Of course I had to end the 3 day 3 quote challenge on a farewell kiss! It would have been so remiss of me not to. Absolutely believe Ingrid Bergman’s quote one hundred and ten percent.
There is nothing like a kiss especially if that certain somebody is kissing you. A kiss is the honey elixir of the soul, it speaks volumes when words carry very little or no weight. The kiss can be tentative, or tender, it can be a peck or a passionate full on don’t come up for breath number, all of which are worthy of our utmost attention, especially the last one! A, sigh, been there, done that! It could be your first kiss, or a kiss with your granny with her false teeth out! Sorry for that gummy image but it’s one that comes to mind! It could be a smooch with your dog, even soldiers kiss dogs. Dogs get kisses too!
Who could resist kissing this little kitten? I couldn’t. Cats seem to love me though, they follow me everywhere I go….. A bit of an exaggeration – but there is a little fellow that always follows me to the bus stop, he’s so cute. I always stop, pat him, and have a little chit chat on the way to the bus, time permitting!
All sorts of kisses can be memorable for so many reasons. I remember before I went under the surgeon’s knife way back in October my husband kissing me, that kiss meant a great deal, it calmed and reassured me. It worked a treat, I didn’t panic, it was just what the doctor ordered, the perfect prescription, no words could have been as effective!
Thank you so much to Swagata Mukherjee from Kolkata, India for nominating me to take part in this 3 day Quote challenge, I’ve thoroughly enjoyed taking part. Swagata is a PhD student in Physics. She loves to travel and is passionate about photography.
Any other #BlogBattlers that I haven’t mentioned (I could only nominate a certain number of bloggers) please do join in too if you’d like, the more the merrier…….
Thanks for joining me in this 3 Day Quote Challenge.
What are your favourite quotes, and kissing tales? Oh, I can’t wait to hear them, don’t be shy!
I hope you’ll agree that they are quite amazing. Let’s start off with this beauty:
This one’s a bit dingy in comparison! Hope you have a warm jumper and a torch.
Maybe you prefer to be cushioned in a tree hand. What about something a bit more uplifting?
Or perhaps you’re a gambler who likes to take risks? The architect for the one below must have been drink! It reminds me of a pack of shuffled cards that’s out of order and tumbling everywhere!
Or would you like to blend into the environment? This one’s calm and tranquil. But how would you find your way home at night? Maybe you’ll need a sheep dog.
Perhaps you like to live dangerously?
This one would suit a hermit with a love of the tropics. Just imagine, you could swim every day. Heaven.
Quirky, yes, why not? I wonder if you have to climb up that hill with your groceries? Or would you give up and live off the land?
A fondness for mushrooms perhaps? Just don’t pick poisonous ones or magical ones!
Eggs? Yes, this reminds me of the material egg boxes are made of. I hope it’s not windy, or this egg box house may turn into a frisby. I hope you can climb trees.
One for a posh hermit with a love of the tropics who likes diving, and living precariously.
You enjoy the circus? Some stilts perhaps?
A lover of shoes?
Fond of gardening and like to keep chickens? This one’s a fancy chicken coop, but you could have a bigger version!
Like your garden but fancy an oriental touch?
An oriental tree house?
An artist with an obsession with plastic lunchboxes?
Or an artist with a door obsession?
A lover of books?
A bookworm wouldn’t just settle with the house, we’d need a few accessories too!
For skiiers, and adrenalin worshippers who also like a touch of summer sun?
Cat lovers, don’t look at me like that, I haven’t forgotten you.
And of course, last but not least, a special home for all those dog lovers out there, equipped with tail, and cute puppy.
Thanks for coming on this Friday’s Quirky house tour, hope you enjoyed yourself. Have a wonderful Friday, and a lovely weekend see you again soon!
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Well let’s get into the Christmas spirit by celebrating man’s best friend
and our feline friends too.
So many authors love cats and dogs, and often play tribute to this friendship by creating animal characters or quoting their love of our furry friends.
“To his dog, every man is Napoleon; hence the constant popularity of dogs.”
—Aldous Huxley (author, Brave New World)
“When the Man waked up he said, ‘What is Wild Dog doing here?’ And the Woman said, ‘His name is not Wild Dog any more, but the First Friend, because he will be our friend for always and always and always.'”
—Rudyard Kipling (author, The Jungle Book)
“Once you have had a wonderful dog, a life without one, is a life diminished.”
