I have noticed that what cats most appreciate in a human being is not the ability to produce food which they take for granted--but his or her entertainment value.
Geoffrey Household


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. N. Whitehead


Of all God's creatures there is only one that cannot be made the slave of the lash. That one is the cat.
Mark Twain


Cats seem to go on the principle that it never does any harm to ask for what you want.
Joseph Wood Krutch


I love cats because I enjoy my home; and little by little, they become its visible soul.
Jean Cocteau


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


When I play with my cat, who knows if I am not a pastime to her more than she is to me?
Montaigne


There is, incidentally, no way of talking about cats that enables one to come off as a sane person.
Dan Greenberg


I've met many thinkers and many cats, but the wisdom of cats is infinitely superior.
Hippolyte Taine


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


Cats can be cooperative when something feels good, which, to a cat, is the way everything is supposed to feel as much of the time as possible.
Roger Caras


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


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


By and large, people who enjoy teaching animals to roll over will find themselves happier with a dog.
Barbara Holland


A meow massages the heart.
Stuart McMillan


Cats are the ultimate narcissists. You can tell this by all the time they spend on personal grooming. Dogs aren't like this. A dog's idea of personal grooming is to roll in a dead fish.
James Gorman


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


Cats always know whether people like or dislike them. They do not always care enough to do anything about it.
Winifred Carriere


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


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


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


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


Prowling his own quiet backyard or asleep by the fire, he is still only a whisker away from the wilds.
Jean Burden


The mathematical probability of a common cat doing exactly as it pleases is the one scientific absolute in the world.
Lynn M. Osband


Cats do not have to be shown how to have a good time, for they are unfailing ingenious in that respect.
James Mason

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


Some people say that cats are sneaky, evil, and cruel. True, and they have many other fine qualities as well.
Missy Dizick


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


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


Cats know how to obtain food without labor, shelter without confinement, and love without penalties.
W. L. George


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 Amory


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


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


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


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


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


The smallest feline is a masterpiece.
Leonardo da Vinci


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


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


There are no ordinary cats.
Colette


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


There are few things in life more heart warming than to be welcomed by a cat.
Tay Hohoff


One reason we admire cats is for their proficiency in one-upmanship. They always seem to come out on top, no matter what they are doing, or pretend they do.
Barbara Webster


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


Of all animals, he alone attains to the Contemplative Life.
Andrew Lang


The cat is domestic only as far as suits its own ends...
Saki (H. H. Munro)


We cannot without becoming cats, perfectly understand the cat mind.
St. George Mivart


Most cats, when they are Out want to be In, and vice versa, and often simultaneously.
Louis F. Camuti, DVM


The phrase "domestic cat" is an oxymoron.
George F. Will


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


Intelligence in the cat is underrated.
Louis Wain


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


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


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


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


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

If a cat did not put a firm paw down now and then, how could his human remain possessed.
Winifred Carriere


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


There is nothing in the animal world, to my mind, more delightful than grown cats at play. They are so swift and light and graceful, so subtle and designing, and yet so richly comic.
Monica Edwards


A little drowsing cat is an image of perfect beatitude.
Jules Champfleury


Are cats lazy? Well, more power to them if they are. Which one of us has not entertained the dream of doing just as he likes, when and how he likes, and as much as he likes?
Fernand Mery


When it comes to knowing how to relax, cats are the original yoga experts.
Patricia Curtis


Cats find malicious amusement in doing what they are not wanted to do, and that with an affectation of innocence that materially aggravates their deliberate offence.
Helen Winslow



It is easy to understand why the cat has eclipsed the dog as modern America's favorite pet. People like pets to possess the same qualities they do. Cats are irresponsible and recognize no authority, yet are completely dependent on others for their material needs. Cats cannot be made to do anything useful. Cats are mean for the fun of it. In fact, cats possess so many of the same qualities as people that is is often hard to tell the people and the cats apart.
P. J. O'Rourke


Cats hate a closed door, you know, regardless of which side they're on. If they're out, they want to get in, and if they're in, they want to get out.
Lillian Jackson Braun


Let us be honest; most of us rather like our cats to have a streak of wickedness. I should not feel quite easy in the company of any cat that walked around the house with a saintly expression.
Beverly Nichols


Cats, as a class, have never completely got over the snootiness caused by the fact that in Ancient Egypt they were worshiped as gods. This makes them prone to set themselves up as critics and censors of the frail and erring human beings whose lot they share.
P. G. Wodehouse


