Some great cat quotes and sayings people have made about Cats

  • One of the problems of taking things apart and seeing how they work – supposing you’re trying to find out how a cat works–you take that cat apart to see how it works, what you’ve got in your hands is a non-working cat. The cat wasn’t a sort of clunky mechanism that was susceptible to our available tools of analysis.(Douglas Adams)
  • Never play cat and mouse games if you’re a mouse. (Don Addis)
  • A cat is there when you call her – if she doesn’t have anything better to do. (Bill Adler)
  • I named my kitten Rose – fur soft as a petal, claws sharper than thorns. (Astrid Alauda)
  • But buds will be roses, and kittens, cats – more’s the pity! (Louisa May Alcott)
  • Two cats can live as cheaply as one, and their owner has twice as much fun. (Lloyd Alexander)
  • Most cats do not approach humans recklessly. The possibility of concealed weapons, clods or sticks, tends to make them reserved. Homeless cats in particular – with some justification, unfortunately – consider humans their natural enemies. Much ceremony must be observed, and a number of diplomatic feelers put out before establishing a state of truce. (Lloyd Alexander)
  • If the pull of the outside world is strong, there is also a pull towards the human. The cat may disappear on its own errands, but sooner or later, it returns once again for a little while, to greet us with its own type of love. (Lloyd Alexander)
  • In the middle of a world that had always been a bit mad, the cat walks with confidence. (Rosanne Amberson)
  • Cats are only human, they have their faults. (Kingsley Amis)
  • Places to look: behind the books in the bookshelf, any cupboard with a gap too small for any cat to squeeze through, the top of anything sheer, under anything too low for a cat to squash under and inside the piano. (Roseanne Ambrose-Brown)
  • Cats talk with their tails. (Cleveland Amory)
  • As anyone who has ever been around a cat for any length of time well knows, cats have enormous patience with the limitations of the human kind. (Cleveland Amory)
  • …one of the ways in which cats show happiness is by sleeping. (Cleveland Amory)
  • To anyone who has ever been owned by a cat, it will come as no surprise that there are all sorts of things about your cat you will never, as long as you live, forget. Not the least of these is the first sight of him or her. (Cleveland Amory)
  • In the middle of a world that has always been a bit mad, the cat walks with confidence. (Roseanne Anderson)
  • Passion for place – there is no greater urge in feline nature. (Paul Annixter)
  • I think my favorite thing in the house has to be the cat…mainly because she’s just like a big piece of noisy Velcro when you toss her at the sofa. (Michelle Argabrite)
  • Cruel, but composed and bland,
    Dumb, inscrutable and grand,
    So Tiberius might have sat,
    Had Tiberius been a cat.
    (Matthew Arnold)

  • A dog will show his love by jumping on you at the front door. A cat will show his love by ignoring you, and then curling up next to you when you need it most. (Danielle Asson)
  • Cats names are more for human benefit. They give one a certain degree more confidence that the animal belongs to you. (Alan Ayckbourn)
  • I cannot exist without a cat…Life would not be worth living without a cat. (Peggy Bacon)
  • Cats’ hearing apparatus is built to allow the human voice to easily go in one ear and out the other. (Stephen Baker)
  • Kittens are born with their eyes shut. They open them in about six days, take a look around, then close them again for the better part of their lives. (Stephen Baker)
  • Most beds sleep up to six cats. Ten cats without the owner. (Stephen Baker)
  • As a housepet, I’m overqualified.(Stephen Baker speaking as a cat in the book How to Live with a Neurotic Cat)
  • Cats are notoriously sore losers. Coming in second best, especially to someone as poorly coordinated as a human being, grates their sensibility. (Stephen Baker)
  • To bathe a cat takes bruteStephen Baker force, perseverance, courage of conviction – and a cat. The last ingredient is usually hardest to come by. ()
  • Of all the toys available, none is better designed than the owner himself. A large multipurpose plaything, its parts can be made to move in almost any direction. It comes completely assembled, and it makes a sound when you jump on it. (Stephen Baker)
  • She knows that nine lives are enough. (Oswald Barron)
  • If I die before my cat, I want a little of my ashes put in his food so I can live inside him. (Drew Barrymore)
  • There’s no need for a piece of sculpture in a home that has a cat. (Wesley Bates)
  • Both ardent lovers and austere scholars, when once they come to the years of discretion, love cats, so strong and gentle, the pride of the household, who like them are sensitive to the cold, and sedentary. (Charles Baudelaire)
  • Drowsing, they take the noble attitude of a great sphinx, who, in a desert land, sleeps always, dreaming dreams that have no end. (Charles Baudelaire)
  • It is easy to understand why the rabble dislike cats. A cat is beautiful; it suggests ideas of luxury, cleanliness, voluptuous pleasures. (Charles Baudelaire)
  • Any household with at least one feline member has no need for an alarm clock. (Louise A. Belcher)
  • Cats hate water only when it is dumped on them, as who wouldn’t? Given the opportunity, they will fish diligently in the neighborhood fish ponds. (Eric Temple Bell)
  • You are my cat and I am your human. (Hilaire Belloc)
  • A plate is distasteful to a cat, a newspaper still worse; they like to eat sticky pieces of meat sitting on a cushioned chair or a nice Persian rug. (Margaret Benson)
  • A cat must either have beauty and breeding, or it must have a profession. (Margaret Benson)
  • The cat is above all things, a dramatist. (Margaret Benson)
  • As every cat owner knows, nobody owns a cat. (Ellen Perry Berkeley)
  • Cat: a soft indestructible automaton provided by nature to be kicked when things go wrong in the domestic circle. (Ambrose Bierce)
  • Cats, by means of their whiskers, seem to possess something like an additional sense: these have, perhaps, some analogy to the antennae of moths and butterflies. (Rev. W. Bingley)
  • If a cat spoke, it would say things like “Hey, I don’t see the problem here.” (Roy Blount, Jr.)
  • Cats have intercepted my footsteps at the ankle for so long that my gait, both at home and on tour, has been compared to that of a man wading through low surf. (Roy Blount, Jr.)
  • Dogs come when they’re called. Cats take a message and get back to you later. (Mary Bly)
  • I myself think to have a cat is more important than to have a Bible. (R. H. Blyth)
  • Cats are cool. They have style, personality, sophistication, and just the right amount of confidence. (Michael Bolton)
  • A man who was loved by 300 women singled me out to live with him. Why? I was the only one without a cat. (Elayne Boosler)
  • Who among us hasn’t envied a cat’s ability to ignore the cares of daily life and to relax completely? (Karen Brademeyer)
  • The real measure of a day’s heat is the length of a sleeping cat. (Charles J. Brady)
  • Cats never strike a pose that isn’t photogenic. (Lillian Jackson Braun)
  • A cat isn’t fussy – just so long as you remember he likes his milk in the shallow, rose-patterned saucer and his fish on the blue plate. From which he will take it, and eat it off the floor. (Arthur Bridges)
  • Cats have an infallible understanding of total concentration – and get between you and it. (Arthur Bridges)
  • Cats can work out mathematically the exact place to sit that will cause most inconvenience. (Pam Brown)
  • It was difficult to feel vexed by a creature that burst into a chorus of purring as soon as I spoke to him. (Philip Brown)
  • In order to keep a true perspective of one’s importance, everyone should have a dog that will worship him and a cat that will ignore him. (Dereke Bruce)
  • The reason cats climb is so that they can look down on almost every other animal – it’s also the reason they hate birds. (K. C. Buffington)
  • Prowling his own quiet backyard or asleep by the fire, he is still only a whisker away from the wilds. (Jean Burden)
  • A dog, I have always said, is prose; a cat is a poem. (Jean Burden)
  • A cat sleeping on your bed is a far more pleasant companion than a ninety-pound Labrador with bad breath. Furthermore, cats do not snore or break wind. (H. Monger Burdock)
  • I love cats. I even think we have one at home. (Edward Burlingame)
  • The cat does not offer services. The cat offers itself. Of course he wants care and shelter. You don’t buy love for nothing. Like all pure creatures, cats are practical. (William S. Burroughs)
  • Anyone who claims that a cat cannot give a dirty look either has never kept a cat or is singularly unobservant. (Maurice Burton)
  • If we treated everyone we meet with the same affection we bestow upon our favorite cat, they, too, would purr. (Martin Buxbaum)
  • To err is human, to purr feline. (Robert Byrne)
  • The city of cats and the city of men exist one inside the other, but they are not the same city. (Italo Calvino)
  • Most cats, when they are Out want to be In, and vice versa, and often simultaneously. (Dr. Louis J. Camuti)
  • There is something about the presence of a cat…that seems to take the bite out of being alone. (Dr. Louis J. Camuti)
  • In my experience, cats and beds seem to be a natural combination. (Dr. Louis J. Camuti)
  • Cat people are different, to the extent that they generally are not conformists. How could they be, with a cat running their lives? (Dr. Louis J. Camuti)
  • Work – other people’s work – is an intolerable idea to a cat. Can you picture cats herding sheep or agreeing to pull a cart? They will not inconvenience themselves to the slightest degree. (Dr. Louis J. Camuti)
  • A cat determined not to be found can fold itself up like a pocket handkerchief if it wants to. (Dr. Louis J. Camuti)
  • Quite obviously a cat trusts human beings; but she doesn’t trust a cat because she knows her better than we do.(Karel Capek)
  • Cats don’t like change without their consent. (Roger A. Caras)
  • Cats can be cooperative when something feels good, which, to a cat, is the way everything is supposed to feel as much of the time as possible. (Roger A. Caras)
  • The cat is a creature of most refined and subtle perceptions naturally. (Roger A. Caras)
  • Cats are like greatness: Some people are born into cat-loving families, some achieve cats, and some have cats thrust upon them. (William H. A. Carr)
  • Few people are mugwumps about the cat. (William H. A. Carr)
  • Cats always know whether people like or dislike them. They do not always care enough to do anything about it. (Winifred Carriere)
  • If a cat did not put a firm paw down now and then, how could his human remain possessed. (Winifred Carriere)
  • I suspect that many an ailurophobe hates cats only because he feels they are better than he is – more honest, more secure, more loved, more whatever he is not. (Winifred Carriere)
  • It is a very inconvenient habit of kittens that whatever you say to them, they always purr. (Lewis Carroll)
  • If one owns a pretty cat, it’s best to avoid the furrier. (Jacob Cats)
  • The love of dress is very marked in this attractive animal. He is proud of the lustre of his coat, and cannot endure that a hair of it shall lie the wrong way. (Jules Champfleury)
  • There is no more intrepid explorer than a kitten. He makes perilous voyages into cellar and attic, he scales the roofs of neighboring houses, he thrusts his little inquiring nose into half-shut doors…he gets himself into every kind of trouble, and he’s always sorry when it is too late. (Jules Champfleury)
  • I said something which gave you to think I hated cats. But gad, sir, I am one of the most fanatical cat lovers in the business. If you hate them, I may learn to hate you. If your allergies hate them, I will tolerate the situation to the best of my ability. (Raymond Chandler)
  • Whether they be the musician cats in my band or the real cats of the world, they all got style. (Ray Charles)
  • Two things are aesthetically perfect in the world – the clock and the cat. (Emile Auguste Chartier)
  • The cat lives alone. He has no need of society. He obeys only when he wishes, he pretends to sleep the better to see, and scratches everything he can scratch. (Francois Rene de Chateaubriand)
  • When we caress her, she stretches herself and arches her back responsively; but this is because she feels an agreeable sensation, not because she takes a silly satisfaction, like the dog, in faithfully loving a thankless master.(Francois Rene de Chateaubriand)
  • Take a cat, nourish it well with milk
    And tender meat, make it a couch of silk,
    But let it see a mouse along the wall
    And it abandones milk and meat and all.

