Cats The Quotes & Sayings

He likes you," Miss Dove said, sounding surprised.
"Yes," Harry answered with an unhappy sigh. He had long ago accepted the fact that cats adored him. The reason, of course, was because both God and cats had the same perverse sense of humor. When the animal buried its claws in his thigh and began to knead with happy abandon, he set his jaw and bore it. "Mr. Pigeon? Rather fitting for you to choose that name, Miss Dove. Both birds, you know. — Laura Lee Guhrke

Fascism's success almost always depends on the cooperation of the "losers" during a time of economic and technological change. The lower-middle classes - the people who have just enough to fear losing it - are the electoral shock troops of fascism (Richard Hofstadter identified this "status anxiety" as the source of Progressivism's quasi-fascist nature). Populist appeals to resentment against "fat cats," "international bankers," "economic royalists," and so on are the stock-in-trade of fascist demagogues. — Jonah Goldberg

But Squirrelpaw had the best idea." Squirrelpaw ducked her head, looking embarrassed. "If ever any of you tell the cats back home that I purred at a Twoleg," she mewed through gritted teeth, "I'll turn you into crow-food, and that's a promise. — Erin Hunter

Then they decided that the fleas that lived on Siamese cats would probably be more intelligent than the fleas that lived on just ordinary alley cats. It only made sense that drinking intelligent blood would make intelligent fleas. — Richard Brautigan

I was drawn to his aloofness, the way cats gravitate toward people who'd rather avoid them. — Rachel Hartman

The 1st day, I stood in the kitchen leaning against the counter watching Annie feed the cats, and I knew I wanted to do that forever. — Nancy Garden

I like to call myself an "equal opportunist," as I love both dogs and cats, but over the last couple years, both Howard and I have become champions for cats. They are so independent and loving and playful and bring such happiness to our lives. — Beth Ostrosky Stern

The coldest depth of Hell is reserved for people who abandon kittens. — Robert A. Heinlein

Here I sit with my three old cats, getting closer to eternity all the time, on a twine chair - (Van Gogh) and me too - and it gets very depressing. What can I do? I had high hopes. We all did. Remember just outside the Tangier Consulate: "Have you met the Skipper yet?" Later I did. And now no skipping, no transport anywhere, except to a cut-rate mortuary. Where were you when I wasn't there? "Hound of Hell!!" screamed the Pop Star, and kicked the fink dog in the nuts. "Only decent thing I done." "Forget the whole thing. I have." Great gasp at this point. How much time? have I left? Not much it seems. — William S. Burroughs

For Harley, reading was the equivalent of chocolate, sleep, and morphine all rolled into one. Like all cats, she was quite the hedonist. — Suzanne Wright

Each year, billions of animals are subjected to cruelty on factory farms, feed lots, and slaughterhouses. The brutality that these animals endure would be grounds for felony cruelty charges if inflicted upon our cats and dogs. — Peter Dinklage

If Chelsea drop points, the cat's out in the open. And you know what cats are like - sometimes they don't come home. — Alex Ferguson

Their [cats] effortless passing between the wild and domestic worlds suggests the kind of grace we need as a species to move between nature and culture. — Richard Mabey

When his father asked why A wasn't apple or B wasn't bird or C wasn't cat, young Ambrose explained that things didn't always have to be the way you'd expect. Everybody does apples and birds and cats, he said, and it's boring to do what everybody else does. — C.S. Richardson

He no longer dreamed of storms, nor of women, nor of great occurrences, nor of great fish, nor fights, nor contests of strength, nor of his wife. He only dreamed of places now and the lions on the beach. They played like young cats in the dusk and he loved them as he loved the boy. He never dreamed about the boy. He simply woke, looked out the open door at the moon and unrolled his trousers and put them on. — Ernest Hemingway,

