Cats and Dogs by H.P. Lovecraft.

Being told of the cat and dog fight about to occur in the Blue Pencil Club, a new thing for

your circle, perhaps, though not unfamiliar to amateurdom as a whole. I cannot resist contributing

a few to massac yowls and sibilance upon my side of the dispute, though conscious that the word of a

venerable ex-member can scarcely have much weight against the brilliancy of such still active adherence

as may bark upon the other side. Aware of my ineptitude at argument, my valued correspondent,

curator James Ferdinand Morton of Patterson, has sent me the records of a

similar controversy in the New York Tribune, in which Mr. Carl Van Doren is on my side, and Mr. Albert

Payson Terhune on that of the canine tribe. From this, I would be glad to plagiarize such data as I need,

but Mr. Morton, with genuinely

Machiavellian subtlety, has furnished me with only a part of the feline section, while

submitting the dogish brief in full. No doubt he imagines that this arrangement, in view of my own

emphatic bias, makes for something like ultimate fairness, but for me it is exceedingly inconvenient,

since it will force me to be more or less original in several parts of the ensuing remarks.

Between dogs and cats, my degree of choice is so great that it would never occur to me to compare

the two. I have no active dislike for dogs, any more than I have for monkeys, human beings, negroes,

cows, sheep, or pterodactyls, but for the cat I have entertained a particular respect and affection

ever since the earliest days of my infancy.

In its flawless grace and superior self-sufficiency, I have seen a symbol of the perfect beauty and bland

impersonality of the universe itself, objectively considered.

And in its air of silent mystery, there resides for me all the wonder and fascination

of the unknown.

...