What a luxury a cat is, the moments of shocking and startling pleasure in a day, the feel of the beast, the soft sleekness under your palm, the warmth when you wake on a cold night, the grace and charm even in a quite ordinary workaday puss. Cat walks across your room, and in that lonely stalk you see leopard or even panther, or it turns its head to acknowledge you and the yellow blaze of those eyes tells you what an exotic visitor you have here, in this household friend, the cat who purrs as you stroke, or rub his chin, or scratch his head.

When asked why Doris Lessing explained:


Doris Lessing Society
The Doris Lessing Society is dedicated to supporting the scholarly study of Lessing’s work. Alfred Tayler and his wife moved to Kermanshah Iran in order to take up a job as a clerk for the Imperial Bank of Persia and it was there that Doris was born in 1919.

Doris May Lessing CH (née Tayler; born 22 October 1919) is a British novelist poet playwright librettist biographer and short story writer. Her novels include The Grass Is Singing (1950) the sequence of five novels collectively called Children of Violence (1952–69) The Golden Notebook (1962) The Good Terrorist (1985) and five novels collectively known as Canopus in Argos: Archives (1979–1983).