Charles, a footman who had once worked on his father's farm and who loved animals, appeared and came over to help her prepare dishes of boiled chicken and brown rice for the cats and dogs waiting eagerly at their feet.
When guests were staying, Charles often assisted with the care of her furry brood. Without asking, he set to work, even taking a few moments to gather fresh meat scraps for Aeolus, her wounded hawk, and cut-up apple and beetroots for Poppy, a convalescing rabbit who had an injured leg. He gave her several more apple quarters for the horses, who got jealous if she didn't bring them treats as well.
Once all her cats and dogs were fed, Esme set off for the stables, laden pail in hand, Burr trotting at her heels. She stopped along the way to chat with the gardener and his assistant, who gave her some timothy grass, comfrey and lavender to supplement the hay she regularly fed Poppy. — Tracy Anne Warren

If you call a cat, he may not come. Which doesn't happen with dogs. They're different types of animals. Cats are very sexy I think too in the way they move. — Antonio Banderas

Some people scorn a cat and think it not an essential; but the Clemens tribe are not of these. — Mark Twain

Dogs will eat till they die. Cats will leave food in the dish, incomprehensible to a dog. — Tim Allen

All cats are grey in the dark. — Thomas Lodge

In Tybalt's case, it means bloody control of the local Court of Cats. He became their king by right of blood; he's held the position by beating the crap out of anyone who tries to take it away. The Cait Sidhe take a more direct and bloody approach to succession than most of Faerie. — Seanan McGuire

We have associations to things. We have, you know, we have associations to tables and to - and to dogs and to cats and to Harvard professors, and that's the way the mind works. It's an association machine. — Daniel Kahneman

I walked beside the woman I had killed last week and tried to hold up my end of a conversation about cats. There — Richard K. Morgan

I lie around the floor with my cats Billy and Jazz or watch DVDs with my best friends. — Cathy Freeman

Smugness was an art invented by the race of imps, no matter what cats might claim, so he did it very well indeed, — Spider Robinson

With the Stray Cats at least, we really took the music somewhere else. First, we wrote our own songs. That's a real weak point in modern classics if you do rockabilly or blues. — Brian Setzer

Sorry about the
squishy in your shoe. Must've
been something I ate. — Lee Wardlaw

I couldn't remember the cats' names any better than the dogs'. Four of them were named after the Horsemen of the Apocalypse, and all I could really recall was that Famine ironically weighed about thirty pounds. — Richelle Mead

He's an excellent listener. Most cats are. Except Siameses, the chatty little bastards. I — Anthony Marra

When I was 18 I worked with the Ringling Brothers circus, taking care of menagerie animals. I used to rather deliberately risk my life with the big cats. — Edward Hoagland

And the kittykats would have to erect scaffolding and a pulley to get him down. Mind you, I wouldn't put that past them. Sometimes when they are behind the sofa supposedly purring, I think they are drilling. — Louise Rennison

Cats are the lap-dancers of the animal world. Soon as you stop shelling out, they move on, find another lap. They're furry little sociopaths. Pretty and slick
in love with themselves. When's the last time you saw a seeing-eye cat? — Andrew Vachss

The presence of cats exercises such a magic influence upon highly organized men of intellect. This is why these long-tailed Graces of the animal kingdom ... have been the favorite animal of a Mahommed, Cardinal Richelieu, Crebillon, Rousseau, Wieland. — Leopold Von Sacher-Masoch

Cat lovers take cover. Believe it or not, in the 15th century, there was a 'sport' involving the swinging of cats (by the tail) into the air where they would become moving targets for archers at fetes, fayres and country festivals. Crowded festivals would be described as having no room to 'swing the cat' as revellers would be in danger of being hit by stray arrows. When — Albert Jack

Cats are the wildest of the tame and the tamest of the wild — Mark Twain

All you cat lovers, remember all the millions of cats mewling through the world's rooms lay all their hopes and trust in you. — William S. Burroughs

Even overweight cats instinctively know the cardinal rule: when fat, arrange yourself in slim poses. — John Weitz

Americans, too many of them, take themselves too seriously. You're going to get rapped - by the viewers, by the sponsors and by the network brass - if you joke about doctors, lawyers, dentists, scientists, bus drivers, I don't care who. You can't make a joke about Catholics, Negroes, Jews, Italians, politicians, dogs or cats. In fact, politicians, dogs and cats are the most sacred institutions in America. — Johnny Carson

