From Scott Westerfeld's THE RISEN EMPIRE:

"The constellation of eyes glistened, reflecting the sunlight that
penetrated the cultured-diamond doors sliding closed being Senator Nara
Oxham. The ocular glint raised her hackles, marking as it did the eyes
of a noctural predator. On Oxham's home planet Vasthold, there ranged
human-hunting bears, paracoyotes, and feral nightdogs. On some deep,
instinctive level, Nara Oxham knew those eyes to be warnings. The
creatures were splayed - fifteen or twenty of them - on an invisible
bed of lovely gravity. They wafted like polychrome clouds down the
wide, breezy hallways of the Emperor's inner palace, carried by the
ambient movement of air. Her apathy bracelet was set to high, as always
here in the crowded capital, but sufficient sensitivity remained to
feel some measure of their inhuman thoughts. They regarded her cooly as
they drifted past, secure in their privilege, in their demigodhood, and
in their speechless wisdom, accumulated over sixteen centuries of
langour. Of course, their species had never, even in the millennia
before Imperial decree had elevated them to semidivine status, doubted
its innate superiority. They were imperious consorts, these personal
familiars of His Risen Majesty. They were Felis Domesticus Immortalis.
They were, in a word, cats. And in a few more words, cats who would
never die. Senator Nara Oxham hated cats. [...] Nara Oxham's
constituency was an entire planet, but here in the Diamond Palace the
mighty senator found herself intimidated by the housepets."

rpca readers will find a review of this book over at rasfw, but should
be aware that the Emperor's immortal cats have (so far) a distressingly
small role in the Succession books.

But a very cool, catly paragraph.

Cheers -- Pete Tillman