—Dean Koontz (author, Whispers)
“A bone to the dog is not charity. Charity is the bone shared with the dog, when you are just as hungry as the dog.”
—Jack London (author, The Call of The Wild)
“I’ve seen a look in dogs’ eyes, a quickly vanishing look of amazed contempt, and I am convinced that basically dogs think humans are nuts.”
—John Steinbeck (author, The Grapes of Wrath)
In fact some authors love dogs so much that they argue that they are heaven bound.
“You think dogs will not be in heaven? I tell you, they will be there long before any of us.”
—Robert Louis Stevenson (author, Treasure Island)
“Heaven goes by favor. If it went by merit, you would stay out and your dog would go in.”
—Mark Twain (author, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer)
“If I have any beliefs about immortality, it is that certain dogs I have known will go to heaven, and very, very few persons.”
—James Thurber (author, The Secret Life of Walter Mitty)
“Ever consider what our dogs must think of us? I mean, here we come back from a grocery store with the most amazing haul, chicken, pork, half a cow. They must think we’re the greatest hunters on earth!”
—Anne Tyler (author, The Accidental Tourist)
And these famous actresses adore dogs too!
“Dogs never bite me. Just humans.”
—Marilyn Monroe (actress, Some Like it Hot)
“Some of my best leading men have been dogs and horses.”
—Elizabeth Taylor (actress, Cleopatra)
Dogs and cats are different, no doubt about it, and here’s why!
Owners of dogs will have noticed that, if you provide them with food and water and shelter and affection, they will think you are god. Whereas owners of cats are compelled to realize that, if you provide them with food and water and shelter and affection, they draw the conclusion that they are gods.”
― Christopher Hitchens, The Portable Atheist: Essential readings for the Nonbeliever
Dogs may be man’s best friend, but cats are a mysterious folk:
“Cats are a mysterious kind of folk. There is more passing in their minds than we are aware of.”
Sir Walter Scott.
“When I play with my cat, who knows whether she is not amusing herself with me more than I with her?”
Michel de Montaigne, French author
(1533-1592)
“Authors like cats because they are such quiet, lovable, wise creatures, and cats like authors for the same reasons.”
Robertson Davies, Playright.
“I gave my cat a bath the other day … they love it. He sat there, he enjoyed it, it was fun for me. The fur would stick on my tongue, but other than that …”
Steve Martin, Comedian
“A cat has nine lives. For three he plays, for three he strays, and for the last three he stays.”
“A cat is more intelligent than people believe, and can be taught any crime,”
― Mark Twain.
Alexander McCall Smith seems to want to make his cat the main subject of any photo he appears in, and there are similarly cuddly pictures of PG Wodehouse, Barbara Pym, Robert Graves, Ruth Rendell, Margaret Atwood (with “Fluffy”) and on and on and on.
Nobel prize–winning author Ernest Hemingway’s former home in Key West, is now open to the public as a museum, populated by as many as 60 descendants of his famous polydactyl cats. Here’s the link to find out more: http://hemingwayhome.com/
A polydactyl Cat.
Hemingway cats
Hemingway cats
My favourite Goodreads Quotes about cats:
“Women and cats will do as they please, and men and dogs should relax and get used to the idea.”
― Robert A. Heinlein
“One day I was counting the cats and I absent-mindedly counted myself.”
― Bobbie Anne Mason, Shiloh and other stories
“A cat has absolute emotional honesty: human beings, for one reason or another, may hide their feelings, but a cat does not.”
― Ernest Hemingway
“I love cats because I enjoy my home; and little by little, they become its visible soul.”
― Jean Cocteau
“Yearning for love made her feel like a cat that was always twining around ankles, meowing Pet me, pet me, look at me, love me.”
― Laini Taylor, Daughter of Smoke & Bone
“That’s the great secret of creativity. You treat ideas like cats: you make them follow you.”
― Ray Bradbury, Zen in the Art of Writing
“Holding this soft, small living creature in my lap this way, though, and seeing how it slept with complete trust in me, I felt a warm rush in my chest. I put my hand on the cat’s chest and felt his heart beating. The pulse was faint and fast, but his heart, like mine, was ticking off the time allotted to his small body with all the restless earnestness of my own.”