The route to his hotel had been committed to memory a long time ago. From the overflowing trashcan on the corner to the feral cats that frequented the dumpsters behind the nearby shawarma shop, Jamison knew every detail. — Christian F. Burton

Work - other people's work - is an intolerable idea to a cat. Can you picture cats herding sheep or agreeing to pull a cart? They will not inconvenience themselves to the slightest degree. — Louis J. Camuti

And there's nothing wrong with spinsters, anyway. They have nice cats and little bowls full of candy. Mrs. Bailey and Mrs. Newitz are the kindest ladies you'll ever meet, and they have nips of whiskey in their tea like cowboys. — Catherynne M Valente

There can never be enough written about heroic acts and heroic people, we all need the inspiration they give us. — Carey V. Azzara

and even the feral, near-wild Third Cat, whose true name he had never discovered, as one has to do with cats, trailed — Peter S. Beagle

Yeah? What'd you name all those cats?" Death, Famine, Pestilence, War, and Mr. Whiskers." You named your cats after the riders of the apocal
wait. Mr. Whiskers?" Well, there are only four horsemen. — Richelle Mead

So this is supposed to be the how, and when, and why, and what or reading - about the way that, when reading is going well, one book leads to another and to another, a paper trail of theme and meaning; and how, when it's going badly, when books don't stick or take, when your mood and the mood of the book are fighting like cats, you'd rather do anything but attempt the next paragraph, or reread the last one for the tenth time. "We talked about books," says a character in Charles Baxter's wonderful Feast of Love, "how boring they were to read, but how you loved them anyway. Anyone who hasn't felt like that isn't owning up. — Nick Hornby

Heads of warring nations could learn a lot about how to achieve lasting peace by watching dogs and cats who live in the same house. — Blaize Clement

THERE IS ONE MORE POINT to be made about animal minds and evolution. Evolution is not a progressive force. Although it was once thought that there was a scale of nature or a Great Chain of Being, with all the forms of life ascending in some orderly, preordained fashion - from jellyfish to fish to birds to dogs and cats to us - this is not the case. We are not the culmination of all these "lesser" beings; they are not lesser and we are not the pinnacle of evolution. — Virginia Morell

He raised his arm to strike me. At that very moment, [my daughter] Meiping's cat, Fluffy, came through the kitchen door, jumped on the man's leg from behind, and sank his teeth into the flesh of the man's calf. — Nien Cheng

Cats don't have names," it said.
"No?" said Coraline.
"No," said the cat. "Now, you people have names. That's because you don't know who you are. We know who we are, so we don't need names."
There was something irritatingly self-centered about the cat, Coraline decided. As if it were, in its opinion, the only thing in any world or place that could possibly be of any importance.
Half of her wanted to be very rude to it; the other half of her wanted to be polite and deferential. The polite half won. — Neil Gaiman

She hops expectantly into the sink. I turn on the tap for her; she laps without a glance in my direction, like a duchess so used to being ministered to that she no longer notices the servants and sees only a world where objects dumbly bend to her wishes, doors opening, faucets discharging cool water, delicious things appearing in her dish. — Peter Trachtenberg

Evidently neither cats nor dogs, nor other animals that listen to human music, were constituted for the appreciation of it, for it is not of the slightest use to them in the struggle for existence. Moreover, they and their organs of hearing were much older than man and his music. Their power of appreciating music is therefore an uncontemplated side-faculty of a hearing apparatus which has become on other grounds what we find it to be. So it is, I believe, with man. He has not acquired his musical hearing as such, but has received a highly developed organ of hearing by a process of selection, because it was necessary to him in the selective process ; and this organ of hearing happens also to be adapted to listening to music. — August Weismann

I've found that the way a person feels about cats-and the way they feel about him or her in return-is usually an excellent gauge by which to measure a person's character — P.C. Cast

They met at one of the Bouchercon mystery conferences. Love among the midlist. "It's raining cats and dogs!" Ted announced, which gives you an idea of the sort of thing they write. — Josh Lanyon

