I never saw an author in my life — saving perhaps one — that did not purr as audibly as a full-grown domestic cat on having his fur smoothed the right way by a skillful hand.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (1809-1894) American poet, essayist, scholar

Article (1858-01), “The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table,” Atlantic Monthly
    (Source)

Collected in The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table, ch. 3 (1858).