Quotations About Cats

A cat has absolute emotional honesty: human beings, for one reason or another, may hide their feelings, but a cat does not. - Ernest Hemingway

A cat is always on the wrong side of the door. - Anonymous

A cat, I realize, cannot be everyone's cup of fur. - Joseph Epstein

A cat may look on a King. - Ibid

A cat pours his body on the floor like water. It is restful just to see him. - William Lyon Phelps

A meow massages the heart. -Stuart Mc Millan

Again I must remind you that a Dog's a Dog – a CAT's a CAT. - T. S. Eliot

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 mind. - Cleveland Amory

By associating with the cat, one only risks becoming richer ... - Colette

Cats are a mysterious kind of folk. There is more passing in their minds than we are aware of. - Sir Walter Scott

Cats and monkeys, monkeys and cats – all human life is there. - Henry James

Cats are intended to teach us that not everything in nature has a function. – Garrison Keillor

Cats are such good friends—they ask no questions, they accept no criticisms. - Edna Beilenson

Cats can be very funny and have the oddest way of showing they're glad to see you. - W. H. Auden

Cats can read your character better than a $50 an hour psychiatrist. - Paul Gallico

Cats don't belong to people, they belong to places. - Wright Morris

Cats do not need to be shown how to have a good time, for they are unfailingly ingenious in that respect. - James Mason

Cats know how to obtain food without labor, shelter without confinement, and love without penalties. - W. L. George

Cats, like men, are flatterers. - Walter Savage Landor

Dogs come when they're called; cats take a message and get back to you. - Mary Bly

Even overweight cats instinctively know the cardinal rule: when fat, arrange yourself in a slim pose. - John Weitz

Every dog has its day, but the nights are reserved for the cats. - Anonymous

God made the cat in order that man might have the pleasure of caressing the tiger. - Fernand Mery

I believe cats to be spirits come to earth. A cat, I am sure, could walk on a cloud without coming through. - Jules Verne

I have never known a cat that couldn't quiet me down just by walking slowly past my chair. - Rod Mc Kuen

I have studied many philosophers and many cats. The wisdom of cats is infinitely superior. - Hippolyte Taine

I love cats because I enjoy my home; and little by little, they become its visible soul. - Jean Cocteau

I purr, therefore I am. - Anonymous

If a cat did not put a firm paw down now and then, how could his human remain possessed? - Winifred Carriere

If a fish is the movement of water embodied, given shape, than a cat is a diagram and pattern of subtle air. - Dorris Lessing

If man could be crossed with the cat, it would improve the man, but it would deteriorate the cat. – Mark Twain

If you want to write, keep a cat. - Aldous Huxley

It has been the providence of Nature to give this creature nine lives. - Pilpay

It is in the nature of cats to do a certain amount of unescorted roaming. - Adlai Stevenson

It's almost as if we're put here on earth to show how silly they (cats) aren't. - Russell Hoban

Intelligence in the cat is underrated. - Louis Wain

Most cats, when they are Out want to be In, and vice versa, and often simultaneously. - Louis J. Camuti

No matter how much cats fight, there always seems to be plenty of kittens. - Abraham Lincoln

Of all animals, the cat alone attains to the contemplative life. He regards the wheel of existence from without, like the Buddha. - Andrew Lang

Of all God's creatures there is only one that cannot be made the slave of the lash. That one is the cat. - Mark Twain

Once you have been presented with a mouse by your cat, you will never be the same again. She can use you for a doormat. And she will, too. - Paul Gallico

One cat just leads to another. – Ernest Hemingway

Since each of us is blessed with only one life, why not live it with a cat? - Robert Stearns

The cat is a dilettante in fur. - Theophile Gautier

The cat has too much spirit to have no heart. - Ernest Menault

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. - Chateaubriand

The cat of the slums and alleys, starved, outcast, harried,...still displays the self-reliant watchfulness which man has never taught it to lay aside. - Saki

The fog comes on little cat feet. - Carl Sandburg

The phrase “domestic cat” is an oxymoron. - George F. Will

The smallest feline is a masterpiece. - Leonardo da Vinci

The soul of another is a mystery, and a cat's soul is even more so. - Anton Chekov

There are no ordinary cats. - Colette

There are two means of refuge from the miseries of life: music and cats. - Albert Schweitzer

There is no more intrepid explorer than a kitten. - Jules Champleury

There's no need for a piece of sculpture in a house that has a cat. - Wesley Bates

Time spent with a cat is never wasted. - Colette

Way down deep, we're all motivated by the same urges. Cats have the courage to live by them. - Jim Davis

We cannot, of course, without becoming cats, perfectly understand the cat-mind – Mivart

When a cat is alone she never purrs. - Samuel Johnson

When I play with my cat, who knows whether she is not amusing herself with me more than I with her? - Montaigne

When rats infest the palace a lame cat is better than the swiftest horse. - Chinese proverb

Wherever a cat sits, there shall happiness be found. - Stanley Spencer

You are my cat and I am your human. - Hilaire Belloc

And finally, a word from the cats -- We are not spoiled, we are much loved. - Garth & Gabby at Catty Corner

Sources: Puss In Books by Maria Polushkin Robbins, The Literary Companion to Cats by Clare Boylan, The Quotable Feline by Jim Dratfield and Paul Coughlin, The Cat's Pajamas by Leonore Fleischer, Cat Tales edited by Suzanne Beilenson