Cat Poetry Quotes & Sayings

There are a lot of people who can now see me as an artist for the first time. — Alison Moyet

Poetry is like fish: if it's fresh, it's good; if it's stale, it's bad; and if you're not certain, try it on the cat. — Osbert Sitwell

You are the Worst Kind of Animal. A Butcher by Day and a Pussy Cat by Night. — Monroe Ariel

the flicker of a memory
is all we can cling to
for our cherished ghosts

From "Cat Paws on a Windscreen — J.S. Watts

In Moonlight
No
Soft sweet paw on my cheek
No
Fur curled under my chin
Just
A sad space left behind -
Gray cat gone away.

[Ellie's poem] — Patricia MacLachlan

The soldier swears to respect no man above Caesar, but we to respect ourselves first of all.'10 'When you appear before the mighty of the earth, remember that Another looks from above on what is happening, and that you must please Him rather than this man.'11 — Anonymous

Spilling a Secret

What its size,
will have varying
consequences. It's not
possible to predict
what will happen
if you
open the gunnysack,
let the cat escape.
A liberated feline
might purr on your lap,
or it might scratch
your eyes out. You can't
tell
until you loosen the knot.
Do you chance losing
a friendship, if that
friend's well-being
will
only be preserved
by betraying sworn-to
silence trust? Once
the seam is ripped, can
it be
mended again?
And if that proves
impossible, will you be
okay
when it all falls to pieces? — Ellen Hopkins

Scenes from the Playroom

Now Lucy with her family of dolls
Disfigures Mother with an emery board,
While Charles, with match and rubbing alcohol,
Readies the struggling cat, for Chuck is bored.

The young ones pour more ink into the water
Through which the latest goldfish gamely swims,
Laughing, pointing at naked, neutered Father.
The toy chest is a Buchenwald of limbs.

Mother is so lovely; Father, so late.
The cook is off, yet dinner must go on
With onions as her only cause for tears
She hacks the red meat from the slippery bone,
Setting the table, where the children wait,
Her grinning babies, clean behind the ears. — R.S. Gwynn

Calico Kitty

My calico kitty
was painted and primed
she could prowl
the night away ~
without spending a dime... — Muse

Fat bed, lick the black cat in my mouth
each morning. Unfasten all the bones

that make a head, and let me rest: unknown
among the oboe-throated geese gone south

to drop their down and sleep beside the out-
bound tides. Now there's no nighttime I can own

that isn't anxious as a phone
about to ring. Give me some doubt

on loan; give me a way to get away
from what I know. I pace until the sun

is in my window. I lie down. I'm a coal:
I smolder to a bloodshot glow. Each day

I die down in my bed of snow, undone
by my red mind and what it woke. — Malachi Black

Then I found my head one day when I wasn't even trying. — Cat Stevens

Then one day I found my head when I wasn't even trying. — Cat Stevens

Cat's waiting is a kind of love. — Jie Zhang

I have a Gumbie Cat in mind, her name is Jennyanydots;Her coat is one of the tabby kind,with tiger stripes and lepard spots. — T. S. Eliot

We went too far when we put on the fur of lynxes,
Of weasels trapped in winter when they've lost their tan;
We went too far when we let the fox assist us
To warm the hide that houses the soul of Man.

The reek of the leopard and the stink of the inky cat
Striped handsomely with white, are in the concert hall;
We sleekly writhe from under them, and are above all that;
But, the concert over, back into our pelts we crawl. — Edna St. Vincent Millay

They mouth love's language. Gnash
The thirteen teeth
Your lean jaws grin with. Lash
Your itch and quailing, nude greed of the flesh.
Love's breath in you is stale, worded or sung,
As sour as cat's breath,
Harsh of tongue. — James Joyce

A black cat among roses,
phlox, lilac-misted under a quarter moon,
the sweet smells of heliotrope and night-scented stock. The garden is very still.
It is dazed with moonlight,
contented with perfume ... — Amy Lowell

A panther poised in the cypress tree about to jump is a
panther poised in a cypress tree about to jump.
The panther is a poem of fire green eyes and a heart charged
by four winds of four directions.
The panther hears everything in the dark: the unspoken
tears of a few hundred human years, storms that will break
what has broken his world, a bluebird swaying on a branch a
few miles away.
He hears the death song of his approaching prey:
I will always love you, sunrise.
I belong to the black cat with fire green eyes.
There, in the cypress tree near the morning star. — Joy Harjo

At dawn, the grains of sleep turn to floating black spots, then out of focus the world tilts, and the cat scratches at the door ... — John Geddes

Lying asleep between the strokes of night
I saw my love lean over my sad bed,
Pale as the duskiest lily's leaf or head,
Smooth-skinned and dark, with bare throat made to bite,
Too wan for blushing and too warm for white,
But perfect-coloured without white or red.
And her lips opened amorously, and said
I wist not what, saving one word
Delight.
And all her face was honey to my mouth,
And all her body pasture to my eyes;
The long lithe arms and hotter hands than fire,
The quivering flanks, hair smelling of the south,
The bright light feet, the splendid supple thighs
And glittering eyelids of my soul's desire. — Algernon Charles Swinburne

We got the spell exactly right. Except for the ingredients. And most of the poetry. And it probably wasn't the right time. And Gytha took most of it home for the cat, which couldn't of been proper. — Terry Pratchett

I had seen a dawn like this one only twice in my life: once in Vietnam, when a Bouncing Betty had risen from the earth on a night trail and twisted its tentacles of light around my thighs, and years earlier outside of Franklin, Louisiana, when my father and I discovered the body of a labor organizer who had been crucified with sixteen-penny nails, ankle and wrist, against a barn wall. - Sunset Limited — James Lee Burke

Whether Pacquiao loses in the first round, whether he knocks out Mayweather in the first round, it's still going to be the biggest fight in history, — Marvin Hagler

At morning, I'm unruffled - I'll sit with my tea and Muse Cat beside me and listen to the soft chime of the grandfather clock ... — John Geddes

You bothered yourself and changed the season. I was left behind with your awful sounds. — Cat Alonso

In the great green room, there was a telephone
And a red balloon
And a picture of a cat jumping over the moon ... — Margaret Wise Brown

A poem is about something the way a cat is about the house. — Allen Grossman

Who can resist when destiny calls? — Bangambiki Habyarimana

Lovers are not at their best when it matters. Mouths dry up, palms sweat, conversation flags and all the time the heart is threatening to fly from the body once and for all. Lovers have been known to have heart attacks. Lovers drink too much from nervousness and cannot perform. They eat too little and faint during their fervently wished consummation. They do not stroke the favoured cat and their face-paint comes loose. This is not all. Whatever you have set store by, your dress, your dinner, your poetry, will go wrong. — Jeanette Winterson

And there he would lie all day long on the lawn brooding presumably over his poetry, till he reminded one of a cat watching birds, when he had found the word, and her husband said, "Poor old Augustus--he's a true poet," which was high praise from her husband. — Virginia Woolf

The wind has a purpose - to rattle the window panes, disturb the cat and make me miss you ... — John Geddes

Is this where the light faded out forever?
Where the cat was finally killed by caught tongue?
Where hand no longer wandered over curious texture?
Where words no longer moved past lips but died in a quiver? — Mellon Black