Cat Quotes and Proverbs

I purr, therefore I am.
~Anonymous~

"No amount of time can erase the memory of a good cat, and no amount
of masking tape can ever totally remove his fur from your couch."
~Leo Dworken~

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

"Our perfect companions never have fewer than four feet."
~Colette~

"Time spent with cats is never wasted."
~Colette~

"There are no ordinary cats."
~Colette~

"My cat does not talk as respectfully to me as I do to her."
~Colette~

"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~

"The smallest feline is a masterpiece."
~Leonardo da Vinci~

"Of all God's creatures there is only one that cannot be made the
slave of the leash. That one is the cat. If man could be crossed with
the cat it would improve man, but it would deteriorate the cat."
~Mark Twain~

"If animals could speak the dog would be a blundering outspoken fellow,
but the cat would have the rare grace of never saying a word too much."
~Mark Twain~

"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~

"Ignorant people think it is the noise which fighting cats make that is so
aggravating, but it ain't so; it is the sickening grammar that they use."
~Mark Twain~

"One of the most striking differences between a cat and a lie
is that the cat has only nine lives."
~Mark Twain~

"One cat justs leads to another."
~Ernest Hemingway~

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

"What greater gift than the love of a cat?"
~Charles Dickens~

"The ideal of calm exists in a sitting cat."
~Jules Reynard~

"Most beds sleep up to six cats. Ten cats without the owner."
~Stephen Baker~

"Kittens are born with their eyes shut. They open them in about six days,
take a look around, then close them again for the better part of their lives."
~Stephen Baker~

"If there was any petting to be done...he chose to do it. Often he would sit
looking at me, and then, moved by a delicate affection, come and pull at my
coat until he could touch my face with his nose, and the go away contented."
~Charles Dudley Warner~
("Calvin")

"Of all animals, he alone attains to the Contemplative Life."
~Andrew Lang~
("On Observing His Cats")

"To err is human, To purr feline."
~Robert Byrne~

"A kitten is the rosebud in the garden of the animal kingdom."
~Robert Southey~

"Every cat is really the most beautiful woman in the room."
~E.V. Lucas~

"A dog is a dog, a bird is a bird, and a cat is a person."
~Mugsy Peabody~

"Cats don't like change without their consent."
~Roger A. Caras~

"Even the stupidest cat seems to know more than any dog."
~Eleanor Clark~

"A dog is prose, a cat is a poem."
~Jean Burden~

"If cats could talk, they wouldn't."
~Nan Porter~

"Two things are aesthetically perfect in the world - the clock and the cat."
~Emile Auguste Chartier~

"Dogs eat. Cats dine."
~Ann Taylor~

"A cat is there when you call her - if she doesn't have something better to do."
~Bill Adler~

"Who can believe that there is no soul behind those luminous eyes!"
~Theophile Gautier~

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

"A meow massages the heart."
~Stuart McMillan~

"I have found my love of cats most helpful in understanding women."
~John Simon~

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

"Like a graceful vase a cat even when motionless seems to flow."
~George F. Will~

"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 kind."
~Cleveland Armory~

"Cats are mysterious folk.
There is more passing in their minds than we are aware of."
~Sir Walter Scott~

"When addressed, a gentleman cat does not move a muscle.
He looks as if he hasn't heard."
~Mary Sarton~

"The only mystery about the cat is why it ever decided to become a domestic animal."
~Sir Compton Mackenzie~

"Cats are rather delicate creatures and they are subject to a good many
ailments, but I never heard of one who suffered from insomnia."
~Joseph Wood Krutch~

"People that hate cats, will come back as mice in their next life."
~Faith Resnick~

"How we behave toward cats here below determines our status in heaven."
~Robert A. Heinlein~

"As every cat owner knows, nobody owns a cat."
~Ellen Perry Berkeley~

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

"I wish I could write as mysterious as a cat."
~Edgar Allan Poe~

"Beware of people who dislike cats."
~Irish Proverb~

"Happy is the home with at least one cat."
~Italian Proverb~

"A cat is a lion in a jungle of small bushes."
~Indian saying~

"Nobody can truly own a cat."
~Old British Saying~

"The cat has nine lives: three for playing, three for straying, three for staying."
~English Proverb~

