Find out what some of history’s greatest minds have said about felines with this list of famous cat quotes. We’ve compiled cat sayings from authors, actors, comedians and more.
There are two means of refuge from the misery of life — music and cats. ― Albert Schweitzer
Of all God’s creatures, there is only one that cannot be made slave of the leash. That one is the cat. If man could be crossed with the cat it would improve the man, but it would deteriorate the cat. ― Mark Twain
I would like to see anyone, prophet, king or God, convince a thousand cats to do the same thing at the same time. ― Neil Gaiman
A cat has absolute emotional honesty: human beings, for one reason or another, may hide their feelings, but a cat does not. ― Ernest Hemingway
There is no such thing as “Just a cat.” ― Robert A. Heinlein
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In my head, the sky is blue, the grass is green and cats are orange. — Jim Davis, In Dog Years I’d be Dead: Garfield at 25
How you behave toward cats here below determines your status in Heaven. ― Robert A. Heinlein
Cats and Home
It is a truth universally acknowledged that a man in possession of a warm house and a well-stocked fridge must be in want of a cat. ― Heather Hacking
Cats gravitate to kitchens like rocks gravitate to gravity. ― Terry Pratchett, Witches Abroad
Cats can work out mathematically the exact place to sit that will cause most inconvenience. ― Pam Brown
I love cats because I enjoy my home; and little by little, they become its visible soul. ― Jean Cocteau
You know a real friend? Someone you know will look after your cat after you are gone. ― William S. Burroughs
Cats gravitate to kitchens like rocks gravitate to gravity. ― Terry Pratchett
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
A house isn’t a home without the ineffable contentment of a cat with its tail folded about its feet. A cat gives mystery, charm, suggestion. ― L.M. Montgomery
The smallest feline is a masterpiece. ― Leonardo da Vinci
Time spent with a cat is never wasted. ― Colette
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. ― Elizabeth Peters
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
My cat is not insane, she’s just a really good actress. ― P.C. Cast, Untamed
A cat understands how to be pleasant in the morning. He doesn’t talk. ― Tamora Pierce, Mastiff
The problem with cats is that they get the same exact look whether they see a moth or an ax-murderer. ― Paula Poundstone
There are no ordinary cats. ― Colette
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
To err is human, to purr is feline. ― Robert Byrne
I have studied many philosophers and many cats. The wisdom of cats is infinitely superior. ― Hippolyte Taine
I believe cats to be spirits come to earth. A cat, I am sure, could walk on a cloud without coming through. ― Jules Verne
When I play with my cat, who knows if I am not a pastime to her more than she is to me? ― Michel de Montaigne
As anyone who has ever been around a cat for any length of time well knows cats have enormous patience with the limitations of the human kind.― Cleveland Amory
What sort of philosophers are we, who know absolutely nothing of the origin and destiny of cats? ― Henry David Thoreau
Don’t judge a cat by its coat. ― Magdalena VandenBerg
When a man loves cats, I am his friend and comrade, without further introduction. ― Mark Twain
Quotes About Cats Compared to Dogs
“Meow” means “woof” in cat. ― George Carlin
Dogs have their day but cats have 365. ― Lilian Jackson Braun
Dogs like everyone. Cats choose who to like. — Lauren Myracle, Shine
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. ― Mark Twain
I love them, they are so nice and selfish. Dogs are TOO good and unselfish. They make me feel uncomfortable. But cats are gloriously human. ― L.M. Montgomery
Dogs come when they’re called; cats take a message and get back to you later. ― Mary Bly
Once when I had remarked on the affection quite often found between cat and dog, my friend replied, “Yes. But I bet no dog would ever confess it to the other dogs. ― C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves
