quotations about cats
Anyone who has owned many cats in long succession can define his or her life as a series of furry episodes.
ROGER CARAS
A Celebration of Cats
A cat ... plays for her own enjoyment, in a self-contained way, with no desire to share. Shut her up alone, and a ball, a fringe, or a looped piece of string is enough to make her give herself up to silent and graceful sport. While she is playing she does not say, "Man, I'm so awfully glad I've got you here!" She will play beside the bed of a corpse.
KAREL CAPEK
Intimate Things
The uncertainty of cats has been thrown in their teeth, but to the true cat-lover this uncertainty is a most attractive trait. One may live in a house for six months with a cat and never receive from it a single kindly word or look. It will perhaps sit quietly on your lap as long as you hold it there, for it hates struggling; but the moment your vigilance is relaxed down it jumps, and licks itself carefully, as a sign that your caresses are anything but agreeable. It will purr when you go down on your knees on the hearthrug and rub it under the chin; but it is purring at itself, not you. Your hand is only a stroking machine. It is not in the least afraid of you, but in a hundred ways it shows that it has no use for your caresses, and that it would rather not be encumbered by unasked attention. Yet, suddenly, and without any cause, this very same cat will one day become, for half an hour or an hour, your dearest friend.
"The Cat in Literature,"
Living Age, vol. 217
In ancient times, cats were worshipped as gods. They have never forgotten this.
ANONYMOUS
I've found that the way a person feels about cats--and the way they feel about him or her in return--is usually an excellent gauge by which to measure a person's character.
P.C. CAST & KRISTIN CAST
Marked
All cats were at first wild, but were at length tamed by the industry of Mankind; it is a Beast of prey, even the tame one, more especially the wild, it being in the opinion of many nothing but a diminutive lion.
WILLIAM SALMON
The Complete English Physician
Giving the cat a name, like marriage, is not an easy thing. Soon I experienced the selection of name for a baby, a dog, a book, a warship, a sports team, even the king, the pope or a hurricane is just child's play compared to the selection of the cat's name.
CLEVELAND AMORY
The Cat Who Came for Christmas
Cats are like Thoreau. You cannot explain them.
DAN SKLAR
Bicycles
Some cats are like mystics or cloistered esthetes, finding waking life of no interest and entering it only for necessities such as eating, while others ... do not disdain the secular pastimes of hunting, lurking, and exploring.
VAL SCHAFFNER
The Algonquin Cat
Cats are like statesmen--they prefer places to persons.
EDMUND HODGSON YATES
Two
A cat knows how to anticipate.
ROGER CARAS
A Cat Is Watching
Two green eyes and a coat of silk
Scourge of mice with a saucer of milk
I've got nine lives and I rhyme with mat
I'm a farmyard cat
PREFAB SPROUT
"Farmyard Cat", The Gunman and Other Stories
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
attributed, The Cat Fanatic
If dogs are like high school, cats are like a really tough Ph.D. program.
SIOBHAN ADCOCK
30 Things Everyone Should Know How to Do Before Turning 30
Cats are rather delicate creatures and they are subject to a good many different ailments, but I never heard of one who suffered from insomnia.
JOSEPH WOOD KRUTCH
The Twelve Seasons
We own a dog--he is with us as a slave and inferior because we wish him to be. But we entertain a cat--he adorns our hearth as a guest, fellow-lodger, and equal because he wishes to be there. It is no compliment to be the stupidly idolized master of a dog whose instinct is to idolize, but it is a very distinct tribute to be chosen as the friend and confidant of a cat.
H. P. LOVECRAFT
"Cats and Dogs"
The cat is not in the long run anxious to please.
T. O. BEACHCROFT
Just Cats
Dogs and horses are our slaves; cats never. This does not prove them without affection, as some people seem to think; on the contrary, it proves their peculiar and characteristic dignity and self respect. Women, poets, and especially artists like cats; delicate natures only can realize their sensitive nervous systems.
HELEN MARIA WINSLOW
Concerning Cats
You now have learned enough to see
That Cats are much like you and me
And other people whom we find
Possessed of various types of mind.
For some are sane and some are mad
And some are good and some are bad
And some are better, some are worse --
But all may be described in verse.
T. S. ELIOT
"The Ad-dressing of Cats,", Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats
Cats, no less liquid than their shadows,
Offer no angles to the wind.
They slip, diminished, neat, through loopholes
Less than themselves.
A.S.J. TESSIMOND
Cats