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Cat  Quotes      "The smallest feline is a masterpiece."  Leonardo da Vinci

  If there is a quote, poem, or proverb about cats that you would like to see here, just drop me a line by clicking on the bunny.       Thousands of years ago, cats were worshipped as gods. Cats have never forgotten this. Anonymous

The Cat has nine lives: Three for playing, three for straying, three for staying. English Proverb

A cat is a lion in a jungle of small bushes. Indian proverb

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

His voice is tenderly discreet; But let it be serene or vexed. Still always it is sonorous and profound, this is his charm and his secret. Charles Baudelaire

"All right," said the Cat; and this time it vanished quite slowly, beginning with end of the tail, and ending with the grin, which remained some time after the rest of it had gone.
"Well! I've often seen a cat without a grin," thought Alice, "but a grin without a cat! It's the most curious thing I ever saw in my life!" Alice in Wonderland, Lewis Carroll

I have studied many philosophers and many cats. The wisdom of cats is infinitely superior. Hippolyte Taine

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

A cat is nobody's fool.  Heywood Broun

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

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

She had green eyes, that excellent seer,
And little peaks to either ear.
She sat there, and I sat here.
She spoke of egypt, and a white
Temple, against enormous night
She smiled with clicking teeth and said
That the dead are never dead;
She said old emperors hung like bats
In barns at night, or ran like rat---
but empresses came back as cat!  Stephen Vincent Benet

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

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

Our old Cat has kittens three,
And what do you think their names shall be?
Pepper-pot, Sootkins, Scratch-away, - there!
Was there ever a kitten with these to compare?
And we call their old mother, now what do you think?
Tabitha Long-Claws Tiddley-Wink!  Tabitha Long-Claws Tiddley-Wink, Thomas Hood

Some pussies' coats are yellow;
Some amber streaked with dark,
No member of the feline race but has a special mark.
This one has feet with hoarfrost tipped;
That one has tail that curls;
Another's inky hide is striped;
Another's decked with pearls. Anonymous

His friendship is not easily won, but something worth having. Michael Joseph, English publisher

What sort of philosophers are we, who know absolutely nothing of the origin and destiny of cats? Henry David  Thoreau

She sits composedly sentinel, with paws tucked under her, a good part of her days at present, by some ridiculous little hole, the possible entry of a mouse. Henry David  Thoreau

When I play with my cat, who knows whether she is not amusing herself with me more than I with her? Michel de Montaigne

I am the cat of cats.
I am the everlasting cat!
Cunning, and old, and sleek as jam,
The everlasting cat!
I hunt vermin in the night--
The everlasting cat!
For I see best without light--
The everlasting cat!  Anonymous, The Cat Of Cats

I could half persuade myself that the word felonious is derived from the feline temper. Robert Southey, letter to his daughter, 1824

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. Sir Compton Mackenzie

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

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

When a cat died, a wise Egyptian tried to be someplace else, so that he could not be accused of it's murder Herodotus

Cats have succeeded one another through the Tertiary Epoch for probably millions of years, and in their capacity as butchering machines have undergone a steady improvement. Thomas Henry Huxley

The cat, like the genius, draws into itself as into a shell except in the atmosphere of congeniality, and this is the secret of its remarkable and elusive personality. Ida Mellen, author

The cat has a nervous ear,
that turns this way and that
And what the cat may hear,
is known but to the cat   David Morton

I could endure anything before but a cat, and now he's a cat to me. All's Well That Ends Well, William Shakespeare

There are no ordinary cats. Colette

Time spent with cats is never wasted. Colette

Ah! Cats are a mysterious kind of folk. There is more passing in their minds than we are aware of.  It comes no doubt from their being too familiar with warlocks and witches. Sir Walter Scott

For every house is incompleat without him, and a blessing is lacking in the spirit. Christopher Smart, poet

They say the test of this is whether a man can write an insription. I say, "Can he name a kitten?" And by this test i am condemned, for I cannot. Samuel Butler 