Cats are good at keeping clean [ ... ] Dogs are good at running forever without getting tired. And I think that pigs are good at being optimistic and not giving up even when things are really bad. So today we're going to do things the pig way, okay? — Chris Kurtz

The dirty little secret on Wall Street: Eighty percent of the Wall Street executives' and their spouses' donations go to Democrats. It's like they've got some kind of little sweet deal, where we'll call you fat cats and demean you and stuff, but you will get richer than your wildest dreams. — Louie Gohmert

I'm not too big on cats, and sometimes I'll say something like that, and people get so mad at me. But the truth is, I don't care if they get mad. — Blake Shelton

I found all these stupid pictures of cats at the beach, and I was like, "They get it, man. They totally get it." — Bethany Cosentino

A cat never discusses his business with humans, not even Princesses. A cat never explains and never apologizes. A cat never alibis. You must accept a cat as it is and for what it is and not expect more than the pleasure of its company. — Terry Brooks

Sir, this is a unique dog. He does not live by tooth or fang. He respects the right of cats to be cats although he doesn't admire them. He turns his steps rather than disturb an earnest caterpillar. His greatest fear is that someone will point out a rabbit and suggest that he chase it. This is a dog of peace and tranquility. — John Steinbeck

They live, we sleep, we starve, they eat. You must comply with their deceit, don't trust the wolves to guard the sheep. They'll colonize when you close your eyes into a superpower that will never die. — Trevor D. Richardson

If you want to concentrate deeply on some problem, and especially some piece of writing or paper-work, you should acquire a cat. Alone with the cat in the room where you work ... the cat will invariably get up on your desk and settle placidly under the desk lamp ... The cat will settle down and be serene, with a serenity that passes all understanding. And the tranquility of the cat will gradually come to affect you, sitting there at your desk, so that all the excitable qualities that impede your concentration compose themselves and give your mind back the self-command it has lost. You need not watch the cat all the time. Its presence alone is enough. The effect of a cat on your concentration is remarkable, very mysterious. — Muriel Spark

A witch there was, who webs could weave
to snare the heart and wits to reave,
who span dark spells with spider-craft,
and as she span she softly laughed;
a drink she brewed of strength and dread
to bind the quick and stir the dead.
In a cave she housed where winging bats
their harbour sought, and owls and cats
from hunting came with mournful cries,
night-stalking near with needle eyes. — J.R.R. Tolkien

Cats of all kinds weave in and out of the text; Burroughs has clearly taken to them in a big way in his old age and seems torn between a fear they will betray him into sentimentality and a resigned acceptance that a man can't be ironic all the time. — Angela Carter

IN WHICH THERE ARE MONSTERS AND CATS, WHICH IS TO SAY, VERY MUCH THE SAME THING — Jonathan L. Howard

Cats, even when robust, have scant liking for the boisterous society of children, and are apt to exert their utmost ingenuity to escape it. Nor are they without adult sympathy in their prejudice. — Agnes Repplier

I could live there all alone, she thought, slowing the car to look down the winding garden path to the small blue front door with, perfectly, a white cat on the step. No one would ever find me there, either, behind all those roses, and just to make sure I would plant oleanders by the road. I will light a fire in the cool evenings and toast apples at my own hearth. I will raise white cats and sew white curtains for the windows and sometimes come out of my door to go to the store to buy cinnamon and tea and thread. People will come to me to have their fortunes told, and I will brew love potions for sad maidens; I will have a robin ... — Shirley Jackson

Come here, cat. You wouldn't want to destroy the space-time continuum, would you? Meow. Meow. — Connie Willis

A cat's secrets run so deep that even the cat itself is often unaware. Their mysteries are as natural as whiskers. — Wendy Beck

Jazz is so difficult. A lot of people think once they've learned these licks they can get up and play them for the rest of their life. But that's not being truthful to the music 'cause it's not developing. Cats you hear that don't make no mistakes? They ain't trying to do nothing. everything they hear is on the mark, but they've played it so many times ... I've built a whole career out of making mistakes! — Lester Bowie

