Best 586 quotes in «cats quotes» category

The factories, the jails, the drunken days and nights, the hospitals have weakened and shaken me like a mouse in the mouth of a hip-cat: life. - from an Aug. 1965 letter to Jim Roman "On Cats

The first thing was not to panic, because all panic does is escalate the problem. (This is the first mistake that people make in situations like this: the cats lose their pee and the humans lose their shit.)

The Fur Person learned then and there that it is better to be a philosopher than to be a king and that, all things considered, wisdom was to be preferred to power.

The gym cat appears to those who will die. He is our totem." This thought came to me a few weeks ago. I shared it with no one of course.

The house-cat is a four-legged quadruped, the legs as usual being at the corners. It is what is sometimes called a tame animal, though it feeds on mice and birds of prey. Its colours are striped, it does not bark, but breathes through its nose instead of its mouth. Cats also mow, which you all have heard. Cats have nine liveses, but which is seldom wanted in this country, coz' of Christianity. Cats eat meat and most anythink speshuelly where you can't afford. That is all about cats." (From a schoolboy's essay, 1903.)

The human race can be roughly divided into two categories: ailurophiles and ailurophobes - cat lovers and the underprivileged.

The living often don’t appreciate how complicated the world looks when you are dead, because while death frees the mind from the straitjacket of three dimensions it also cuts it away from Time, which is only another dimension. So while the cat that rubbed up against his invisible legs was undoubtedly the same cat that he had seen a few minutes before, it was also quite clearly a tiny kitten and a fat, half-blind old moggy and every stage in between. All at once. Since it had started off small it looked like a white, catshaped carrot, a description that will have to do until people invent proper four-dimensional adjectives.

The love of one cat simply can't be compared with the love of another..

The man who will not defend the honour of his cat cannot be trusted to defend anything.

The Naming of Cats is a difficult matter, It isn't just one of your holiday games; You may think at first I'm as mad as a hatter When I tell you, a cat must have THREE DIFFERENT NAMES. First of all, there's the name that the family use daily, Such as Peter, Augustus, Alonzo or James, Such as Victor or Jonathan, or George or Bill Bailey - All of them sensible everyday names. There are fancier names if you think they sound sweeter, Some for the gentlemen, some for the dames: Such as Plato, Admetus, Electra, Demeter - But all of them sensible everyday names. But I tell you, a cat needs a name that's particular, A name that's peculiar, and more dignified, Else how can he keep up his tail perpendicular, Or spread out his whiskers, or cherish his pride? Of names of this kind, I can give you a quorum, Such as Munkustrap, Quaxo, or Coricopat, Such as Bombalurina, or else Jellylorum - Names that never belong to more than one cat. But above and beyond there's still one name left over, And that is the name that you never will guess; The name that no human research can discover - But THE CAT HIMSELF KNOWS, and will never confess. When you notice a cat in profound meditation, The reason, I tell you, is always the same: His mind is engaged in a rapt contemplation Of the thought, of the thought, of the thought of his name: His ineffable effable Effanineffable Deep and inscrutable singular Name.

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

The next day, Trixie pawed Maddie awake, patting her arm gently. “I’m up,” Maddie groaned, blinking sleep out of her eyes. “Mrrow.” Trixie peered at her, then gave her a soft nose kiss, her whiskers skimming Maddie’s cheeks. “Thanks, Trixie.” The gesture touched Maddie’s heart, and she wondered how she’d managed to live without a pet until Trixie came into her life.

The next morning, as I picked an Eddie hair off my pant leg, I again considered the possibility of cats controlling the world. "It's possible," I muttered to myself as I dropped the hair into a wastebasket, "that they already do.

The noisy jay swoops by and reviles me, he complains of my meow and my malingering. I too am not a bit subdued, I too am uncontrollable, I sound my splenetic yowl over the roof of the house." (From Meow of Myself, from LEAVES OF CATNIP)

Then I laughed because here I was having a conversation with a cat about having a conversation with a cat.

Then the cow asked: "What is a mirror?" "It is a hole in the wall," said the cat. "You look in it, and there you see the picture, and it is so dainty and charming and ethereal and inspiring in its unimaginable beauty that your head turns round and round, and you almost swoon with ecstasy.

The only purpose of cats is that they constitute mobile decorative objects, a concept which I find intellectually interesting, but unfortunately our cats have such drooping bellies that this does not apply to them.

The realest of cats love with all of their being...

The purr is very important. It's the purr that does it every time. It's the purr that makes up for the Things Under the Bed, the occasional pungency, the 4 a.m. yowl. Other creatures went in for big teeth, long legs or over-active brains, while cats just settled for a noise that tells the world they're feeling happy.

The problem with cats is that they get the same exact look whether they see a moth or an ax-murderer.

THE RAINBOW OF THE NIGHT In this adventure of soul and spirit I have seen great men leave alcohol, their family, music, meditation and the company of the living saints But they could never leave behind the coffee of the late hours of the night nor his yellow cats They only fit in the children and in the rainbows of the night How can they have choice?

There are always cats around Charlie's, but they are usually refugees seeking asylum from the local rat population, and rather desperately friendly.

There are only a few things that are more entertaining than watching a cat trying to run across a freshly waxed wood floor after a ball.

There is no known cure for severe affection for one's cat. The only way to relieve the symptoms is to go ahead and launch a kiss attack.

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

There is no creature better at delicate rudeness than a cat...

There are those who have suggested that the tendency of a cat to play with its prey is a merciful one...

