons about life by owning dogs.

Cats can be cooperative when something feels good, which, to a cat, is the way everything is supposed to feel as much of the time as possible.