"Cats are mentally near to us: their brains function even as ours
do." W. H. Hudson (1841 - 1922)
"To gain the friendship of a cat is not an easy thing. It is ... a creature of habit
and a lover of order and cleanliness. It will consent to be your friend if you are worthy
of the honor, but it will not be your slave." Théophile Gautier (1811 - 1872)
"The smallest feline is a masterpiece!" Leonardo da Vinci
"The cat in gloves catches no mice." Benjamin Franklin
"Whenever the cat of the house is black,
The lasses of lovers will have no lack."
English Proverb
"A kitten is in the animal world what a rosebud is in the garden." Robert
Southey (1774 - 1843)
"What fun to be a cat!" Christopher Morley (1890 - 1957) "In
Honour of Taffy Topaz"
"A little drowsing cat is an image of perfect beatitude." Champfleury
(1821 - 1889)
"They say the test of literary power is whether a man can write an inscription. I
say, 'Can he name a kitten?'" Samuel Butler (1612 - 1680)
"I love cats because I love my home, and little by little they become its visible
soul." Jean Cocteau
"One of the things most beguiling to cat lovers is the intractability of a cat...its refusal to surrender the least part of its spiritual independence." Marguerite Steen
"Those who play with cats must expect to be scratched." Miguel Cervantes
"If a dog jumps onto 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." Alfred North Whitehead
(1861 - 1947)
Wherever mice laugh at a cat, there is a hole nearby. Proverb
"Observe a cat entering a room for the first time: it searches and smells about, ...
it trusts nothing until it has examined and made acquaintance with everything." Jean-Jacques
Rousseau (1712 - 1778)
"Old cats mean young mice." Italian Proverb
"If a fish is the movement of water embodied, given shape, then a cat is a diagram and pattern of subtle air." Doris Lessing
"I have met many thinkers and many cats. The wisdom of cats is infinitely
superior." Hippolyte Taine (1828 - 1893)
"Cats seldom make mistakes, and they never make the same mistake twice." Carl
Van Vechten (1880 - 1964)
"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)
"Wanted by a lady of rank, for adequate remuneration, a few well-behaved and
respectably dressed children, to amuse a cat in delicate health two or three hours a
day."
Want Ad in Late-19th-Century Berlin Newspaper
Maybe your house cat can't roar, but on the other hand, lions and tigers can't
purr! Unknown
"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
"He seems the incarnation of everything soft and silky and velvety,
without a sharp edge in his composition, a dreamer whose philosophy is sleep and let
sleep." Saki (1870 - 1916)
"You are my cat and I am your human." Hilaire Belloc (1870 - 1853)
"Cats are connoisseurs of comfort." James Herriot
"The cat, indignity and independence, is very much like the human animal should be
but isn't." Paul Corey
"The tortoiseshell cat
She sits on the mat
As gay as a sunflower she;
In orange and black you see her blink,
And her waistcoat's white, and her nose is pink ..."
Patrick R. Chalmers
"If animals could speak, the dog would be a blundering, outspoken fellow -- but the
cat would have the rare grace of never saying a word too much." Philip Gilbert
Hamerton
"My Love She
Is A Kitten
And My Heart's a Ball of String."
Henry Sambrooke Leigh
Cats sleep anywhere,
Any table, any chair,
Top of piano, Window-ledge,
In the middle, on the edge ..."
Eleanor Farjeon
"... A little lion small and dainty sweet, with sea-grey eyes and softly stepping
feet." Unknown
"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 (1817 - 1862)
"As the cherub is to the angel, so the cat is to the tiger ..." Elizabeth
Marshall Thomas
"If human, cats might play solitaire, but they would never sit around with the gang
and a few six-packs watching Monday Night Football." TIME Magazine, December 7,
1981
"Nobody can truly own a cat." Old British Saying
"In the image of the lion made He kittens small and curious." Heinrich Heine
(1797 - 1856)
"A kitten is chiefly remarkable for rushing about like mad at nothing whatever and
generally stopping before it gets there." Agnes Repplier (1855 - 1950)
"One of the most striking differences between a cat and and lie is that a cat has
only nine lives." Mark Twain (Samuel L. Clemens)
"In a cat's eyes, all things belong to cats." English Proverb
"No matter how much cats fight, there always seem to be plenty of kittens." Abraham Lincoln, lover of cats
"A cat can never be too clean or too well rested." Anonymous
"A kitten is to the animal world what a rosebud is in the garden." Robert Southey
"Once cats were all wild, but afterward they retired to houses." Edward Topsell
"You have now learned to see,
That cats are much like you and me,
And other people whom we find,
Possessed of various types of mind."
T.S. Eliot
"Cats don't have to be put on pedestals - they put themselves there." Anonymous
"The cat has nine lives: three for playing, three for straying, and three for staying." English Proverb
Mary Bly"No one can have experienced to the fullest the true sense of achievement and satisfaction who has never pursued and successfully caught his tail." Rosalind Welcher
"It is a very inconvenient habit of kittens (Alice had once remarked) that whatever you say to them they always purr." Lewis Carroll
"My pretty cat to my heart I hold,
My heart ever warm to her;
Let me look into thine eyes of agate and gold;
Thy claws keep sheathed in fur."
Charles Baudelaire
Did You Know?
We speak of a pride of lions, but a group of cats is called clowder -- an old word for
"clutter"!
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This page was created by M. B. Campbell
Keep our "litter box" full - Mary usually
empties it daily for us
Last Revised July 12, 1998