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

Once it has given its love,
what absolute confidence,
what fidelity of affection!
It will make itself the companion
of your hours of work, of loneliness, or of sadness.
It will lie the whole evening on your knee,
purring and happy in your society,
and leaving the company of creatures
of its own society to be with you. Theophile Gautier

A cat can be trusted to purr when pleased, which is more than can be said for human beings. William Ralph Inge

Sometimes the veil between human and animal intelligence wears very thin - then one experiences the supreme thrill of keeping a cat, or perhaps allowing oneself to be owned by a cat. Catherine Manley, author

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, essayist

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

The cat and dog may kiss, but are none the better friends. Anonymous

You see the beauty of the world
Through eyes of unalloyed content,
And in my study chair upcurled,
Move me to pensive wonderment.

I wish I knew your trick of thought,
The prefect balance of your ways;
They seem an inspiration, caught
From other laws in older days Anonymous
 
 

 Mark Twain On Cats  

Mark Twain loved cats.   According  to his daughter,  Susy Clemens,  in her   biography of her father,   written when she was 13   in 1885:

 

"Papa is very fond of animals particularly of cats, we had a dear little gray kitten  once that he named "Lazy"  (papa always  wears gray to match his hair  and eyes) and he would carry him around  on his shoulder, it was a mighty pretty sight!  the gray cat sound asleep against papa's  gray coat and hair.  The names that he  has given our different cats, are really  remarkably funny, they are namely  Stray Kit, Abner, Motley, Fraeulein, Lazy,   Bufalo Bill, Cleveland, Sour Mash,   and Pestilence and Famine."

More Mark Twain quotes can be found here. And now, Mark Twain on cats:

If man could be crossed with the cat it would improve man, but it would deteriorate the cat." 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 title? Pudd'nhead Wilson - Mark Twain

...the person that had took a bull by the tail once had learnt sixty or seventy times as much as a person that hadn't, and said a person that started in to carry a cat home by the tail was getting knowledge that was always going to be useful to him, and warn't ever going to grow dim or doubtful. Chances are, he isn't likely to carry  the cat that way again, either. But if he wants to, I say let him! -Tom Sawyer Abroad- Mark Twain

One of the most striking differences between a cat and a lie is that a cat has only nine lives Pudd'nhead Wilson - Mark Twain

I simply can't resist a cat, particularly a purring one. They are the cleanest, cunningest, and most intelligent things I know, outside of the girl you love, of course. - Abroad with Mark Twain

A cat is more intelligent than people believe, and can be taught any crime. - Notebook, 1895  Mark Twain

Ignorant people think it's the noise which fighting cats make that is so aggravating, but it ain't so; it's the sickening grammar they use.
- A Tramp Abroad  Mark Twain

Of all God's creatures there is only one that cannot be made the slave of the last. That one is the cat. If man could be crossed with the cat it would improve man, but  it would deteriorate the cat. - Notebook, 1894  Mark Twain

By what right has the dog come to be regarded as a "noble" animal? The more brutal and cruel and unjust you are to him the more your fawning and adoring slave he becomes; whereas, if you shamefully misuse a cat once she will always maintain a dignified reserve toward you afterward- you will never get her full confidence again. - Mark Twain, a Biography

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

I urged that kings were dangerous. He said, then have cats. He was sure that a royal family of cats would answer every purpose. They would be as useful as any other royal family, they would know as much, they would have the same virtues and the same treacheries, the same disposition to get up shindies with other royal  cats, they would be laughable vain and absurd and never know it, they would be wholly inexpensive, finally, they would have as sound a divine right as any other  royal house...The worship of royalty being founded in unreason, these graceful and harmless cats would easily become as sacred as any other royalties, and indeed  more so, because it would presently be noticed that they hanged nobody, beheaded nobody, imprisoned nobody, inflicted no cruelties or injustices of any sort, and  so must be worthy of a deeper love and reverence than the customary human king, and would certainly get it. - A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court Mark Twain 
 

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