My cat brought me a toy. I thanked her and threw it. She sat there gave me a look that made me realize people and dogs are the crazy ones. ― Dan Harmon
Dogs own space and cats own time. ― Nicola Griffith
Owners of dogs will have noticed that, if you provide them with food and water and shelter and affection, they will think you are god. Whereas owners of cats are compelled to realize that, if you provide them with food and water and shelter and affection, they draw the conclusion that they are gods. ― Christopher Hitchens, The Portable Atheist: Essential Readings for the Nonbeliever
Cats as Judges of People
Kind old ladies assure us that cats are often the best judges of character. A cat will always go to a good man, they say. ― Virginia Woolf
I was drawn to his aloofness, the way cats gravitate toward people who’d rather avoid them. ― Rachel Hartman
In nine lifetimes, you’ll never know as much about your cat as your cat knows about you. ― Michel de Montaigne
Like all pure creatures, cats are practical. ― William S. Burroughs
One reason that cats are happier than people is that they have no newspapers. ― Gwendolyn Brooks
After all, a woman who doesn’t love cats is never going to be make a man happy. ― Orhan Pamuk
If man could be crossed with a cat, it would improve man but deteriorate the cat. ― Mark Twain
Sleep and Relaxation
Why do cats sleep so much? Perhaps they’ve been trusted with some major cosmic task, an essential law of physics – such as: if there are less than 5 million cats sleeping at any one time the world will stop spinning. So that when you look at them and think, “what a lazy, good-for-nothing animal,” they are, in fact, working very, very hard. ― Kate Atkinson
Cats are connoisseurs of comfort. ― James Herriot
The ideal of calm exists in a sitting cat. ― Jules Renard
As my cat would say, all hours are good for sleeping. ― José Saramago, Seeing
The amazing activity of the cat is delicately balanced by his capacity for relaxation. Every household should contain a cat, not only for decorative and domestic values, but because the cat in quiescence is medicinal to irritable, tense, tortured men and women. ― William Lyon Phelps
Sleep is like a cat: It only comes to you if you ignore it. ― Gillian Flynn, Gone Girl
Cats have it all – admiration, an endless sleep, and company only when they want it. ― Rod McKuen
Sleeping, it’s what cats do best. It’s why they are my heroes. ― Jarod Kintz
Prowling his own quiet backyard or asleep by the fire, he is still only a whisker away from the wilds. ― Jean Burden
I have lived with several Zen masters — all of them cats. ― Eckhart Tolle, The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment
Human beings are drawn to cats because they are all we are not — self-contained, elegant in everything they do, relaxed, assured, glad of company, yet still possessing secret lives. ― Pam Brown
Cats and Writing
I wish I could write as mysterious as a cat. ― Edgar Allan Poe
Authors like cats because they are such quiet, lovable, wise creatures, and cats like authors for the same reasons. ― Robertson Davies
I’m trying to translate what my cat says and put it in a book, but how many homonyms are there for meow? ― Jarod Kintz
Living with Multiple Cats
There should always be one more cat than person, so everyone has one to pet, and I have two to myself. ― Jarod Kintz
When bored, find a little cat and watch it; when very bored, find two little cats and watch them! ― Mehmet Murat ildan
One of my biggest fears is that I’m going to die alone in my home, and my cats will eat me because I am too dead to open their food cans. ― Kelli Jae Baeli
Cats are a mysterious kind of folk. ― Walter Scott
One cat just leads to another.― Ernest Hemingway
I have found it is surprisingly difficult to remain sad when a cat is doing its level best to sandpaper one’s cheeks. ― R.L. LaFevers
Funny Cat Quotes
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
If a black cat crosses your path, it signifies that the animal is going somewhere. ― Groucho Marx
If a cat spoke, it would say things like ‘Hey, I don’t see the problem here.’ ― Roy Blount Jr.