When naming a cat, if one's imagination is totally at a loss, start with a good encyclopedia. Look up the names of emperors, empresses, kings, and queens. Cats, particularly male cats, like very strong names which link them to majestic feats.
Auriel Douglas


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


Never ask a hungry cat whether he loves you for yourself alone.
Louis J. Camuti

Loneliness is comforted by the closeness and touch of fur to fur, skin to skin, or--skin to fur.
Paul Gallico


Cats love one so much--more than they will allow. But they have so much wisdom they keep it to themselves.
Mary E. Wilkins Freeman


The cat, it is well to remember, remains the friend of man because it pleases him to do so and not because he must.
Carl Van Vechten


The cat always leaves a mark on his friend.
Aesop


It is impossible for a lover of cats to banish these alert, gentle, and discriminating little friends, who give us just enough of their regard and complaisance to make us hunger for more.
Agnes Repplier


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


Cats are smarter than dogs. You can not get eight cats to pull a sled through the snow.
Jeff Valdez


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


The cat has too much spirit to have no heart.
Ernest Menaul


One cat just leads to another.
Ernest Hemingway


Women and cats will do as they please, and men and dogs should relax and get used to the idea.
Robert A. Heinlein


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


When you're special to a cat, you're special indeed...she brings to you the gift of her preference of you, the sight of you, the sound of your voice, the touch of your hand.
Lenore Fleischer


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


The cat pretends to sleep, the better to see.
Francois-Auguste Rene de Chateaubriand


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


Once cats were all wild, but afterward they retired to houses.
Edward Topsell


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


There is, indeed, no single quality of the cat that man could not emulate to his advantage.
Carl Van Vechten


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


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


Cats are love on four legs.
Richard Torregrossa


Anyone who claims that a cat cannot give a dirty look either has never kept a cat or is singularly unobservant.
Maurice Burton


I suspect that many an ailurophobe (a person who fears or hates cats) hates cats only because he feels they are better people than he is--more honest, more secure, more loved, more whatever he is not.
Winifred Carriere


If you would know what a cat is thinking about, you must hold its paw in your hand for a long time...
Jules Champfleury


Any cat who misses a mouse pretends it was aiming for the dead leaf.
Charlotte Gray


If your cat falls out of a tree, go indoors to laugh.
Patricia Hitchcock


Cats only assume their strangest, most intriguing and most beautiful postures when it is impossible to photograph them. Cat calendars always disappoint for they only show the public range of cat positions.
J. R. Coulson


A cat isn't fussy--just as long as you remember he likes his milk in the shallow, rose-patterned saucer and his fish on the blue plate. From which he will take it, and eat off the floor.
Arthur BridgesAesop


Kittens are wide-eyed, soft and sweet. With needles in their jaws and feet.
Pam Brown


A cat who has taken umbrage is a terrible sight to see.
Rosemary Nisbet


To some blind souls all cats are much alike. To a cat lover every cat from the beginning of time has been utterly and amazingly unique.
Jenny De Vries


The really great thing about cats is their endless variety. One can pick a cat to fit almost any kind of decor, income, personality, mood. But under the fur, there still lies, essentially unchanged, one of the world's free souls.
Eric Gurney


One small cat changes coming home to an empty house to coming home.
Pam Brown


Only cat lovers know the luxury of fur-coated, musical hot water bottles that never go cold.
Susanne Millen


There are people who reshape the world by force or argument, but the cat just lies there, dozing, and the world quietly reshapes itself to suit his comfort and convenience.
Allen and Ivy Dodd


He makes himself the companion of your hours of solitude, melancholy and toil. He remains for whole evenings on your knee, uttering his contented purr, happy to be with you, and forsaking the company of animals of his own species.
Theophile Gautier


Places to look: behind the books in the bookshelf, any cupboard with a gap too small for any cat to squeeze through, the top of anything sheer, under anything too low for a cat to squash under and inside the piano.
Roseanne Ambrose-Brown


Cats like doors left open, in case they change their minds.
Rosemary Nisbet


I love in the cat that independent and most ungrateful temper which prevents it from attaching itself to anyone; the indifference with which it passes from the salon to the housetop.
Francois Rene De Chateaubriand


For me, one of the pleasures of cats' company is their devotion to bodily comfort.
Compton Mackenzie


The trouble with sharing one's bed with cats is that they'd rather sleep on you than beside you.
Pam Brown


A cat allows you to sleep on the bed. On the edge.
Jenny De Vries

 

