God was ready to take him home

quote from Jack's Life: The Life Story of C.S. Lewis, by Douglas H. Gresham, his stepson:

“He was the finest man I ever knew in my life, and I miss him to this day. But he was ready to go. He had done all he wanted to do and said all he wanted to say; and more important still, God was ready to take him home.”

cats: to love things for themselves

How are dog people and cat people different?
By Elizabeth Landau, CNN

quotes:

Veterinarian David Bessler, senior emergency clinician at NYC Veterinary Specialists in New York City, said he was a dog person growing up, but that owning a cat has "converted " him. It hasn't changed his personality, but he can imagine that dog people and cat people have personality differences.

"To love cats, you have to be able to love things for themselves; they have their own life, they aren't necessarily dependent on you," he said. "Your dog kind of lives for you."
...
Both of those studies are mentioned in an upcoming book called "Some We Love, Some We Hate, Some We Eat: Why it is So Hard to Think Straight About Animals" by Hal Herzog, professor of psychology at Western Carolina University.
...
About 37 percent of American households have dogs and 32 percent have cats, but the cat population (82 million) is significantly higher than the dog population (72 million), said Herzog, citing 2007 data from the American Veterinary Medical Association. That's because people tend to own multiple cats, as they are more amenable to many people's lifestyles, he said.

People tend to gravitate toward the animals they were raised with, Herzog said. Cat owners tend to be raised in cat families, and dog owners tend to be raised in dog families. In fact, one study found the animal you like is the one your grandparents lived with, he said.

The field of anthrozoology, the study of how animals and people relate to one another, only recently took off, Herzog said.

"I think our interactions with animals shed a lot of light on larger issues in human psychology," he said. "With pets it's things like attachment and why we're altruistic toward other creatures, especially creatures that we're not genetically related to."

Find this article at:
http://www.cnn.com/2010/HEALTH/01/13/
cat.dog.personality/index.html?hpt=Sbin

someone who appreciates you

“Your heart just breaks, that’s all. But you can’t judge, or point fingers. You just have to be lucky enough to find someone who appreciates you.”

~ Audrey Hepburn

Loving Dogs

"The better I get to know men, the more I find myself loving dogs."

~ Charles de Gaulle, President of France, 1958-69

http://www.answers.com/topic/charles-de-gaulle
"Charles de Gaulle rose to the rank of general and was serving as France's minister for National Defense and War in June, 1940, when France capitulated to Germany early in World War II. DeGaulle escaped to Britain, where he made a famous broadcast calling on the French people to resist (earning him the nickname of the "Man of June 18, 1940"). DeGaulle formed the Free French forces and led the provisional government that ruled France after it was retaken from Germany. After the war he was elected head of the French government."

Marriage benefits men the most

http://www.cnn.com/2010/LIVING/01/05/
elizabeth.gilbert.marriage.book/index.html

'Eat, Pray, Love' author tackles marriage
By A. Pawlowski, CNN
STORY HIGHLIGHTS

• In "Committed," Elizabeth Gilbert spends months traveling and researching marriage
• Gilbert, boyfriend were "sentenced to wed" to avoid immigration problems
• "Women go into marriage with such high expectations," Gilbert says
• Julia Roberts will play her in the film version of Gilbert's memoir, "Eat, Pray, Love"
  

excerpt:

CNN: Marriage has often been portrayed as something that protects women. But you found in your book that it benefits men the most. Were you surprised by that?

Gilbert: It's surprising, though it shouldn't be. Looking at study after study, it becomes quite chilling to see how very much benefited men are by marriage. Married men perform in life exceptionally better than single men, they live longer, they're richer, they're happier.

CNN: And yet men are often reluctant to enter into marriage.

Gilbert: Which is the big irony. They have to be dragged kicking and screaming into something that will benefit them enormously in life. And the cruel irony is that the people who drag them kicking and screaming into it -- the women -- are the ones who often find that they've gotten the short end of the stick.

Women give more and as a result they give up more.

I think the other problem is that women go into marriage with such high expectations, really inflated romantic ideas about what this relationship is going to be. Men go into marriage with virtually no expectations whatsoever. Ten years later, the men are delightfully surprised to find out that it's actually kind of nice, and the women have sort of had to take a nose dive from what they thought it was going to be.
...

There's a wonderful expression, a Brazilian adage, that says most people never learn anything at all, very smart people learn from their own mistakes, and the geniuses learn from other people's mistakes.