When I play with my cat, who knows if I am not a pastime for her more than she is to me?
—Michel de Montaigne (1533–92) French Essayist
Time spent with cats is never wasted.
—Colette (1873–1954) French Novelist, Performer
Cats can work out mathematically the exact place to sit that will cause most inconvenience.
—Pam Brown (b.1948) Australian Poet
Beware of people who dislike cats
—Irish Proverb
A cat is a lion in a jungle of small bushes.
—Indian Proverb
Bragging is not an attractive trait, but let’s be honest. A man who catches a big fish doesn’t go home through an alley.
—Ask Ann Landers (1918–2002) American Advice Columnist
The smallest feline is a masterpiece.
—Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519) Italian Polymath, Painter, Sculptor, Inventor, Architect
Persian pussy from over the sea demure and lazy and smug and fat none of your ribbons and bells for me ours is the zest of the alley cat
—Don Marquis (1878–1937) American Humorist, Journalist, Author
A cat is a tiger that is fed by hand.
—Common Proverb
Take a cat, nourish it well with milk
And tender meat, make it a couch of silk,
But let it see a mouse along the wall
And it abandones milk and meat and all.
—Geoffrey Chaucer (1343–1400) English Poet, Philosopher, Diplomat, Bureaucrat
The cat loves fish, but she’s loath to wet her feet.
—Common Proverb
We love kitties, gawd bless their little whiskers, and we don’t give a damn whether they or we are superior or inferior! They’re confounded pretty, and that’s all we know and all we need to know!
—H. P. Lovecraft (1890–1937) American Science-fiction Writer
Both ardent lovers and austere scholars, when once they come to the years of discretion, love cats, so strong and gentle, the pride of the household, who like them are sensitive to the cold, and sedentary.
—Charles Baudelaire (1821–67) French Poet, Art Critic, Essayist, Translator
Cats always seem so very wise, when staring with their half-closed eyes. Can they be thinking, “I’ll be nice, and maybe she will feed me twice?”
—Bette Midler (b.1945) American Actress, Singer
One of the problems of taking things apart and seeing how they work – supposing you’re trying to find out how a cat works—you take that cat apart to see how it works, what you’ve got in your hands is a non-working cat. The cat wasn’t a sort of clunky mechanism that was susceptible to our available tools of analysis.
—Douglas Adams (1952–2001) English Novelist, Scriptwriter
The ideal of calm exists in a sitting cat.
—Jules Renard (1864–1910) French Writer, Diarist
The way to keep a cat is to try to chase it away.
—E. W. Howe (1853–1937) American Novelist, Editor
Authors like cats because they are such quiet, lovable, wise creatures, and cats like authors for the same reasons.
—Robertson Davies (1913–95) Canadian Novelist, Playwright, Essayist
A cat has absolute emotional honesty: human beings, for one reason or another, may hide their feelings, but a cat does not.
—Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961) American Author, Journalist, Short Story Writer
A cat bitten once by a snake dreads even rope.
—Arabic Proverb
Cats are intended to teach us that not everything in nature has a function.
—Garrison Keillor (b.1942) American Author, Humorist, Radio Personality
In a cat’s eye, all things belong to cats.
—English Proverb
Those who’ll play with cats must expect to be scratched.
—Miguel de Cervantes (1547–1616) Spanish Novelist
One small cat changes coming home to an empty house to coming home.
—Pam Brown (b.1948) Australian Poet
When the cat’s away, the mice will play.
—English Proverb
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?
—Mark Twain (1835–1910) American Humorist
Cats are dangerous companions for writers because cat watching is a near-perfect method of writing avoidance.
—Dan Greenberg (b.1965) American Elected Rep, Politician
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 laughably 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.
—Mark Twain (1835–1910) American Humorist
I love cats because I enjoy my home; and little by little, they become its visible soul.
—Jean Cocteau (1889–1963) French Poet, Playwright, Film Director
A cat pours his body on the floor like water.
—William Lyon Phelps (1865–1943) American Author, Critic, Scholar