quotations about 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
It is a very onconvenient habit of kittens ... that, whatever you say to them, they always purr.
LEWIS CARROLL
Through the Looking Glass
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
Pudd'nhead Wilson
A cat has to be in a very bad mood if a human cannot coax him to purr.
DEREK TANGYE
A Cat in the Window
I cannot agree that it should be the declared public policy of Illinois that a cat visiting a neighbor's yard or crossing the highways is a public nuisance. It is in the nature of cats to do a certain amount of unescorted roaming. Many live with their owners in apartments or other restricted premises, and I doubt if we want to make their every brief foray an opportunity for a small game hunt by zealous citizens--with traps or otherwise.... To escort a cat abroad on a leash is against the nature of the cat, and to permit it to venture forth for exercise unattended into a night of new dangers is against the nature of the owner. Moreover, cats perform useful service, particularly in rural areas, in combating rodents--work they necessarily perform alone and without regard for property lines.
ADLAI STEVENSON
veto message, Apr. 23, 1949
Zoologists seem to consider the cerebration of cats and dogs about 50-50 -- but my respect always goes to the cool, sure, impersonal, delicately poised feline who minds his business and never slobbers.
H. P. LOVECRAFT
letter to E. Hoffmann Price, July 29, 1936
Beware of the night, child. All cats are black in the dark.
JEAN GENET
The Blacks
Oft in the stilly night, certain back fence melodies convince us that old Noah made a grave mistake when he let more than one cat in the ark.
ROBERT ELLIOTT GONZALES
Poems and Paragraphs
Cats are like that, as we all know, full of little nooks and crannies where secrets may hide.
ROGER A. CARAS
Cat is Watching
Let take a cat, and foster her with milk
And tender flesh, and make her couch of silk,
And let her see a mouse go by the wall,
Anon she leaveth milk and flesh, and all,
And every dainty that is in that house,
Such appetite hath she to eat the mouse.
Lo, here hath kind her domination,
And appetite banishes discretion.
GEOFFREY CHAUCER
Canterbury Tales
Everybody wants to be a cat
Because a cat's the only cat who knows where it's at
Tell me, everybody's pickin' up on that feline beat
'Cause everything else is obsolete
SCATMAN CROTHERS
"Everybody Wants to Be a Cat", The Aristocats
A dog is like a liberal. He wants to please everybody. A cat really doesn't need to know that everybody loves him.
WILLIAM KUNSTLER
Esquire, 1971
All nations seem to have appreciated the mysterious and almost human qualities of cat nature; the profound cunning, the impertinent indifference, the intense selfishness, yet capable of the most hypocritical flatteries when some point has to be gained. Their traits are not merely the product of brute instinct with unvarying action and results, but the manifestation of a calculating intellect, akin to the human. Then their grace and flexile beauty make them very attractive; while the motherly virtues of the matron cat are singularly interesting as a study of order, education, and training for the wilful little kitten, quite on the human lines of salutary discipline.... For cats are thoroughly well-bred, born aristocrats; never abrupt, fussy, or obtrusive like the dog, but gentle, grave, and dignified in manner. Cats never run, they glide softly, and always with perfect and beautiful curves of motion; and they express their affection, not violently, like the dog, but with the most graceful, caressing movements of the head.
LADY WILDE
Ancient Legends
A cat can be trusted to purr when she is pleased, which is more than can be said for human beings.
WILLIAM INGE
A Rustic Moralist