    (Chaucer)

  • I like pigs. Dogs look up to us. Cats look down on us. Pigs treat us as equals. (Winston Churchill)
  • Getting a cat is a greater commitment than getting married. (Seymour and Paula Chwast)
  • The thing about cats,
    As you may find,
    Is that no one knows
    What they have in mind.
    (John Ciardi)

  • Even the stupidest cat seems to know more than any dog. (Eleanor Clark)
  • Momma loves morals and Papa loves cats.(Susy Clemens)
  • I love my cats because I love my home, and little by little they become its visible soul. (Jean Cocteau)
  • There are no ordinary cats. (Colette)
  • Time spent with cats is never wasted. (Colette)
  • By associating with the cat, one only risks becoming richer. (Colette)
  • I am indebted to the species of the cat for a particular kind of honorable deceit, for a great control over myself, for a characteristic aversion to brutal sounds, and for the need to keep silent for long period of time. (Colette)
  • Our perfect companions never have fewer than four feet. (Colette)
  • My cat does not talk as respectfully to me as I do to her. (Colette)
  • There stands before you, gray like all the other grays but one whom you won’t confuse, having seen her once, with any other gray cat, she who rejects the names of queens, the childish diminutives, and is called – as if she were the only one in the world – Cat. (Colette)
  • O cat of ashen coat! To the uninitiated you look like every other gray cat on earth, lazy, oblivious, morose, somewhat listless, neuter, bored…but I know you to be wildly tender, and whimsical, jealous to the point of starving yourself, talkative, paradoxically awkward, and, on occasion, as tough as a young mastiff. (Colette)
  • A cat cares for you only as a source of food, security, and a place in the sun. Her high self-sufficiency is her charm. (Charles Horton Cooley)
  • We need a word for all the kitty-prints that are all over my windshield because the cats like to lie on my hood when the car is still warm. (Megan Coughlin)
  • I’m aloof, I like to run around outside, but I also like to curl up in warm spots. I eat fish. (Megan Coughlin explaining why she would make a good cat)
  • A poet’s cat, sedate and grave
    As a poet well could wish to have…
    (William Cowper)