"Her function is to sit and be admired."
~Georgina Strickland Gates~

"Meow is like aloha - it can mean anything."
~Hank Ketchum~

"Nothing's more determined than a cat on a hot tin roof..."
~Tennessee Williams~

"If you want to be a psychological novelist and write about human beings,
the best thing you can do is keep a pair of cats."
~Aldous Huxley~

"Cats are always elegant."
~John Weitz~

"Watch a cat when it enters a room for the first time.
It searches and smells about, it is not quiet for a moment,
it trusts nothing until it has examined and made acquaintance with everything."
~Jean Jacques Rousseau~

"If there is one spot of sun spilling onto the floor, a cat will find it and soak it up."
~Jean Asper McIntosh~

"When a man wants to murder a tiger, it's called sport.
When the tiger wants to murder him, it's called ferocity."
~George Bernard Shaw~

"Those who will play with cats must expect to be scratched."
~Cervantes~

"No man ever dared to manifest his boredom so insolently as does a Siamese
tomcat when he yawns in the face of his amorously importunate wife."
~Aldous Huxley~

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

"It is a very inconvenient habit of kittens that,
whatever you say to them, they always purr."
~Lewis Carroll~

"Among human beings, a cat is merely a cat;
among cats, a cat is a prowling shadow in a jungle."
~Karel Capek~

"Every life should have nine cats."
~Anonymous~

"There is no more intrepid explorer than a kitten."
~Jules Champfleury~

"No amount of time can erase the memory of a good cat, and no amount
of masking tape can ever totally remove his fur from your couch."
~Leo Dworken~

"The cat is a character of being; the dog, a character of doing."
~Michael J. Rosen~

"A cat can purr its way out of anything."
~Donna McCrohan~

"In a cat's eyes, all things belong to cats."
~English Proverb~

"Cats invented self-esteem; there is not an insecure bone in their body."
~Erma Bombeck~

"To respect the cat is the beginning of the aesthetic sense."
~Erasmus Darwin~

"In the beginning, God created man, but seeing him so feeble, He gave him the cat."
~Warren Eckstein~

"The cat could very well be man's best friend, but he would never stoop to admit it."
~Doug Larson~

"A child is a person who can't understand why someone would give away
a perfectly good kitten."
~Doug Larson~

"Cats are absolute individuals, with their own ideas about everything,
including the people they own."
~John Dingman~

"If a dog jumps into your lap it is because he is fond of you;
but if a cat does the same thing it is because your lap is warmer."
~A. H. Whitehead~

"When my cats aren't happy, I'm not happy. Not because I care about their
mood but because I know they're just sitting there thinking up ways to get even."
~Penny Ward Moser~

"I wonder what goes through his mind when he sees us peeing in his water bowl."
~Penny Ward Moser~

"Artists like cats; soldiers like dogs."
~Desmond Morris~

"He seems the incarnation of everything soft and silky and velvety, without
a sharp edge in his composition, a dreamer whose philosophy is sleep and let sleep"
~Saki~

"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~

"Cats are dogs with a college education"
~Grace Hodgson~

"You can't own a cat. The best you can do is be partners."
~Sir Harry Swanson~

"In nine lifetimes, you'll never know as much about your cat as your cat knows about you."
~Michael Zullo~

"A cat is a puzzle for which there is no solution."
~Hazel Nicholson~

"Cats come and go without ever leaving."
~Martha Curtis~

"Everything comes to those who wait...except a cat."
~Marilyn Peterson~

"The problem with cats is that they get the exact same look
on their face whether they see a moth or an ax-murderer."
~Paula Poundstone~

"In life there are two compensations.....Prozac and cats."
~Brian Walsh~

"By associating with the cat one only risks becoming richer."
~Colette~

"Cats are designated friends."
~Norman Corwin~

"A cat is the only domestic animal I know who toilet trains itself
and does a damned impressive job of it."
~Joseph Epstein~