Lots of donations and money go to rescue dogs and cats, however the public does not understand that every cow, pig and chicken needs to be rescued too. — Nathan Runkle

Trying to corral the suburban stampede with a bunch of school buses was like herding cats. Actually, it was worse than herding cats. It was herding white people, earth's only species with a greater sense of entitlement than a cat. — Tanner Colby

Cats aren't shirts that you buy at the store and then return if they don't fit. Nor are they a pair of shoes you can give away or toss out when you've outgrown them. While these comparisons may seem ridiculously obvious to you, the sad fact is that too many cat owners actually do view their cats that way. As a result, countless cats end up relinquished to shelters or just abandoned because they didn't meet their owners' expectations of the perfect cat. — Pam Johnson-Bennett

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

The wiry man scratched his head, looked the two inquisitors up and down and cleared his throat softly. "We must be quick." He turned to go, pulling his cloak over his head and shuffling through the door into the moonlight. The two inquisitors moved with impossible silence behind, floating across the straw-covered floor like the cats on the walls outside the hut. The cats froze at the disturbance before scurrying noiselessly into the shadows as the three silhouettes crossed the ten yards of grass before the blackness of the forest swallowed them. No fires flickered at this time, when the full moon was highest in the cloudless summer sky, and the three were the only waking souls in the hamlet. — Gregory Figg

Ari regards cats as lessons in the journey through life. Cats, he explains, are divine messengers of patience. Joe, one shoulder still sore from a near miss two weeks ago, says they are Satanic messengers of discord and pruritus. Ari says this is possible, but by the workings of the ineffable divinity, even if they are Satanic messengers of discord and pruritus, they are also tutors sent by the Cosmic All. "They are of themselves," Ari says, clutching this morning's consignment of organic milk, some of which is leaking through the plastic, "an opportunity for self-education. — Nick Harkaway

In the matter of animals I love only cats, but I love them unreasonably for their qualities and in spite of their numerous faults. I have only one, but I could not live without a cat. — Joris-Karl Huysmans

The torture of animals, especially cats, was a popular amusement throughout early modern Europe. The power of cats was concentrated on the most intimate aspect of domestic life: sex. Le chat, la chatte, le minet mean the same thing in French slang as 'pussy' does in English, and they have served as obscenities for centuries. — Slavoj Zizek

In Proverbs, a wisdom book of the Hebrew Scriptures, a cat would find a few "wisdom" passages as noxious as the Garden of Eden passages. Again the symbology of fruit being eaten — Leviak B. Kelly

There's and entire world outside these bleak pages, one full of SUNRISES and KITTY-CATS and late-night BURRITO RUNS and the horrible, creaking amble of us all towards DEATH. It is to that world that I am afraid I must release you to now. — David Malki

To be honest, the reason I have my cats is to force myself to think about something other than myself. — Marie Helvin

Dogs often remind us of the human, ail-too human. Cats, never. — Mason Cooley

Wisdom is nothing more than the marriage of intelligence and compassion.
And, as with all good unions, it takes much experience and time to reach its widest potential.
Have you introduced your intellect to your compassion yet? Be careful; lately, intellect has taken to eating in front of the TV and compassion has taken in too many cats. — Vera Nazarian

Prince Charming is very nice and very honest and very confident in who he is and funny and knows how to have a kick-ass fun time. Is willing to melt away so that nothing else exists in the world except himself and his princess and loves food and cats and every life form except human beings which is not necessary. — Alicia Silverstone

Hellbenders. I collected with exuberance and totality, bringing home almost everything I could get my hands on, and releasing them into the assorted outdoor terrariums or aquariums in my back yard (the turtles I let run wild in the yard, like dogs or cats). — Rick Bass

Cora Thompson had two of them
cats, that is. Which was quite remarkable considering she had never owned a pet before. Growing up in the rural South as she had, Cora had been taught that if an animal couldn't work in a field or be slaughtered for food, then it was of no use. Certainly any domesticated animal such as a dog or a cat would only bring about the destruction of fine furniture, stained carpets, and the onset of disease, not to mention the foul odor. That's just the way it was. — Barbara Casey