  • Time, that spoils all things, will, I suppose, make her also a cat…For no wisdom that she may gain by experience and reflection hereafter will compensate for the loss of her present hilarity. (William Cowper)
  • The cat lives his own life; he expects you to live yours. (Nelson A. Crawford)
  • If a cat does something, we call it instinct; if we do the same thing, for the same reason, we call it intelligence. (Will Cuppy)
  • Cats come and go without ever leaving. (Martha Curtis)
  • One cat in a house is a sign of loneliness, two of barrenness, and three of sodomy. (Edward Dahlberg)
  • There is one way in which cats differ from all other animals and that is in the effect they have on human beings. (Patricia Dale-Green)
  • The cat has always been associated with the moon. Like the moon it comes to life at night, escaping from humanity and wandering over housetops with its eyes beaming out through the darkness. (Patricia Dale-Green)
  • I had been told that the training procedure with cats was difficult. It’s not. Mine had me trained in two days. (Bill Dana)
  • To respect the cat is the beginning of the aesthetic sense. (Erasmus Darwin)
  • Authors like cats because they are such quiet, lovable, wise creatures, and cats like authors for the same reasons. (Robertson Davies)
  • The great charm of cats is their rampant egotism, their devil-may-care attitude toward responsibility, their disinclination to earn an honest dollar…cats are disdainful of everything but their own immediate interests. (Robertson Davies)
  • The kitten has a luxurious, Bohemian, unpuritanical nature. It eats six meals a day, plays furiously with a toy mouse and a piece of rope, and suddenly falls into a deep sleep whenever the fit takes it. It never feels the necessity to do anything to justify its existence; it does not want to be a Good Citizen; it has never heard of Service. It knows that it is beautiful and delightful, and it considers that a sufficient contribution to the general good. And in return for its beauty and charm it expects fish, meat, and vegetables, a comfortable bed, a chair by the grate fire, and endless petting. (Robertson Davies)
  • The smallest feline is a masterpiece. (Leonardo da Vinci)
  • Cats are just little hair factories. (James Davis, DVM)
  • Way down deep, we’re all motivated by the same urges. Cats have the courage to live by them. (Jim Davis)
  • Cats instinctively know the precise moment their owners will awaken…then they awaken them ten minutes earlier.(Jim Davis)
  • They say a cat always lands on his feet, but they don’t mention the pain. (as Garfield the cat) (Jim Davis)
  • The cat is the only animal which accepts the comforts but rejects the bondage of domesticity. (Georges Louis Leclerc de Buffon)
  • In the night all cats are gray. (Miguel de Cervantes)
  • Those who will play with cats must expect to get scratched. (Miguel de Cervantes)
  • Cats know not how to pardon. (Jean de la Fontaine)
  • I love cats, I adore cats, and may be forgiven for putting one in the sky, after sixty years of hard work. (J. J. L. de Lalande concerning his efforts to launch a cat into space)
  • Everything that moves, serves to interest and amuse a cat. He is convinced that nature is busying herself with his diversion; he can conceive of no other purpose in the universe. (F. A. Paradis de Moncrif)
  • When I play with my cat, who knows if I am not a pastime for her more than she is to me? (Michel deMontaigne)
  • Cats do not go for a walk to get somewhere but to explore. (Sidney Denham)
  • We tie bright ribbons around their necks, and occasionally little tinkling bells, and we affect to think that they are as sweet and vapid as the coy name “kitty” by which we call them would imply. It is a curious illusion. For purring beside our fireplaces and pattering along our back fences, we have got a wild beast as uncowed and uncorrupted as any under heaven. (Alan Devoe)
  • If he is comic, it is only because of the incongruity of so demure a look and so wild a heart. (Alan Devoe)
  • When a cat chooses to be friendly, it’s a big deal, because a cat is picky. (Mike Deupree)
  • Does the father figure in your cat’s life ever clean the litter box? My husband claims that men lack the scooping gene. (Barbara L. Diamond)
  • If there were to be a universal sound depicting peace, I would surely vote for the purr. (Barbara L. Diamond)
  • Your cat may never have to hunt farther than the kitchen counter for its supper nor face a predator more fierce than the vacuum cleaner. (Barbara L. Diamond)
  • What greater gift than the love of a cat? (Charles Dickens)
  • A cat stretches from one end of my childhood to the other. (Blaga Dimitrova)
  • Some people say that cats are sneaky, evil and cruel. True, and they have many other fine qualities as well.(Missy Dizick)
  • Confound the cats! All cats–alway–
    Cats of all colours, black, white, grey;
    By night a nuisance and by day–
    Confound the cats!
    (Rev. Orlando Thomas Dobbin)

  • There are people who reshape the world by force or argument, but the cat just lies there, dozing; and the world quietly reshapes itself to suit his comfort and convenience. (Allen and Ivy Dodd)
  • What’s virtue in a man can’t be vice in a cat. (Mary Abigail Dodge)
  • Experience is valuable in most human endeavors, but the problem of getting a cat down out of a tree is new every time it arises. (Francis Duffy)
  • No amount of time can erase the memory of a good cat, and no amount of masking tape can ever totally remove his fur from your couch. (Leo Dworken)
  • In the beginning, God created man, but seeing him so feeble, He gave him the cat. (Warren Eckstein)

    li>Cats are independent, but completely loyal friends for life. (Anthony Edwards)

  • People that don’t like cats haven’t met the right one yet. (Deborah A. Edwards)
  • Purring would seem to be, in her case, an automatic safety valve device for dealing with happiness overflow. (Monica Edwards)
  • You see, wire telegraph is a kind of a very, very long cat. You pull his tail in New York and his head is meowing in Los Angeles. Do you understand this? And radio operates exactly the same way: you send signals here, they receive them there. The only difference is that there is no cat. (Albert Einstein)
  • I’m not one o’ those as can see the cat i’ the dairy, an’ wonder what she’s come after. (George Eliot)
  • Who can tell what just criticisms Murr the cat may be passing on us beings of wider speculation? (George Eliot)
  • When a Cat adopts you there is nothing to be done about it except to put up with it until the wind changes. (T. S. Eliot)
  • Before a cat will condescend
    To treat you as a trusted friend,
    Some little token of esteem
    Is needed, like a dish of cream
    (T. S. Eliot)

  • If ’twere not for my cat and dog, I think I could not live. (Ebenezer Elliott)
  • Do you see that kitten chasing so prettily her own tail? If you could look with her eyes, you might see her surrounded with hundreds of figures performing complex dramas, with tragic and comic issues, long conversations, many characters, many ups and downs of fate. (Ralph Waldo Emerson)
  • Nature abhors a vacuum, but not as much as cats do. (Lee Entrekin)
  • The cat: an animal that’ so unpredictable, you can never tell in advance how it will ignore you the next time. (Evan Esar)
  • A creature that never cries over spilt milk: a cat. (Evan Esar)
  • Some cats is blind,
    And stone-deaf some,
    But ain’t no cat
    Wuz ever dumb.
    (Anthony Henderson Euwer)