Dogs eat. Cats dine. — Ann Taylor
His movements could be called cat-like, except that he did not stop to spray urine up against things. ― Terry Pratchett, Night Watch
I had been told that the training procedure with cats was difficult. It’s not. Mine had me trained in two days. — Bill Dana
Quotes on Cat Behavior
Cats randomly refuse to follow orders to prove they can. ― Ilona Andrews
It always gives me a shiver when I see a cat seeing what I can’t see. ― Eleanor Farjeon
Who knows what goes on in the mind of a cat? ― Julie Kagawa, The Iron King
Of all the things God created, from sunrises and rainbows, to black holes and humor, cats are the most fascinating to me. ― Jarod Kintz
Cats randomly refuse to follow orders to prove they can. ― Ilona Andrews, Magic Strikes
It is a curious truth that many cats enjoy warmer, more convivial, even affectionate relationships with humans than they could ever do with fellow felines. ― Bruce Fogle
If cats could write history, their history would be mostly about cats. ― Eugen Weber
I don’t understand people who don’t touch their pets. Their cat or dog is called a pet for a reason. ― Jarod Kintz
I’ve always wanted to be a cat. Warm and domesticated when you want to be, wild when you don’t. ― Jenny Downham, Before I Die
God made the cat to give man the pleasure of stroking a tiger. ― Francois Joseph Mery
I realized that cats make a perfect audience, they don’t laugh at you, they never contradict you, there’s no need to impress them, and they won’t divulge your secrets. ― Elle Newmark
If I knew everything, life would be lonely, as everyone else would want to explore the world, and I’d be content with a cat on my lap sitting in the dark. ― Jarod Kintz
Cats may walk by themselves, but there are times when they need our support. ― Nicholas Dodman
Kitten Quotes
A kitten is, in the animal world, what a rosebud is in the garden. ― Robert Sowthey
A kitten is the delight of a household. All day long a comedy is played out by an incomparable actor. ― Champfleury
The coldest depth of Hell is reserved for people who abandon kittens. ― Robert A. Heinlein, Friday
No matter how much the cats fight, there always seem to be plenty of kittens. ― Abraham Lincoln
The only thing a cat worries about is what’s happening right now. As we tell the kittens, you can only wash one paw at a time. ― Lloyd Alexander, Time Cat
Cat Love
What greater gift than the love of a cat. ― Charles Dickens
The human race can be roughly divided into two categories: ailurophiles and ailurophobes – cat lovers and the underprivileged. ― David Taylor
We need cats to need us. It unnerves us that they do not. However, if they do not need us, they nonetheless seem to love us. ― Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson
“People who love cats have some of the biggest hearts around. –Susan Easterly
If you can love cats, you can love human beings, because you have to be able to love them without getting them at all. ― Chris Kelly, Downton Tabby
A meow massages the heart. – Stuart McMillan
Love is like a blanket: it will keep you warm, but it might also suffocate you. Also, it’s probably covered with cat hair–love, I mean. ― Jarod Kintz
The cat does not offer services. The cat offers itself. Of course he wants care and shelter. You don’t buy love for nothing. ― William S. Burroughs
My cat will love you more than me. He won’t love you more than he loves me, but he will love you more than I love you. ― Jarod Kintz
Cat Attitude
When a cat flatters … he is not insincere: you may safely take it for real kindness. ― Walter Savage Landor
You know how it is with cats: They don’t really have owners, they have staff. ― P.C. Cast
When Rome burned, the emperor’s cats still expected to be fed on time. ― Seanan McGuire, Rosemary and Rue
I love them, they are so nice and selfish. Dogs are TOO good and unselfish. They make me feel uncomfortable. But cats are gloriously human. ― L.M. Montgomery, Anne of the Island
I regard cats as one of the great joys in the world. I see them as a gift of highest order. ― Trisha McCagh
Cats ask plainly for what they want. ― Walter Savage Landor
Cats will amusingly tolerate humans only until someone comes up with a tin opener that can be operated with a paw. ― Terry Pratchett, Men at Arms
The cat does not offer services. The cat offers itself. ― William S. Burroughs
