quotations about cats
Cats ask plainly for what they want.
WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR
Imaginary Conversations
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
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
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
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
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
A cat knows how to anticipate.
ROGER CARAS
A Cat Is Watching
The cat is not in the long run anxious to please.
T. O. BEACHCROFT
Just Cats
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'Cause everything else is obsolete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
Cats are like that, as we all know, full of little nooks and crannies where secrets may hide.
ROGER A. CARAS
Cat is Watching
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