quotations about cats
We have to afford cats the same sort of dignity we do with a human.
NICK DOUGLAS
"How to Get a Cat to Like You", lifehacker, August 22, 2018
The sound of the cat mesmerizes, calms the chattering mind, stills the anxious heart.
THERESA MANCUSO
Cats Do It Better Than People
We sleep researchers like cats, you know; they sleep a lot!
URSULA K. LE GUIN
The Lathe of Heaven
Confront a cat with something he has never seen before and his first reaction will almost invariably be one not of fear but of curiosity.
MICHAEL JOSEPH
Cat's Company
Cat said, "I am not a friend, and I am not a servant. I am the Cat who walks by himself."
RUDYARD KIPLING
Just So Stories
Cats seem to go on the principle that it never does any harm to ask for what you want.
JOSEPH WOOD KRUTCH
The Twelve Seasons
The naming of cats is a difficult matter;
It isn't just one of your holiday games.
You may think at first, I'm as mad as a hatter
When I tell you a cat must have three different names.
T. S. ELIOT
Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats
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. They realize that, whether they like it or not, they are simply going to have to put up with what to them are excruciatingly slow mental processes, that we humans have embarrassingly low I.Q.'s, and that probably because of these defects, we have an infuriating inability to understand, let alone follow, even the simplist and most explicit of directions.
CLEVELAND AMORY
The Cat Who Came for Christmas
Cats are like guests you're never sure of and are always trying to please.
MARY WELLS LAWRENCE
A Big Life in Advertising
The self-esteem of a cat is extraordinary.
CHRISTIAN MORGENSTERN
Levels
What a luxury a cat is, the moments of shocking and startling pleasure in a day, the feel of the beast, the soft sleekness under your palm, the warmth when you wake on a cold night, the grace and charm even in a quite ordinary workaday puss. Cat walks across your room, and in that lonely stalk you see leopard or even panther, or it turns its head to acknowledge you and the yellow blaze of those eyes tells you what an exotic visitor you have here, in this household friend, the cat who purrs as you stroke, or rub his chin, or scratch his head.
DORIS LESSING
The Old Age of El Magnifico
The moral charm of the cat consists in one's complete inability to fathom their minds and motives. A dog's mind is generally a clear and straightforward affair. You can never discover what strange things are passing in a cat's brain. You know that a dog is looking up to you, following your whims and reflecting your fancies--is, in a word, intellectually dependent upon his master. Not so with a cat. The cat is never the servant of your hand and eye. She may deign to play with you, but it is always with reserves complete enough to save her own individuality and freedom of action. The cat plays with you as much as you with her.
"The Cat in Literature,"
Living Age, vol. 217
Cats ... are like four-legged poster children for OCD.
CAROLINE KNAPP
The Merry Recluse
Cats ... have a natural affinity for people who don't like them--very perverse creatures.
ALAN GOLDSMITH
Waldo Chicken Wakes the Dead
A cat is not merely diverted by everything that moves, but is convinced that all nature is occupied exclusively with catering to her diversion.
FRANÇOIS AUGUSTE PARADIS DE MONCRIF
attributed, The Fireside Sphinx
Cats are autocrats of naked self-interest.
CAMILLE PAGLIA
Sexual Personae
Through all this horror my cat stalked unperturbed. Once I saw him monstrously perched atop a mountain of bones, and wondered at the secrets that might lie behind his yellow eyes.
H. P. LOVECRAFT
"The Rats in the Walls"
The cat could very well be man's best friend but would never stoop to admitting it.
DOUG LARSON
Reader's Digest, vol. 136
If a fish is the movement of water embodied, given shape, then cat is a diagram and pattern of subtle air.
DORIS LESSING
On Cats
You know what cats are like--fast on their feet and not very grateful.
HELEN MAGEE
What's French for Help