What does the author mean with "The dog gives but the cat is"? The part I don't understand is the cat part. It's from "Cats and Dogs" by H. P. Lovecraft.
Altogether, we may see that the dog appeals to those primitive emotional souls whose chief demands on the universe are for meaningless affection, aimless companionship, and flattering attention and subservience; whilst the cat reigns among those more contemplative and imaginative spirits who ask of the universe only the objective sight of poignant, ethereal beauty and the animate symbolisation of Nature's bland, relentless, reposeful, unhurried, and impersonal order and sufficiency. The dog gives, but the cat is.