  • Cats are peaceful and tranquil – they bring calmness with their serene personalities. (Chris Evert)
  • You own a dog; you feed a cat. (Jim Fiebig)
  • The clever cat eats cheese and breathes down rat holes with baited breath. (W. C. Fields)
  • When you’re special to a cat, you’re special indeed – she brings to you the gift of her preference of you, the sight of you, the sound of your voice, the touch of your hand. (Lenore Fleischer)
  • While you might see a cat on a hot tin roof, a dog on a hot tin roof would be yowling its head off. (Dr. Bruce Fogle)
  • If the claws didn’t retract, cats would be like Velcro. (Dr. Bruce Fogle)
  • Cats are forever. (François Fossier)
  • He swings from the chandelier, he paws my peanut butter, and he knocks over my drink in the most unfortunate places in the house – but I still love him like crazy. It’s like a hairball in my heart. (François Fossier)
  • They purr to signal a relaxed mood, And their purring may also help relax them and those around them who feel and hear their purring – like getting a nice massage in sound. (Michael W. Fox, DVM)
  • The cat in gloves catches no mice. (Benjamin Franklin)
  • Four little Persians, but only one looked in my direction. I extended a tentative finger and two soft paws clung to it. There was a contented sound of purring, I suspect on both our parts. (George Freedley)
  • The smart cat doesn’t let on that he is. (H. G. Frommer)
  • Nothing’s more playful than a young cat, nor more grave than an old one. (Thomas Fuller)
  • I can see stopping a car for a dog. But a cat? You squish a cat and go on. (James Gallagher)
  • “What is the appeal about cats?” he said kindly. “I’ve always wanted to know.” “They don’t care if you like them. They haven’t the slightest notion of gratitude, and they never pretend. They take what you have to offer, and away they go.” (Mavis Gallant)
  • I think of a woman as something like myself.(Paul Gallico translating from cat language)
  • All you have to remember is Rule 1: When in doubt – wash. (Paul Gallico)
  • Loneliness is comforted by the closeness and touch of fur to fur, skin to skin – or skin to fur. (Paul Gallico)
  • The cat is the only non-gregarious domestic animal. (Francis Galton)
  • Don’t think that I’m silly for liking it, I just happen to like the simple little things, and I love cats! (Michelle Gardner)
  • Her function is to sit and be admired. (Georgina Strickland Gates)
  • The cat is a dilettante in fur. (Theophile Gautier)
  • Dynasties of cats, as numerous as the dynasties of the Pharaohs, succeed each other under my roof. The memory of the cats we have lost fades like the memory of men. (Theophile Gautier)
  • Sometimes he sits at your feet looking into your face with an expression so gentle and caressing that the depth of this gaze startles you. Who can believe that there is no soul behind those luminous eyes! (Theophile Gautier)
  • It is a matter to gain the affection of a cat. He is a philosophical animal, tenacious of his own habits, fond of order and neatness, and disinclined to extravagant sentiment. He will be your friend, if he finds you worthy of friendship, but not your slave. He keeps his free will though he loves, and will not do for you what he thinks unreasonable; but if he once gives himself to you, it is with absolute confidence and fidelity of affection. (Theophile Gautier)
  • God has created the cat to give man the pleasure of caressing the tiger. (Theophile Gautier)
  • The catlike man is one upon whom no tricks can be played with success. (Delphine Gay)
  • Cats know how to obtain food without labor, shelter without confinement, and love without penalties. (W. L. George)
  • It depends on what is in my house. If there was a cat, and my works, I would save the cat. A cat’s life is more important than art.(Alberto Giacometti, when asked which of his sculptures he would rescue from a fire)
  • For a dyed-in-the-wool author nothing is as dead as a book once it is written…She is rather like a cat whose kittens have grown up. While they were a-growing she was passionately interested in them but now they seem hardly to belong to her – and probably she is involved with another batch of kittens as I am involved with other writing.
    (Rumer Godden)

  • These guys [his cats Curly, Larry and Moe] entertain, love and are always there for me. I can never express how much I care for these three. All of my cats are adopted and all show their gratitude on a daily basis. I don’t know where I would be without them. (Bill Goldberg)
  • Cats are the ultimate narcissists. You can tell this by all the time they spend on personal grooming. Dogs aren’t like this. A dog’s idea of personal grooming is to roll in a dead fish. (James Gorman)
  • Cats don’t bark and act brave when they see something small in fur or feathers – they kill it. Dogs tend to bravado. They’re braggarts. In the great evolutionary drama, the dog is Sergeant Bilko, the cat is Rambo. (James Gorman)
  • Do not meddle in the affairs of cats, for they are subtle and will piss on your computer. (Bruce Graham)
  • After scolding one’s cat one looks into its face and is seized by the ugly suspicion that it understood every word. And has filed it for reference. (Charlotte Gray)
  • People meeting for the first time suddenly relax if they find they both have cats. And plunge into anecdote. (Charlotte Gray)
  • Cats were put into the world to disprove the dogma that all things were created to serve man. (Paul Gray)
  • One must love a cat on its own terms. (Paul Gray)
  • Cats have always been associated with the Moon. Like the Moon, they come to life at night, escaping from humanity and wandering over housetops with their eyes beaming out through the darkness. (Patricia Dale Green)
  • There is, incidently, no way of talking about cats that enables one to come off as a sane person. (Dan Greenberg)
  • Cats are dangerous companions for writers because cat watching is a near-perfect method of writing avoidance. (Dan Greenberg)
  • Maybe in the future we should add one more question to those we ask of presidential candidates – we should ask them where they stand on cats. Better still, we should demand to see the cats these candidates say they have raised, just to make sure we are not having the fur pulled over our eyes. (Gilbert Gude)
  • The really great thing about cats is their endless variety. One can pick a cat to fit almost any kind of decor, color scheme, income, personality, mood. But under the fur; whatever color it may be, there still lies, essentially unchanged, one of the world’s free souls. (Eric Gurney)
  • Cat lovers can readily be identified. Their clothes always look old and well used. Their sheets look like bath towels and their bath towels look like a collection of knitting mistakes. (Eric Gurney)
  • When you come upon your cat, deep in meditation, staring thoughtfully at something that you can’t see, just remember that your cat is, in fact, running the universe. (Bonni Elizabeth Hall (and Missycat))
  • Which is the more beautiful, feline movement or feline stillness? (Elizabeth Hamilton)
  • What’s virtue in a man can’t be virtue in a cat. (Gail Hamilton)
  • Apparently, through scientific research, it has been determined that a cat’s affection gland is stimulated by snoring, thus explaining my cat’s uncontrollable urge to rub against my face at 2 a.m. (Terri L. Haney)
  • Okay, cats will never bring you pictures they’ve drawn in school, but they may give you a dead mouse. What parent could resist that gift? (Terri L. Haney)
  • Who hath a better friend than a cat? (William Hardwin)
  • Cats do not declare their love much; they enact it, by their myriad invocations of our pleasure. (Vicki Hearne)
  • How we behave towards cats here below determines out status in heaven. (Robert A. Heinlein)
  • Women and cats will do as they please, and men and dogs should relax and get used to the idea. (Robert A. Heinlein)
  • No catnip tree
    Could offer bliss
    Of magnitude
    To equal this
    As in a transport
    Of delight
    My spaced-out cougar
    Spends the night
    His nose in cozy
    Rendezvous
    With my malodorous
    Jogging shoe.
    (Dorothy Heller)

  • One cat just leads to another. (Ernest Hemingway)
  • True calendars, as Pusses eare
    Washt o’re, to tell what change is neare.
    (Robert Herrick)

  • A cat has absolute emotional honesty: human beings, for one reason or another, may hide their feelings, but a cat does not. (Robert Herrick)
  • There are few things in life more heartwarming than to be welcomed by a cat. (Tay Hohoff)
  • There is no ‘cat language.’ Painful as it is for us to admit, they don’t need one! (Barbara Holland)
  • A catless writer is almost inconceivable. It’s a perverse taste, really, since it would be easier to write with a herd of buffalo in the room than even one cat; they make nests in the notes and bite the end of the pen and walk on the typewriter keys. (Barbara Holland)
  • Essentially, you do not so much teach your cat as bribe him. (Lynn Hollyn)
  • If left to their own devices, felines tend to nap and nibble throughout the day and night, scarcely differentiating between the two. (Lynn Hollyn)
  • If purring could be encapsulated, it’d be the most powerful anti-depressant on the pharmaceutical market. (Alexis F. Hope)
  • The best kind of alarm clock is the purring kind. (Alexis F. Hope)
  • I have noticed that what cats most appreciate in a human being is not the ability to produce food which they take for granted–but his or her entertainment value. (Geoffrey Household)
  • It doesn’t do to be sentimental about cats; the best ones don’t respect you for it. (Susan Howatch)
  • The way to keep a cat is to try to chase it away. (E. W. Howe)
  • In his castle
    He is King
    And I his vassal.
    (Mildred R. Howland)

