Characterization which somehow gets the essence of a person. | Anita Mathias: Dreaming Beneath the Spires

Look at this passage from A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving

“There was undeniably a feline quality to my mother–never in the sly or stealthy sense of the word, but in the word’s other catlike qualities:a clean, sleek, self-possessed, strokable quality. In quite a different way from Owen Meany, my mother looked touchable; I was always aware of how much people wanted, or needed, to touch her. I’m not talking only about men, although–even at my age–I was aware of how restlessly men moved their hands in her company. I mean that everyone liked to touch her–and depending on her attitude toward her toucher, my mother’s responses to being touched were feline, too. She could be so chillingly indifferent that the touching would instantly stop; she was well-coordinated and surprisingly quick and, like a cat, she could retreat from being touched–she could duck under or dart away from someone’s hand as instinctively as the rest of us can shiver. And she could respond in that other way that cats can respond, too; she could luxuriate in being touched–she could contort her body quite shamelessly, putting more and more pressure against the toucher’s hand, until (I used to imagine) anyone near enough to her could hear her purr.”