A cat refuses to be the object of sentimentality--if she doesn't want to be cuddled, that's it.
Samantha Armstrong


All cats like being the focus of attention.
Peter Gray


People meeting for the first time suddenly relax if they find they both have cats. And plunge into anecdote.
Charlotte Gray


Nobody who is not prepared to spoil cats will get from them the reward they are able to give to those who do spoil them.
Compton Mackenzie


One day a cat will opt to join you while you are utterly relaxed in muscle and brain, and with delicate miaow and a velvet paw will show you transcendental meditation by an expert.
V. Martin


Even overweight cats instinctively know the cardinal rule: when fat, arrange yourself in slim poses.
John Weitz


If man could be crossed with a cat it would improve man, but it would deteriorate the cat.
Mark Twain


If a fish is the movement of water embodied, given shape, then a cat is a diagram and pattern of subtle air.
Doris Lessing


After scolding one's cat one looks into its face and is seized by the ugly suspicion that it understood every word. And has filed it for reference.
Charlotte Gray


There is nothing so lowering to one's self-esteem as the affectionate contempt of a beloved cat.
Monica Edwards


A dog will flatter you but you have to flatter the cat.
George Mikes


You can keep a dog; but it is the cat who keeps people, because cats find humans useful domestic animals.
George Mikes


You own a dog but you feed a cat.
Jenny De Vries


One is never sure, watching two cats washing each other, whether it's affection, the taste or a trial run for the jugular.
Helen Thomson


A cat sees no good reason why it should obey another animal, even if it does stand on two legs.
Sarah Thompson


Cats are kindly masters, just so long as you remember your place.
Paul Gray


A cat does not want all the world to love her--only those she has chosen to love.
Helen Thomson


If you are worthy of its affection, a cat will be your friend, but never your slave.
Theophile Gautier


One must love a cat on its own terms.
Peter Gray


Cats are a tonic, they are a laugh, they are a cuddle, they are at least pretty just about all of the time and beautiful some of the time.
Roger Caras


Cats can work out mathematically the exact place to sit that will cause the most inconvenience.
Pam Brown


Most cats enjoy kneading--digging their claws into rugs, fabrics or human arms or legs. It exercises certain muscles, but I think they do it for fun, too.
Lloyd Alexander


Cats have an infallible understanding of total concentration--and get between you and it.
Arthur Bridges


A kitten is so flexible that she is almost double; the hind parts are equivalent to another kitten with which the forepart plays. She does not discover that her tail belongs to her until you tread on it.
Henry David Thoreau


Cats were put into the world to disprove the dogma that all things were created to serve man.
Paul Gray


The cat has been described as the most perfect animal, the acme of muscular perfection and the supreme example in the animal kingdom of the co-ordination of mind and muscle.
Roseanne Ambrose-Brown


Poets generally love cats--because poets have no delusions about their own superiority.
Marion Garretty


Everything a cat is and does physically is to me beautiful, lovely, stimulating, soothing, attractive and an enchantment.
Paul Gallico


I think one reason we admire cats, those of us who do, is their proficiency in one-upmanship. They always seem to come out on top, no matter what they are doing--or pretend to do. Rarely do you see a cat discomfited. They have no conscience, and they never regret. Maybe we secretly envy them.
Barbara Webster


A cat is a regency gentleman--elegant of pose, exquisite of manner, with spotless linen and an enthusiasm for bare knuckle fights, rampaging love affairs, duels by moonlight and the singing of glees. He expects immaculate service from his domestic staff, and possesses a range of invective that would make a navvy blanch.
Pam Brown


We tie bright ribbons around their necks, and occasionally little tinkling bells, and we affect to think that they are as sweet and vapid as the coy name 'kitty' by which we call them would imply. It is a curious illusion. For, purring beside our fireplaces and pattering along our back fences, we have got a wild beast as
uncowered and uncorrupted as any under heaven.
Alan Devoe


I saw the most beautiful cat today. It was sitting by the side of the road, its two front feet neatly and graciously together. Then it gravely swished around its tail to completely and snugly encircle itself. It was so fit and beautifully neat, that gesture, and so self-satisified--so complacent.
Mary Morrow Lindbergh


As an inspiration to the author, I do not think the cat can be over-estimated. He suggests so much grace, power, beauty, motion, mysticism. I do not wonder that many writers love cats; I am only surprised that all do not.
Carl Van Vechten

If a fish is the movement of water embodied, given shape, then a cat is a diagram and pattern of subtle air.
Doris Lessing