  • If you want to be a psychological novelist and write about human beings, the best thing you can do is keep a pair of cats. (Aldous Huxley)
  • No man has ever dared to manifest his boredom so insolently as does a Siamese tomcat. (Aldous Huxley)
  • In the matter of animals I love only cats, but I love them unreasonably for their qualities and in spite of their numerous faults. I have only one, but I could not live without a cat. (J. K. Huysmans)
  • A cat can be trusted to purr when she is pleased, which is more than can be said for human beings. (William Ralph Inge)
  • Cats are glorious creatures who must on no accounts be underestimated…Their eyes are fathomless depths of cat-world mysteries. (Lesley Anne Ivory)
  • After extensive research, I have determined that cats do have nine lives. But this has made for some awkward moments on the autopsy table since you can never really tell which life is nine. (David James)
  • A cat’s got her own opinion of human beings. She don’t say much, but you can tell enough to make you anxious not to hear the whole of it. (Jerome K. Jerome)
  • The domestic cat seems to have greater confidence in itself than in anyone else. (Lawrence N. Johnson)
  • Some people say man is the most dangerous animal on the planet. Obviously those people have never met an angry cat. (Lillian Johnson)
  • Cats keep their cool, no matter what. Even when they do things like fall or lose their balance, they’ll walk away with an attitude that seems to say, ‘I meant to do that.’ (Michael Jordan)
  • Is it yet another survival of jungle instinct, this hiding away from prying eyes at important times? Or merely a gesture of independence, a challenge to man and his stupid ways? (Michael Joseph)
  • All cats are possessed of a proud spirit, and the surest way to forfeit the esteem of a cat is to treat him as an inferior being. (Michael Joseph)
  • Never miss an opportunity to hold a kitten. (Keeba)
  • Cats are intended to teach us that not everything in nature has a function. (Garrison Keilor)
  • Meow is like aloha – it can mean anything. (Hank Ketchum)
  • The Woman laughed and said, “You are the Cat who walks by himself, and all places are alike to you. You are neither a friend nor a servant. You have said it yourself. Go away and walk by yourself in all places alike.”
    Then Cat pretended to be sorry and said, “Must I never come into the Cave? Must I never sit by the warm fire? Must I never drink the warm white milk? You are very wise and beautiful. You should not be cruel even to a Cat.”
    (Rudyard Kipling)

  • I am not a friend and I am not a servant. I am the cat who walks by himself, and I wish to come into your cave. (Rudyard Kipling)
  • If cats could talk, they would lie to you. (Rob Kopack)
  • Cats are rather delicate creatures and they are subject to a good many ailments, but I never heard of one who suffered from insomnia. (Joseph Wood Krutch)
  • Cats seem to go on the principle that it never does any harm to ask for what you want. (Joseph Wood Krutch)
  • A dog is like a liberal. He wants to please everybody. A cat doesn’t need to know that everybody loves him. (William Kunstler)
  • I put down my book, The Meaning of Zen, and see the cat smiling into her fur as she delicately combs it with her rough pink tongue. Cat, I would lend you this book to study but it appears you have already read it. She looks up and gives me her full gaze. Don’t be ridiculous, she purrs, I wrote it. (Dilys Laing)
  • Cats, like men, are flatters. (William S. Landor)
  • Of all animals, the cat alone attains to the comtemplative life. He regards the wheel of existence from without, like the Buddha. (Andrew Lang)
  • The cat could very well be man’s best friend but would never stoop to admitting it. (Doug Larson)
  • I’ve never understood why women love cats. Cats are independent, they don’t listen, they don’t come in when you call, they like to stay out all night, and when they’re home they like to be left alone and sleep. In other words, every quality that women hate in a man, they love in a cat. (Jay Leno)
  • A black cat dropped soundlessly from a high wall, like a spoonful of dark treacle, and melted under a gate. (Elizabeth Lemarchand)
  • If a fish is the movement of water embodied, given shape, then a cat is a diagram and pattern of subtle air.(Doris Lessing)
  • Oh, cat; I’d say, or pray: be-ooootiful cat!Delicious cat! Exquisite cat! Satiny cat! Cat like a soft owl, cat with paws like moths, jeweled cat, miraculous cat! (Doris Lessing)
  • Friendship between cats can exist, but more or less in the same way that it can exist for a not very sociable man who spends his time in provoking others, and who, when asked why he does not have any friends, replies: “I would like to have them – but they are so ignoble!” (Paul Leyhausen)
  • If a cat is creeping up on prey and realizes that another cat is watching, it will straighten up and act disinterested. (Paul Leyhausen)
  • He marveled at the fact that cats had two holes cut in their fur at precisely the spot where their eyes were. (Georg Christoph Lichtenberg)
  • I love how independent and self-contained they are. I always feel it’s an honor when one decides to let you into their world with a rub against the leg or a quick jump into your lap. (Tina Lifford)
  • No matter how much cats fight, there always seem to be plenty of kittens. (Abraham Lincoln)
  • I care not for a man’s religion whose dog or cat is not the better for it. (Abraham Lincoln)
  • I am in favor of animal rights as well as human rights. That is the way of a whole human being. (Abraham Lincoln)
  • It’s too dangerous a journey to risk the cat’s life.(Charles Lindbergh, explaining why his kitten, Patsy, didn’t accompany him on his legendary transatlantic flight.)
  • The cat is a wild animal that inhabits the homes of humans. (Konrad Lorenz)
  • Cats are possessed of a shy, retiring nature, cajoling, haughty, and capricious, difficult to fathom. They reveal themselves only to certain favored individuals, and are repelled by the faintest suggestion of insult or even by the most trifling deception. (Pierre Loti)
  • If by chance I seated myself to write, she very slyly, very tenderly, seeking protection and caresses, would softly take her place on my knee and follow the comings and goings of my pen -sometimes effacing, with an unintentional stroke of her paw, lines of whose tenor she disapproved. (Pierre Loti)
  • I will admit to feeling exceedingly proud when any cat has singled me out for notice; for, of course, every cat is really the most beautiful woman in the room. That is part of their deadly fascination. (E. V. Lucas)
  • A cat is a very special friend who comes into your life. When it comes it brings warmth, companionship, contentment and love. Whether it’s long-haired, short-haired, pedigreed or “heinz” makes no difference.
    A cat, though independent, has a way of letting you know that without you life just wouldn’t be worthwhile.
    If you’re lucky enough to own a cat consider yourself one of life’s winners because when you have a cat around you’ll never be lonely; the sound of its purr will give you comfort, and as you hold it and pet it, stress will slip away.
    (Sharon Lundblad)