There is a certain concentrated, avid-for-blood look that appears on the faces of reporters on the trail of a very big story that you'd have to visit the big cat house at the zoo to see duplicated in its primal state. From the look on Brenda's face, if a tiger was standing between her and this story right now, the cat would soon have a tall-journalist-sized hole in him.

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

There is something dead about a lawn which has never been shadowed by the swift silhouette of a dancing kitten.

There is something about a man with a beard I cannot stand. No particular reason for it. Prejudice, I suppose. I feel the same way about cats.

...there is the fable, Chinese I think, literary I am sure: of a period on earth when the dominant creatures were cats: who after ages of trying to cope with the anguishes of mortality---famine, plague, war, injustice, folly, greed---in a word, civilized government---convened a congress of the wisest cat philosophers to see if anything could be done: who after long deliberation agreed that the dilemma, the problems themselves were insoluble and the only practical solution was to give it up, relinquish, abdicate, by selecting from among the lesser creatures a species, race optimistic enough to believe that the mortal predicament could be solved and ignorant enough never to learn better. Which is why the cat lives with you, is completely dependent on you for food and shelter but lifts no paw for you and loves you not; in a word, why your cat looks at you the way it does.

There's no thrilling anticipation of the day's first cup of coffee...nor the eye-closing delight of that first swallow of sauvignon blanc in the evening. We cats have no access to everyday mood-enhancing substances. Apart from humble catnip, there is no pharmaceutical refuge if we're suffering from boredom, depression, existential crisis, or even an everyday headache.

There was a sort of gallery structure in the roof space which held a bed and also a bathroom which you could actually swing a cat in. But only if it was a reasonably patient cat and didn’t mind a few nasty cracks about the head.

There were fat cats and skinny cats. The long-tailed and the bobbed. The daring young leapers, and the old windowsill sleepers. Balls of waddling fluff, smooth-coated prowlers, and hairless ones that looked fragile and wise. The tiger-striped, the ring-tailed, and the ones with matching coloured socks and mittens. There were tabbies and calicos. Manx and Persians. Siamese and Bombay. Ragdolls and Birmans. Maine Coons and Russian Blues. There were Snowshoes and Somalis, Tonkinese and Turkish, and many, many more. Brown and beige and orange and grey and black and white and silver cats, each with gleaming eyes of emerald, or sapphire, or amber. A rainbow of precious stones.

There was once a tiger-striped cat. This cat died a million deaths, and lived a million lives, and in those lives, various people owned him. None of those people he cared for. This cat was not afraid of death. One life, the cat became a stray cat, which meant it was free. And it met a white female cat. They became mates, and lived together. Time passed, the white cat passed away of old age. And the tiger- striped cat cried a million times. Eventually, the cat died again. But this time, it didn't come back to life.

There will always be road construction in life, and never a point when all the highways are fixed. Keep walking.

There were only four dissentients, the three dogs and the cat, who was afterwards discovered to have voted on both sides.

The somatotype of the cat or any animal from quadruped to biped partially determines the perspective of the creature. The physiology of any given creature will alter its understanding of its environment. A close look then at the physiology of cats and dogs and one biped, in particular, the primate, should give anyone a clear reason for the biological and psychological shaping of religion. This examination of cats, dogs and then other primates, humanity's cousins, in comparison with some religious ideals, will show just how physiological perspectives would and have influenced religious dogma or cat-ma as the case may be.

The solution to the feral cats that already exist is the one no one wants to hear: accepting the fact that feral cats will live among us, and taking responsibility for controlling their numbers by trapping, neutering, and returning them to their outdoor territories.

The wisdom of cats is infinitely superior.

The urge to change my mind and not go at all is enormous. I’m absolutely terrified to leave on that boat. But, if I don’t go, there’ll be one more broken person in this world who gave up a dream to sit in a chair, pick up the TV remote and shrink.

The three months I'd spend with Eddie had taught me many things, and the top two items were (1) A Cat's Purr Makes Everything Okay and (2) The Cat Always Wins.

The trees around and overhead were so thick that it was always dry inside and on Sunday morning I lay there with Jonas, listening to his stories. All cat stories start with the statement: "My mother, who was the first cat, told me this," and I lay with my head close to Jonas and listened. There was no change coming, I thought here, only spring; I was wrong to be so frightened. The days would get warmer, and Uncle Julian would sit in the sun, and Constance would laugh when she worked in the garden, and it would always be the same. Jonas went on and on ("And then we sang! And then we sang!") and the leaves moved overhead and it would always be the same.

The way to get on with a cat is to treat it as an equal - or even better, as the superior it knows itself to be.

The white cat Sal-al was lying on the straw matting in the empty conservatory. She looked at us with a wicked, conceited expression as if all her appetites had just been satisfied. She was beautiful. Vesta and I both said, "I wish I were a cat!" Before we got to the last word we smiled at each other in annoyance, not liking the idea that most human beings think very much alike.

The word of a cat is not to be relied upon.

The world would probably be better if people were put in carriers and cats roamed free.

This is the story of how I "came down with cat," even though I had decided I would never, ever, own any pet.

They all seemed hungry, happy, and healthy enough in their buzzing—oh the days were hot, and the noise of bees filled the air that was dusty with pollen and sun haze, and there were tiny black flies stuck to one another crowded by the creek and a creek stink rising from the deep pool under the willow tree where a wheat sack of new kittens had been drowned, and their tiny terrible struggling had shot like an electric current through the confusion of muddy water and up the arm of the person who had tied the stone around the mouth of the sack and thrust it into the water; and the culprit had not been able to brush away the current; it penetrated her body and made her heart beat with fear and pity. I was the culprit.