It is a difficult matter to gain the affection of a cat. He is a philosophical, methodical animal, tenacious of his own habits, fond of order and neatness, and disinclined to extravagant sentiment. He will be your friend, if he finds you worthy of friendship, but not your slave. ― Théophile Gautier
The fear of death is why we build cathedrals, have children, declare war, and watch cat videos online at three a.m. ― Caitlin Doughty
If a fish is the movement of water embodied, given shape, then cat is a diagram and pattern of subtle air. ― Doris Lessing
In ancient times cats were worshipped as gods; they have not forgotten this. ― Terry Pratchett
We’re all mad here. ― Cheshire Cat
Cats, like men, are flatterers. ― Walter Savage Landor
A cat knows how to be comfortable, how to get the people around it to serve it. In a tranquil domestic situation, the cat is a veritable manipulative genius. It seeks the soft, it seeks the warm, it prefers the quiet and it loves to be full. It displays, when it gets its own way in these matters, a degree of contentment we would all like to emulate. ― Roger A. Caras
Never try to outstubborn a cat. ― Robert A. Heinlein
The approval of a cat cannot but flatter the recipient. ― Elizabeth Peters
‘I will do just as you wish,’ said no cat ever. ― Laini Taylor, Night of Cake & Puppets
If cats understood technology and had opposable thumbs, they’d rule the world. ― P.C. Cast, Awakened
Purr more, hiss less ― Linda C. Marchman
Like all pure creatures, cats are practical. ― William S. Burroughs, The Cat Inside
Of all God’s creatures, there is only one that cannot be made slave of the lash. That one is the cat. If man could be crossed with the cat it would improve the man, but it would deteriorate the cat. ― Mark Twain
The wisdom of cats is infinitely superior. ― Hippolyte Taine
I’ve found that he 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
Those who will play with cats must expect to be scratched. ― Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
I preferred to think of myself as a cat. If I think of my behavior as cat behavior instead of people behavior, it pretty much always makes sense. ― Jael McHenry
Cats choose us, we don’t own them. – Kristen Cast
Cats were the gangsters of the animal world, living outside the law and often dying there. There were a great many of them who never grew old by the fire. ― Stephen King, Pet Sematary
While the rest of the species is descended from apes, redheads are descended from cats. ― Mark Twain
When the mouse laughs at the cat, there’s a hole nearby. ― Nigerian Proverb
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. ― Tichakorn Khroopan Hill
No one has ever been able to discover how they make this subtle sound, and what is more, no one ever will. It is a secret that has endured from the very beginning of the time of cats and will never be revealed. ― Paul Gallico
Cats are people, and the sooner the world accepts that fact, the better off the world will be. ― H. Allen Smith
I take care of my flowers and my cats. And enjoy food. And that’s living. ― Ursula Andress
Man who hates cats is insecure, but a man who likes them is one worth keeping. If he can appreciate a cat, he can appreciate a strong, independent woman. ― Larissa Ione, Passion Unleashed
I was drawn to his aloofness, the way cats gravitate toward people who’d rather avoid them. ― Rachel Hartman, Seraphina
No animal has more liberty than the cat, but it buries the mess it makes. The cat is the best anarchist. ― Ernest Hemingway, For Whom the Bell Tolls
I have lived with several Zen masters — all of them cats. ― Eckhart Tolle
I prefer cats to people, for the most part. Most people aren’t cute, and if they are cute they rapidly outgrow it. ― William S. Burroughs
A happy arrangement: many people prefer cats to other people, and many cats prefer people to other cats. ― Mason Cooley
A lie is like a cat: you need to stop it before it gets out the door or it’s really hard to catch. ― Charles M. Blow
Looking for more cat quotes?
Whether you’re looking for inspirational cat quotes for a shelter newsletter or short cat captions for Instagram photos, here are two of our favorite places to search:
- GoodReads (you’ll find some great cat book recommendations here, too!)
- Brainy Quote
- And if you’re looking for some canine wisdom, don’t miss our DogTipper page on famous dog quotes!
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