There is a lot to read about her principles of what to include in a novel in her The Romantic Manifesto and The Art of Fiction.

But there are metaphorical references to cats in The Fountainhead:

"Roark was there, on a davenport in the corner, half lying, sprawled limply like a kitten. It had often astonished Keating; he had seen Roark moving with the soundless tension, the control, the precision of a cat; he had seen him relaxed, like a cat, in shapeless ease, as if his body held no single solid bone."

And:

"At the dinner table Keating did most of the talking. He seemed possessed by a talking jag. He turned over words with the sensuous abandon of a cat rolling in catnip."

And:

"And then I [Wynand] looked at that kitten. And I thought that it didn't know the things I loathed, it could never know. It was clean—clean in the absolute sense, because it had no capacity to conceive of the world's ugliness. I can't tell you what relief there was in trying to imagine the state of consciousness inside that little brain, trying to share it, a living consciousness, but clean and free. I would lie down on the floor and put my face on that cat's belly, and hear the beast purring. And then I would feel better.... There, Howard. I've called your office a rotting wharf and yourself an alley cat."

And:

"She [Dominique] thought: This is the tribute to Gail, the confidence of surrender—he relaxes like a cat—and cats don't relax except with people they like."

And:

"They were walking past a vacant lot. The wind blew an old sheet of newspaper against her [Dominique's] legs. It clung to her with a tight insistence that seemed conscious, like the peremptory caress of a cat. She thought, anything of this town had that intimate right to her. She bent, picked up the paper and began folding it, to keep it."

And this one, if you really want to stretch it:

"Next morning, he walked into the office of the editor of the Gazette, a fourth-rate newspaper in a run-down building, and asked for a job in the city room. The editor looked at his clothes and inquired, 'Can you spell cat?'

"'Can you spell anthropomorphology?' asked Wynand.

"'We have no jobs here,' said the editor."


There are many references to 'cats' in the index of Scott McConnell's, An Oral History of Ayn Rand on interviews with people who knew her. There is a photo of Ayn Rand with one of her cats in the Sures' Facets of Ayn Rand: Memoirs by Mary Ann Sures and Charles Sures, p. 126.

There are also some references to cats in Michael Berliner's The Letters of Ayn Rand, including this endorsement of cats in 1966 to the editor of Cat Fancy magazine:

"You ask whether I own cats or simply enjoy them, or both. The answer is: both. I love cats in general and own two in particular.

"You ask: 'We are assuming that you have an interest in cats, or was your subscription strictly objective?' My subscription was strictly objective, because I have an interest in cats. I can demonstrate objectively that cats are a great value, and the charter issue of Cat Fanc magazine can serve as part of the evidence. ('Objective' does not mean 'disinterested' or indifferent; it means corresponding to the facts of reality and applies both to knowledge and to values.)

"I subscribed to Cat Fancy primarily for the sake of the pictures, and found the charter issue very interesting and enjoyable."

Exactly that- I have one cat and three dogs. The cat can kick the German Shepherd's butt any day, and does so when he's annoyed.

He wrote that while he was still an Objectivist, calling it the "Visibility principle" or the "Muttnick principle" (named after his dog) that we need to "perceive ourselves" in another living being. Psychologically it's a rather incomplete and metaphorical explanation of why pets are of value to us.

Fred Gipson penned Old Yeller and other dog stories . Old Yeller was a favorite of mine as a child.

There's the most famous dog story, Lassie Come Home. It's a good tale and you learn about the nature of collies.

Very true. Right up there with Ayn.

I suppose it would be an answer to "Nick and Nora's pet", or "world's most famous wire-haired terrier".