From CATS ARE KIND
I saw a dog pursuing automobiles;
On and on he sped.
I was puzzled by this;
I accosted the dog.
'If you catch one,' I said
'What will you do with it?'
'Dumb cat,' he cried,
And ran on. — Henry N. Beard

Well, when I was a little girl we had 17 cats once. They all lived outside, and they kept having more kittens. My mom made us put little ribbons around each kitten's neck, put them in a wagon, and go door-to-door around the neighborhood to try to give them away. — Cheryl Hines

The absence of life is not the same as material privation: we will never again see the same soul occupying the same space. The world refers to them as pets, but that is what we do, not really what they are. Affection pays for itself in proportion to the love we offer, and if the love we lavished on him was any indication, we are inconsolable. The suffering is more on our side now, for he led an enormously happy and productive life, and we are left to remember and agonize. It is all wretchedness now. Grief is the currency for death, leaving us in emotional debt perhaps forever, but love is the tax we happily pay toward the investment of another's company, and we would all rather pay it and be happy and poor than be rich in a friendless life. He is gone, and we are now beholden to him, but we are so much happier for his having been here than we deserve to be.
On the death of Ted, beloved cat — Michelle Franklin

Cats, on the other hand, are similar to Vulcans - dispassionate, contemplative and pointy-eared. — George Takei

Psychologists now recognize that the need in some people to have a dozen cats is really a sublimated desire to have two dozen cats. — Robert Breault

I'd found my niche: cat-owning, stalker-y secretary. And I played the same part again and again and again. — Felicia Day

Daughter of Bast, she replied, with a little bow. Cats liked to be reminded that they had once been worshiped. They pretended that they didn't, that they were above flattery, but of course, that only meant that they were all the more susceptible to it. — Anonymous

I was just thinking how the purr of a contented cat is one of my favorite sounds in the world. There's something so comforting about it, isn't there? — Laura Lam

This is a classic story of the friendship between humans and cats. Yes. I got in a lie right from the start! — Hiro Mashima

Keith much preferred cats. A cat wouldn't go mad at a man traversing a wall in the dead of night; it would shrug and lick its arse — Simon Dunn

I read a study once about sleep deprivation. The researchers made cat-sized islands of sand in the middle of a pool of water, then placed very tired cats on top of them. At first, the cats curled up perfectly on the sand and slept, but eventually they'd sprawl out and wake up in water. I can't remember what they were trying to prove exactly. All I took away was that the cats went crazy. — Jenny Offill

Besides, your a cat.Its your nature to think your the center of the universe."
She stared at him blankly. "But I am the center of the universe. — Rick Riordan

Aunt and Katriona kept a few chickens, but the only other domestic animal they had - if either "domestic" or "had" was applicable - was Flinx, their not-a-house-cat. He was presently a fat tortoiseshell puddle sprawled in the sunlight a few rows over. Since he was only crushing a few nonessential greens, which would regrow anyway, they let him be. Cats — Robin McKinley

Henri said our names were fitting because we were destined to be together in our old age, like our great-great-aunts. Two gray old ladies in the bodies of teenage girls. Someday we'd live in a big house with faded curtains, a dozen or so cats, and a handful of our marbles long ago lost. On all accounts - our destiny, her clairvoyance, and our soon-to-be missing marbles - I believed her. — Jessica Taylor

Not enough info makes for a lot of dead cats."
"Dead cats?"
"You know, 'Curiosity killed the cat.' And I have enough curiosity to start a feline genocide."
"Feline genocide?"
"Yeah. If you don't explain Apollo, the cat kingdom will crumble. Cats all over the world will suddenly plop down in unmoving masses of fur, their food will dry up in smelly chunks of fish, and when people call, 'Here, kitty kitty kitty,' no cats will come running; they'll just-" Walter suddenly stopped.
"What's wrong?" Ashley asked.
Walter stared straight ahead. "I just realized . . . if all those things happened, no one would notice the difference." ~Walter~ — Bryan Davis