On Cats
"Cats is smart, allowed the old man. Course it could of been a common everday housecat. They'll tear up anything they come up on, a cat will. Housecats is smart too. Smarter'n a dog or a mule. Folks thinks they ain't on account of you cain't learn em nothin, but what it is is that they won't learn nothin. They too smart. Knowed a man oncet had a cat could talk. Him and this cat'd talk back and forth of one another like ary two people. That's one cat I kept shy of. I knowed what it was. Lots of times that happens, a body dies and their soul takes up in a cat for a spell. Specially somebody drowned or like that where they don't get buried proper" - The Orchard Keeper by Cormac McCarthy (227).