― Haruki Murakami, The Wind-up Bird Chronicle
On a more serious note, please remember that cats and dogs are for life, not just for Christmas:
Meet the people who give up their Christmas Day to look after cats and dogs
Article from The Mirror: “This year the RSPCA has reported an alarming increase in animals being abandoned across England and Wales – and they expect the situation to get worse over the winter months.
With nearly 2,500 cats and dogs in care this Christmas, hundreds of RSPCA volunteers spend Christmas Day with the animals, getting in extra early to make sure the cats and dogs have a special day.
And it’s lucky that they do, because the RSPCA receives 1,140 calls on Christmas Day putting immense strain on the people who choose to spend their Christmas looking after the animals.”
It’s coming to the end of my ten LA Fitness sessions, via Groupon. Has it made any difference? Yes I think I’ve noticed a few positive aspects, one I seem to be walking faster, two I have more energy, and three I do believe I may be losing a bit of weight. Hip Hip Hoorah. Though this could be due to my enforced diet, aka Gallbladder problem. Am I fit enough to survive in a Hunger Games scenario? No. Definitely not. But it’s a start, and a start is better than nothing. Anyway I don’t have the killer instinct to survive for more than a second in the Hunger Games. I’m a pussy cat, the best I could do would be a scratch, and a hiss, and a bit of feline stretching, that’s it.
I’m quite proud of my multi tasking. On the way to the gym, I read, and make notes on the bus. I must look like this nerdy book person. Well that’s ok because I suppose I fit that description quite well. Today I was reading Eleanor and Park by Rainbow Rowell. I was so engrossed, Eleanor and Park is just cute, CUTE, C-U-T-E, C – U – T – E, and for that half an hour I felt I had been transported back to the late 1980’s. Yes I remember The Smiths, Joy Division, Miami Vice. It brought back a flood of memories. It was wonderful, so wonderful that I nearly missed my stop. Fortunately I looked up and had this panicky moment when you kind of don’t know where you are and think that you’re way beyond where you should be, but it was ok, I hadn’t missed my stop. If I had missed it that would have been a nuisance as the next stop is the hospital and I didn’t fancy going there. I went there last week for a scan, upper abdomen – yes gallbladder issue. So there’s no way I fancied ending up there again. No. Once was enough. It was messy, gel all over my tummy. While I was lying there I had a bit of a nostalgic moment. The last time I had gel over my tummy I was pregnant and that was a long time ago. Happy times, funny how these kind of things bring back all sorts of memories.
Anyway, getting back to my gym session, I did my workout, ended up in the pool. It was busy, very busy, not surprising really when you consider that today is a bank holiday. So I had to avoid the other swimmers. Tricky. There was definitely this ripple effect. Too many bodies, the water was getting out of control. I prefer it when it’s quiet. Though I like the sauna and steam room when they’re busy as it’s great for eavesdropping. Yes, I admit it, I’m a terrible eavesdropper. I think it is almost compulsory if you’re a writer. You just can’t help yourself. It’s amazing what people will say in such an enclosed space, especially considering that they know that there’s just no way that people aren’t listening in. So I think it’s fair dues to blog about it. One time I was in a sauna, and these two men were chatting, confessing. One of them was admitting that he used to go to the gym without paying – not LA Fitness – I hasten to add, but some other gym. He kept doing it until he found God. Then he stopped. From this point on the conversation changed. God was mentioned a lot. A heap of a lot. I almost felt like he was in there with us in the sauna, purifying our sins with the sauna heat. Well the heat got too much for me, so I had to go. I left those two guys praising God, in the sauna. It reminded me of a comedy sketch. It was just so bizarre. I hope this doesn’t offend anybody, I’m not religious myself, but I do believe in respect, respect for other people’s views. So if I’ve offended anyone, I apologise.
Let’s see, what was I talking about, oh yes, waves. The waves reminded me of a story my dad told me, another swimming pool tale. He used to go to Portobello baths when he was a young lad. I expect there might have been a sign like this one:
Does anyone pay attention to those signs. I doubt it! They had a wave machine. He loved it. The waves would bounce him around and he had an excuse to collide with all the pretty girls! The girls pretended they needed saving and well he was happy to oblige. He played the part of a life guard. He hasn’t changed much, he still appreciates the ladies, nowadays at the age of eighty-five he gets a kiss at the end of his golf matches! My mum knows, she indulges him. Good on him, I say, why not. Life is too short not to enjoy it. Believe me.
M J Mallon YA Author and Poet 