  • If a cat can detect no self-advantage in what it is being told to do, it says the hell with it, and, if pressure is brought to bear, it will grow increasingly surly and irritable to the point where it is hopeless to continue. (John D. MacDonald)
  • Nobody who is not prepared to spoil cats will get from them the reward they are able to give to those who do spoil them. (Compton MacKenzie)
  • If you put down food and the cat eats, it’s hungry. If it doesn’t, it isn’t. (Larry Madrid)
  • I gave my cat a bath the other day. He just sat there. Actually, I think he enjoyed it. It wasn’t very fun for me, though. The fur kind of stuck to my tongue. (Steve Martin)
  • A black cat crossing your path signifies that the animal is going somewhere. (Groucho Marx)
  • Cats do not have to be show how to have a good time, for they are unfailing ingenious in that respect. (James Mason)
  • A cat can purr its way out of anything. (Donna McCrohan)
  • If there is one spot of sun spilling onto the floor, a cat will find it and soak it up. (J. A. McIntosh)
  • There has never been a cat
    Who couldn’t calm me down
    By walking slowly
    Past my chair
    (Rod McKuen)

  • A meow massages the heart. (Stuart McMillan)
  • I think it would be great to be a cat! You come and go as you please. People always feed and pet you. They don’t expect much of you. You can play with them, and when you’ve had enough, you go away. You can pick and choose who you want to be around. You can’t ask for more than that. (Patricia McPherson)
  • The cat has too much spirit to have no heart. (Ernest Menual)
  • These furry buggers are just deep, deep wells you throw all your emotions into. (Ernest Menual)
  • The sun rose slowly, like a fiery furball coughed up uneasily onto a sky-blue carpet by a giant unseen cat. (Michael McGarel)
  • With the qualities of cleanliness, affection, patience, dignity, and courage that cats have, how many of us, I ask you, would be capable of becoming cats? (Fernand Mery)
  • God made the cat in order that man might have the pleasure of caressing the lion. (Fernand Mery)
  • Are cats lazy? Well, more power to them if they are. Which one of us has not entertained the dream of doing just as he likes, when and how he likes, and as much as he likes? (Fernand Mery)
  • Looking at a cat, like looking at clouds or stars or the ocean, makes it difficult to believe there is nothing miraculous in this world. (Leonard Michaels)
  • Cats always seem so very wise, when staring with their half-closed eyes. Can they be thinking, “I’ll be nice, and maybe she will feed me twice”? (Bette Midler)
  • You can keep a dog; but it is the cat who keeps people, because cats find humans useful domestic animals. (George Mikes)
  • A dog will flatter you but you have to flatter the cat. (George Mikes)
  • Only cat lovers know the luxury of fur-coated, musical hot water bottles that never go cold. (Susanne Millen)
  • Cats regard people as warmblooded furniture. (Jacquelyn Mitchard)
  • We cannot without becoming cats, perfectly understand the cat mind. (St. George Mivart)
  • The smart cat doesn’t let on that he is. (St. George Mivart)
  • When the tea is brought at five o’clock
    And all the neat curtains are drawn with care,
    The little black cat with bright green eyes
    Is suddenly purring there.
    (Harold Monro)

  • The playful kitten with its pretty little tigerish gambole is infinitely more amusing than half the people one is obliged to live with in the world. (Lady Sydney Morgan)
  • Personally, I don’t believe felines are a fad. We’re here to stay. (Morris the Cat)
  • Artists like cats; soldiers like dogs. (Desmond Morris)
  • Cats don’t belong to people. They belong to places. (Wright Morris)
  • When my cats aren’t happy, I’m not happy. Not because I care about their mood but because I know they’re just sitting there thinking up ways to get even. (Penny Ward Moser)
  • The trouble with a Kitten is that, eventually it becomes a Cat! (Ogden Nash)
  • Cats do care. For example they know instinctively what time we have to be at work in the morning and they wake us up twenty minutes before the alarm goes off. (Michael Nelson)
  • Most of us rather like our cats to have a streak of wickedness. I should not feel quite easy in the company of any cat that walked about the house with a saintly expression. (Beverly Nichols)
  • Cats aren’t clean, they’re just covered with cat spit. (John S. Nichols)
  • A cat is a puzzle for which there is no solution. (Hazel Nicholson)
  • A cat is never a presentation, but an innocent happening. (Alwin Nikolais)
  • But you must not think we allowed our kittens to behave badly. On the contrary, we tried all we could to teach them good manners…”Well, I told you kittens are mischievous,” Nanny said. “And some are more mischievous than others.” (Ernest Nister)
  • Always the cat remains a little beyond the limits we try to set for him in our blind folly. (Andre Norton)
  • Cats are to dogs what modern people are to the people we used to have. Cats are slimmer, cleaner, more attractive, disloyal, and lazy. Cats are irresponsible and recognize no authority, yet are completely dependent on others for their material needs. Cats cannot be made to do anything useful. Cats are mean for the fun of it. In fact, cats possess so many of the same qualities as some people (expensive girlfriends, for instance) that it’s often hard to tell the people and the cats apart. (P. J. O’Rourke)
  • Its easy to understand why the cat has eclipsed the dog as modern America’s favorite pet. People like pets to possess the same qualities they do. Cats are irresponsible and recognize no authority, yet are completely dependent on others for their material needs. Cats cannot be made to do anything useful. Cats are mean for the fun of it.
    (P. J. O’Rourke)