"With the qualities of cleanliness, discretion, affection, patience, dignity, and
courage that cats have, how many of us, I ask you, would be capable of being cats?"
~Fernand Mery~

"The cat is utterly sincere."
~Fernand Mery~

"To bathe a cat takes brute force, perseverance, courage of conviction--
and a cat. The last ingredient is usually hardest to come by."
~Stephen Baker~

"Cats' hearing apparatus is built to allow the human voice to easily go
in one ear and out the other."
~Stephen Baker~

"Cats are smarter than dogs. You can't get eight cats to pull a sled through snow."
~Jeff Valdez~

"Unlike us, cats never outgrow their delight in cat capacities,
nor do they settle finally for limitations.
Cats, I think, live out their lives fulfilling their expectations."
~Irving Townsend~

"Cats are connoisseurs of comfort."
~James Herriot~

"The trouble with cats is that they've got no tact."
~P.G. Wodehouse~

"The little furry buggers are just deep, deep wells you throw all your emotions into."
~Bruce Schimmel~

A man has to work so hard so that something of his personality stays alive. A tomcat has it so easy, he has only to spray and his presence is there for years on rainy days."
~Albert Einstein~

"There's no need for a piece of sculpture in a home that has a cat."
~Wesley Bates~

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

"Cats are living adornments."
~Edwin Lent~

"We quickly discovered that two kittens were much more fun than one."
~Allen Lacy~

"If a cat does something, we call it instinct;
if we do the same thing, for the same reason, we call it intelligence."
~Will Cuppy~

"No tame animal has lost less of its native dignity or maintained more of
its ancient reserve. The domestic cat might rebel tomorrow."
~William Conway~

"To assume a cat's asleep is a grave mistake.
He can close his eyes and keep both his ears awake."
~Aileen Fisher~

"Cats are only human, they have their faults."
~Kingsley Amis~

"The way to keep a cat is to try to chase it away."
~E. W. Howe~

"If we treated everyone we meet with the same affection we bestow
upon our favorite cat, they, too, would purr."
~Martin Buxbaum~

"If only cats grew into kittens."
~R. D. Stern~

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

"Like those great sphinxes lounging through eternity in noble attitudes
upon the desert sand, they gaze incuriously at nothing, calm and wise."
~Charles Baudelaire~

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

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

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

"I had been told that the training procedure with cats was difficult.
It's not. Mine had me trained in two days."
~Comedian Bill Dana~

"One of the oldest human needs is having someone to wonder where you are
when you don't come home at night."
~Margaret Mead~

"You can keep a dog; but it is the cat who keeps people,
because cats find humans useful domestic animals."
~George Mikes~
(from "How to be decadent")

"When the cat's away, the mice will play."
~Folk Saying~

"The dog for the man, the cat for the woman."
~English Proverb~

"Happy owner, happy cat. Indifferent owner, reclusive cat."
~Chinese Proverb~

"A cat pent up becomes a lion."
~Italian Proverb~

"A house without either a cat or a dog is the house of a scoundrel."
~Portuguese Proverb~

"The cat was created when the lion sneezed."
~Arabian Proverb~

"Curiosity killed the cat, Satisfaction brought it back!"
~English Proverb~

"A cat bitten once by a snake dreads even rope."
~Arabian Proverb~

"Books and cats and fair-haired little girls make the best furnishing for a room."
~French Proverb~

"I gave an order to a cat, and the cat gave it to its tail."
~Chinese Proverb~

"In the middle of a world that has always been a bit mad,
a cat walks with confidence."
~Roseanne Amberson~

"A cat can be trusted to purr when she is pleased,
which is more than can be said for human beings."
~William Ralph Inge~
(1860-1954)

"The fog comes on little cat feet."
~Carl Sandberg~
(1916)

"The Cat. He walked by himself, and all places were alike to him."
~Rudyard Kipling~
(1865-1936)

"My cat knows the song in my heart and purrs it to me when my memory fails."
~Unknown~