I love my cats because I love my home, and little by little they become its visible soul.
Jean Cocteau (1889–1963)
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 (1835–1910)
The smallest feline is a masterpiece.
Leonardo DaVinci (1452–1519)
If a fish is the movement of water embodied, then a cat is a diagram and pattern of subtle air.
Doris Lessing (b. 1919)
The ideal of calm exists in a sitting cat.
Jules Reynard (1864–1910)
A little drowsing cat is an image of perfect beatitude.
Jules Champfleury (1821–1889)
There’s no need for a piece of sculpture in a home that has a cat.
Wesley Bates
A cat improves the garden wall in sunshine, and the hearth in foul weather.
Judith Merkle Riley (1942–2010)
A cat pours his body on the floor like water.
William Lyon Phelps (1865–1943)
Like a graceful vase, a cat, even when motionless, seems to flow.
George F. Will (b. 1941)
I have studied many philosophers and many cats. The wisdom of cats is infinitely superior.
Hippolyte Taine (1828–1893)
If man could be crossed with cat it would improve man, but it would deteriorate the cat.
Mark Twain (1835–1910)
There are no ordinary cats.
Colette (1873–1954)
In ancient times cats were worshipped as gods; they have not forgotten this.
Terry Pratchett (b. 1948)
In a cat’s eye, all things belong to cats.
English Proverb
A kitten is infinitely more amusing than half the people one is obliged to live with in the world.
Sydney Owenson (1776–1859)
I believe cats to be spirits come to earth. A cat, I am sure, could walk on a cloud without coming through.
Jules Verne (1828–1905)
There are two means of refuge from the misery of life: music and cats.
Albert Schweitzer (1875–1965)
In a fire, between a Rembrandt and a cat, I would save the cat.
Alberto Giacometti (1901–1966)
Time spent with cats is never wasted.
Sigmund Freud (1856–1939)
There are few things in life more heartwarming than to be welcomed by a cat.
Tay Hohoff
What greater gift than the love of a cat?
Charles Dickens (1812–1870)
When you believe there is no love in the world, just gaze into the eyes of the cat in your lap.
Old Welsh saying
There is something about the presence of a cat… that seems to take the bite out of being alone.
Louis J. Camuti (1893–1981)
Only cat lovers know the luxury of fur-coated, musical hot-water bottles that don’t go cold.
Suzanne Millen
Since each of us is blessed with only one life, why not live it with a cat?
Robert Stearns
When I play with my cat, who knows if I am not a pastime to her more than she is to me?
Michel de Montaigne (1533–1592)
It is a matter to gain the affection of a cat. He is a philosophical animal, tenacious of his own habits, fond of order and neatness, and disinclined to extravagant sentiment. He will be your friend, if he finds you worthy of friendship but not your slave.
Theophile Gautier (1811–1872)
Cats are a mysterious kind of folk. There is more passing in their minds than we are aware of.
Sir Walter Scott (1771–1832)
It always gives me a shiver when I see a cat seeing what I can’t see.
Eleanor Farjeon (1881–1965)
A cat’s eyes are windows, enabling us to see into another world.
Irish Legend
Cats are glorious creatures who must on no accounts be underestimated… Their eyes are fathomless depths of cat-world mysteries.
Lesley Anne Ivory
The city of cats and the city of men exist one inside the other, but they are not the same city.
Italo Calvino (1923–1985)
I wish I could write as mysterious as a cat.
Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1849)
If there is one spot of sunshine spilling onto the floor, a cat will find it and soak it up.
J.A. McIntosh
Cats are connoisseurs of comfort.
James Herriot (1916–1995)
Cats pride themselves on their ability to do nothing.
John R. Breen
Cats do not have to be shown how to have a good time for they are unfailingly ingenious in that respect.
James Mason (1909–1984)
Cats don’t like change without their consent.
Roger A. Caras (1928–2001)
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 (1893–1970)
If it’s raining at the back door, every cat is convinced there’s a good chance it won’t be raining at the front door.
William Toms
No one can own a cat, but they will bless you with their company, if they choose.
Frank Engram
If you are worthy of its affection, a cat will be your friend, but never your slave.
Theophile Gautier (1811–1872)
Cats are kindly masters, just so long as you remember your place.
Paul Gray
Cats can work out mathematically the exact place to sit that will cause most inconvenience.
Pam Brown
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 no more intrepid explorer than a kitten.
Jules Champfleury (1821–1889)
The cat is the only animal which accepts the comforts but rejects the bondage of domesticity.
Georges Louis Leclerc (1707–1788)
The cat is domestic only as far as suits its own ends.
Saki [Hector Hugh Munro] (1870–1916)
Prowling his own quiet backyard or asleep by the fire, he is still only a whisker away from the wilds.
Jean Burden (1914–2008)
Most cats, when they are Out want to be In, and vice versa, and often simultaneously.
Louis J. Camuti (1893–1981)
How you behave toward cats here below determines your status in Heaven.
Robert A. Heinlein (1907–1988)
Beware of people who dislike cats.
Irish Proverb
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.
Cleveland Amory (1917–1998)
Authors like cats because they are such quiet, lovable, wise creatures, and cats like authors for the same reasons.
Robertson Davies (1913–1995)
A catless writer is almost inconceivable. It’s a perverse taste, really, since it would be easier to write with a herd of buffalo in the room than even one cat; they make nests in the notes and bite the end of the pen and walk on the typewriter keys.
Barbara Holland (1933–2010)
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 (1855–1950)
I had been told that the training procedure with cats was difficult. It’s not. Mine had me trained in two days.
Bill Dana (b. 1924)
‘Meow’ is like ‘Aloha’ — it can mean anything.
Hank Ketchum (b. 1920)