  • The mathematical probability of a common cat doing exactly as it pleases is the one scientific absolute in the world. (Lynn M. Osband)
  • Cats are autocrats of naked self-interest. They are both amoral and immoral, consciously breaking rules. Their ”evil” look at such times is no human projection: the cat may be the only animal who savors the perverse or reflects upon it. (Camille Paglia)
  • Our character is what God and cats know of us. (Thomas Paine)
  • I always find it curious as to why I take such great pains to keep my cat’s bowls clean when I know I’ll look out the window and see her with a dead mouse in her mouth. (Fannie Roach Palmer)
  • Cats are like Baptists. You KNOW they raise hell,but you can never catch them at it. (James Patterson)
  • You cannot look at a sleeping cat and feel tense. (Jane Pauley)
  • A dog is a dog, a bird is a bird, and a cat is a person. (Mugsy Peabody)
  • The cat Bastet sat perched on the rim of the tub, watching me through slitted golden eyes. She was fascinated by baths. I suppose total immersion in water must have seemed to her a peculiar method of cleansing oneself. (Elizabeth Peters)
  • Cats are masters of sublime hisssstrionics. (Kathrine Palmer Peterson)
  • I don’t think it is so much the actual bath that most cats dislike; I think it’s the fact that they have to spend a good part of the day putting their hair back in place. (Debbie Peterson)
  • You’ll never need a lawn ornament if you have a cat in the yard. (Debbie Peterson)
  • Our words should be purrs not hisses. (Debbie Peterson)
  • Each cat has a distinct purrsonality. (Richard L. Peterson)
  • My cat is concerned with the economy because his favorite kitty kibbles are over $1.00 a pound. He figures that’s close to $15.00 a pound in cat currency. (Richard L. Peterson)
  • Cat scan: When a cat checks out a yard for prey. (Richard L. Peterson)
  • A cat pours his body on the floor like water. It is restful just to see him. (William Lyon Phelps)
  • Managing senior programmers is like herding cats. (Dave Platt)
  • I wish I could write as mysterious as a cat. (Edgar Allen Poe)
  • Cats have a curious effect on people. They seem to excite more extreme sentiments than any other animals. There are people who cannot remain in the room with a cat – who feel instinctively the presence of a cat even though they do not actually see it. On the other hand, there are people who, whatever they may be doing, will at once get up and fondle a cat immediately [when] they see it. (Arthur Ponsonby)
  • It’s funny how dogs and cats know the inside of folks better than other folks do, isn’t it? (Eleanor H. Porter)
  • If cats could talk, they wouldn’t. (Nan Porter)
  • The problem with cats is that they get the exact same look on their faces whether they see a moth or an ax-murderer. (Paula Poundstone)
  • Your cat will never threaten your popularity by barking at three in the morning. He won’t attack the mailman or eat the drapes, although he may climb the drapes to see how the room looks from the ceiling. (Helen Powers)
  • In ancient times cats were worshipped as gods; they have not forgotten this. (Terry Pratchett)
  • There are many lessons we can learn from our cats. (Albert Pujois)
  • It is widely grokked that cats have the hacker nature. (Eric S. Raymond)
  • The cat lives alone, has no need of society, obeys only when she pleases, pretends to sleep that she may see the more clearly, and scratches everything on which she can lay her paw. (Francois Rene)
  • A kitten is chiefly remarkable for rushing about like mad at nothing whatsoever, and generally stopping before it gets there. (Agnes Repplier)
  • A kitten is the most irresistible comedian in the world. Its wide-open eyes gleam with wonder and mirth. It darts madly at nothing at all, and then, as though suddenly checked in the pursuit, prances sideways on its hind legs with ridiculous agility and zeal. (Agnes Repplier)
  • People that hate cats, will come back as mice in their next life. (Faith Resnick)
  • The ideal of calm exists in a sitting cat. (Jules Reynard)
  • A cat improves the garden wall in sunshine, and the hearth in foul weather. (Judith Merkle Riley)
  • If cats seem distant and aloof it is because this is not their native planet – they are here just to visit and dominate. (Hank Roll)
  • Watch a cat when it enters a room for the first time. It searches and smells about, it is not quiet for a moment, it trusts nothing until it has examined and made acquaintance with everything. (Jean Jacques Rousseau)
  • Even if you have just destroyed a Ming vase, purr. Usually all will be forgiven. (Lenny Rubenstein)
  • Give a cat a fish and you feed her for a day; teach a cat to fish and she will wait for you to feed her.(HBS)
  • Cats exercise…a magic influence upon highly developed men of intellect. This is why these long-tailed Graces of the animal kingdom, these adorable, scintillating electric batteries have been the favorite animal of a Mohammed, Cardinal Richlieu, Crebillon, Rousseau, Wieland. (Leopold Von Sacher-Masoch)
  • The cat is domestic only as far as suits its own ends; it will not be kennelled or harnessed nor suffer any dictation as to its goings out or comings in. Long contact with the human race has developed in it the art of diplomacy, and no Roman Catholic in medieval days knew better how to ingratiate himself with his surroundings than a cat with a saucer of cream on its mental horizon. (Saki (H. H. Munro))
  • He seems the incarnation of everything soft and silky and velvety, without a sharp edge in his composition, a dreamer whose philosophy is sleep and let sleep. (Saki (H. H. Munro))
  • Now, as you all know, there is nothing a cat dislikes so much as water; just watch your kitty shake her paws daintily when she steps into a puddle, and see how disgusted she is if a drop of water falls on her nose and back. (Agnes A. Sandham)
  • Cats speak a subtle language in which few sounds carry many meanings, depending on how they are sung or purred. “Mnrhnh” means comfortable soft chairs. It also means fish. It means genial companionship…and the absence of dogs.
    (Val Schaffner)

  • The little furry buggers are just deep, deep wells you throw all your emotions into. (Bruce Schimmel)
  • There are two means of refuge from the miseries of life: music and cats. (Albert Schewitzer)
  • Cats are a mysterious kind of folk. There is more passing in their minds than we are aware of. (Sir Walter Scott)
  • A harmless, necessary cat. (William Shakespeare)
  • I am as vigilant as a cat to steal cream. (William Shakespeare)
  • I have found my love of cats most helpful in understanding women. (John Simon)
  • Everything I know I learned from my cat: When you’re hungry, eat. When you’re tired, nap in a sunbeam. When you go to the vet’s, pee on your owner. (Gary Smith)
  • Ah! Little do you know how swiftly fly
    The venomed darts of feline jealousy.
    (Robert Southey)

  • A kitten is a rosebud in the garden of the animal kingdom. (Robert Southey)
  • Among animals, cats are the top-hatted, frock-coated statesmen going about their affairs at their own pace. Dogs are the peasants, dutifully plodding behind their leaders. (Robert Stearns)
  • Since each of us is blessed with only one life, why not live it with a cat? (Robert Stearns)
  • A human may go for a stroll with a cat; he has to walk a dog. The cat leads the way, running ahead, tail high, making sure you understand the arrangement. If you should happen to get ahead, the cat will never allow you to think it is following you. It will stop and clean some hard-to-reach spot, or investigate a suspicious movement in the grass; you will find yourself waiting and fidgeting like the lackey you are. But this is not annoying to cat lovers, who understand and appreciate a good joke, even when it is on them. (Robert Stearns)
  • My cat speaks sign language with her tail. (Robert A. Stern)
  • If only cats grew into kittens. (Robert A. Stern)
  • To escort a cat on a leash is against the nature of the cat. (Adlai Stevenson)
  • It is in the nature of cats to do a certain amount of unescorted roaming. (Adlai Stevenson)
  • I love cats. I love their grace and their elegance. I love their independence and their arrogance, and the way they lie and look at you, summing you up, surely to your detriment, with that unnerving, unwinking, appraising stare.
    (Joyce Stranger)

  • No other animal inspires such devotion as the cat. (Linda Sunshine)
  • Perhaps cats and writers simply go together because the cat is the perfect companion for the solitary, sedentary artist. (Linda Sunshine)
  • You can’t own a cat. The best you can do is be partners. (Sir Harry Swanson)
  • It is in their eyes that their magic resides. (Arthur Symons)
  • Once in awhile I receive an e-mail from someone who doesn’t like cats, or has allergies or some other condition that prevents having them. I alway feel sorry for them because of the unique soul-expanding experience they are missing. I’m so grateful to have cats in my life that I can’t imagine life without them. I truly believe that if there is a Heaven, it has to include cats. (Franny Syufy)
  • When cat people get together they are as single-minded as vegetarians, or kelp and soybean addicts. For they can talk for hours about what their cats will and will not eat. Once you meet a cat lover you will pursue his or her cat’s food predilections endlessly. (Gladys Tabor)
  • I have studied many philosophers and many cats. The wisdom of cats is infinitely superior. (Hippolyte Taine)
  • Dogs eat. Cats dine. (Ann Taylor)
  • I like little Pussy, her coat is so warm,
    And if I don’t hurt her she’ll do me no harm.
    (Jane Taylor)

  • Life with a cat is in certain ways a one-sided proposition. Cats are not educable; humans are. Moreover, cats know this. If you’re not willing to humor them, you might as well stick to dogs. (Terry Teachout)
  • Cats, no less liquid than their shadows,
    Offer no angles to the wind.
    They slip, dimished, neat, through loopholes
    Less than themselves.
    (A. S. J. Tessimond)

