Nature & Animals Quote by William S. Burroughs

Burroughs turns a domestic animal into a miniature apocalypse, and the move is pure Burroughs: take what we think we know, push it past tastefulness, and dare us to admit we’re thrilled. A cat’s fury isn’t framed as “cute” or “misbehavior” but as an aesthetic event, “beautiful” in the same way fire is beautiful when you’re not the one getting burned. The phrase “pure cat flame” refuses metaphorical modesty; it insists the animal has its own elemental physics, irreducible and self-justifying.

The sensory overload does the real work. Hair “standing up” becomes an electrical storm, “crackling blue sparks,” eyes “blazing and sputtering.” Burroughs stacks verbs like a voltage surge, accelerating the scene into something hallucinatory. That amplification isn’t just descriptive; it’s a worldview. In Burroughs’ writing, the body is a machine for signals and compulsions, and “rage” reads less like a moral failing than a raw discharge. The cat isn’t angry for a reason you can litigate; it’s angry because the switch flipped. Watching it, the human observer becomes complicit, admiring a force that bypasses rational control.

Context matters: Burroughs is a chronicler of altered states and predatory systems, someone who treats civility as a thin membrane over animal intensity. This little vignette smuggles in a bigger suspicion: that our prized composure is just better grooming, and beneath it the same crackle waits. The cat gets to be honest about it, incandescent and unashamed.