  • One is never sure, watching two cats washing each other, whether it’s affection, the taste, or a trial run for the jugular. (Helen Thomson)
  • What sort of philosophers are we who know absolutely nothing about the origin and destiny of cats? (Henry David Thoreau)
  • A kitten is so flexible that she is almost double; the hind parts are equivalent to another kitten with which the forepart plays. She does not discover that her tail belongs to her until you tread on it. (Henry David Thoreau)
  • Never will you get a better psychological subject than a hungry cat. (Dr. Edward Lee Thorndike)
  • I am not a cat man, but a dog man, and all felines can tell this at a glance – a sharp, vindictive glance. (James Thurber)
  • Another cat? Perhaps. For love there is also a season; its seeds must be resown. But a family cat is not replaceable like a wornout coat or a set of tires. Each new kitten becomes its own cat, and none is repeated. I am four cats old, measuring out my life in friends that have succeeded but not replaced one another. (Irving Townsend)
  • If animals could speak the dog would be a blundering outspoken fellow, but the cat would have the rare grace of never saying a word too much. (Mark Twain)
  • Of all God’s creatures, there is only one that cannot be made slave of the leash. That one is the cat. If man could be crossed with the cat it would improve the man, but it would deteriorate the cat. (Mark Twain)
  • A home without a cat, and a well-fed, well-petted and properly revered cat may be a perfect home, perhaps, but how can it prove its title? (Mark Twain)
  • A man who carries a cat by the tail learns something he can learn in no other way. (Mark Twain)
  • Ignorant people think it’s the noise which fighting cats make that is so aggravating, but it ain’t so; it’s the sickening grammar they use. (Mark Twain)
  • One of the most striking differences between a cat and a lie is that a cat has only nine lives. (Mark Twain)
  • We should be careful to get out of an experience only the wisdom that is in it – and stop there; lest we be like the cat that sits down on a hot stove-lid. She will never sit down on a hot stove-lid again – and that is well; but also she will never sit down on a cold one anymore. (Mark Twain)
  • A cat is more intelligent than people believe, and can be taught any crime. (Mark Twain)
  • I simply can’t resist a cat, particularly a purring one. They are the cleanest, cunningest, and most intelligent things I know, outside of the girl you love, of course. (Mark Twain)
  • A computer and a cat are somewhat alike — they both purr, and like to be stroked, and spend a lot of the day motionless. They also have secrets they don’t necessarily share. (John Updike)
  • Cats are smarter than dogs. You can’t get eight cats to pull a sled through snow. (Jeff Valdez)
  • It is impossible to keep a straight face in the presence of one or more kittens. (Cynthia E. Varnado)
  • A cat will sit washing his face within two inches of a dog in the most frantic state of barking rage, if the dog be chained. (Carl van Vechten)
  • The cat seldom interferes with other people’s rights. His intelligence keeps him from doing many of the fool things that complicate life. (Carl van Vechten)
  • The cat is the only animal without visible means of support who still manages to find a living in the city. (Carl van Vechten)
  • An ordinary kitten will ask more questions than any five year old. (Carl van Vechten)
  • I believe cats to be spirits come to earth. A cat, I am sure, could walk on a cloud without coming through.
    (Jules Verne)

  • A dog is a man’s best friend. A cat is a cat’s best friend. (Robert J. Vogel)
  • I have myself found, the result of many years enquiry and study, that all people who keep cats do not suffer from those petty ailments which all flesh is heir to. (Louis Wain)
  • Intelligence in the cat is underrated. (Louis Wain)
  • A mouse in the paws is worth two in the pantry. (Louis Wain)
  • Calvin’s life seens to me a fortunate one, for it was natural and unforced. He ate when he was hungry, slept when he was sleepy, and enjoyed existence to the very tips of his toes and the end of his expressive and slow-moving tail. (Charles Dudley Warner)
  • He liked companionship, but he wouldn’t be petted, or fussed over, or sit in anyone’s lap a moment; he always extricated himself from such familiarity with dignity and with no show of temper. If there was any petting to be done, however, he chose to do it. Often he would sit looking at me, and then, moved by a delicate affection, come and pull at my coat and sleeve until he could touch my face with his nose, and then go away contented. (Charles Dudley Warner)
  • One reason we admire cats is for their proficiency in one-upmanship. They always seem to come out on top, no matter what they are doing, or pretend they do. (Barbara Webster)
  • If I called her she would pretend not to hear, but would come a few moments later when it could appear that she had thought of doing so first. (Arthur Weigall)
  • Even overweight, cats instinctively know the cardinal rule: when fat, arrange yourself in slim poses. (John Weitz)
  • No one can have experienced to the fullest the true sense of achievement and satisfaction who have never pursued and successfully caught his tail. (Rosalind Welcher)
  • Did St. Francis really preach to the birds? Whatever for? If he really liked birds he would have done better to preach to the cats. (Rebecca West)
  • If a dog jumps in your lap, it is because he is fond of you; but if a cat does the same thing, it is because your lap is warmer. (Alfred North Whitehead)
  • Cats love one so much – more than they will allow. But they have so much wisdom they keep it to themselves. (Mary Wilkins)
  • Like a graceful vase, a cat, even when motionless, seems to flow. (George F. Will)
  • The phrase “domestic cat” is an oxymoron. (George F. Will)
  • Cats only pretend to be domesticated if they think there’s a bowl of milk in it for them. (Robin Williams)
  • It is remarkable, in cats, that the outer life they reveal to their master is one of perpetual confident boredom. All they betray of the hidden life is by means of symbol; if it were not for the recurring evidence of murder – the disemboweled rabbits, the headless flickers, the torn squirrels – we should forever imagine our cats to be simple pets whose highest ambition is to sleep in the best soft chair, whose worst crime is to sharpen their claws on carpeting. (Robley Wilson, Jr.)
  • Women, poets, and especially artists, like cats; delicate natures only can realize their sensitive nervous systems. (Helen M. Winslow)
  • Cats find malicious amusement in doing what they know they are not wanted to do, and that with an affectation of innocence that materially aggravates their deliberate offense. (Helen M. Winslow)
  • The trouble with cats is that they’ve got no tact. (P. G. Wodehouse)
  • Cats as a class, have never completely got over the snootiness caused by that fact that in Ancient Egypt they were worshipped as gods. (P. G. Wodehouse)
  • The real objection to the great majority of cats is their insufferable air of superiority. (P. G. Wodehouse)
  • You can visualize a hundred cats. Beyond that, you can’t. Two hundred, five hundred, it all looks the same.
    (Jack Wright, who is listed in the Guinness Book of World Records as the “owner” of the most cats at one time – 689!)

  • Curiosity killed the cat, but for a while I was a suspect. (Steven Wright)
  • Each cat I have reminds me of unconditional love. No matter what’s going on in my professional life, I know that with my animals I’m always #1! If I’m with my cats I’m also with God. (Wynonna)
  • I don’t care what color the cat is, as long as it catches the rat. (Deng Xiaoping)
  • The eyes of a cat will wax and wane with the phases of the moon. (W. B. Yeats)
  • Cats may sense early on that you don’t like paw prints on your butter, but they will jump onto any surface in the home as long as no one sees it happen. (Kathy Young)
  • Cats never feel threatened. They are genetically incapable of accepting that anyone could possibly dislike anything as perfect as a cat. (Kathy Young)
  • Cats can derive their nutrition from the air they breathe until you get the message that the Fish Fin Buffet you put in their bowl three days ago will never be acceptable. (Kathy Young)
  • You must set down all the rules to your cat at the beginning of your relationship. You cannot add rules as you go along. Once these rules are set, you must never, under any circumstances, break any of them. Dare to break a rule, and you will never live it down. Trust me. (Kathy Young)