Cat Quotes: Best, Funny, Famous
These cat quotes reflect the mystery, confidence, and independence of felines. As you read through our collection of 101 quotations, you’ll note that a pretty clear pattern emerges of what a cat is all about.
Despite usually being a puzzle to their owners, it hasn’t stopped the likes of Ernest Hemingway, Mark Twain, and Charles Dickens from raving fans.
If you’re in a rush, check out the Poet Panel’s picks of the Seven Best Cat Quotes, which we’ve included first thing. We think they’re the cat’s meow!
Best Cat Quotes
1.) In ancient times cats were worshipped as gods; they have not forgotten this.
Terry Pratchett
2.) If cats could write history, their history would be mostly about cats.
Eugen Weber
3.) What greater gift than the love of a cat.
Charles Dickens
4.) A man who carries a cat by the tail learns something he can learn in no other way.
Mark Twain
5.) As every cat owner knows, nobody owns a cat.
Ellen Perry Berkeley
6.) It is in fact, the cat’s house. We only pay the mortgage.
Unknown
7.) I was normal three cats ago.
Unknown
Funny Cat Quotes
Some funny quotes about our feline friend.
8.) Dogs have owners; cats have staff.
Unknown
9.) A cat will do what it wants when it wants, and there’s not a thing you can do about it.
Frank Perkins
10.) Dogs come when they’re called; cats take a message and get back to you later.
Mary Bly
11.) The phrase ‘domestic cat’ is an oxymoron.
George Will
12.) Surely people who don’t like cats were mice in another life.
Unknown
13.) Dogs believe they are human. Cats believe they are God.
Unknown
14.) I’d like people more if they were cats instead.
Unknown
15.) 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 affection, they draw the conclusion that they are God.
Christopher Hitchens
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Amusing Cat Quote
16.) I have studied many philosophers and many cats. The wisdom of cats is infinitely superior.
Hippolyte Taine
17.) Cats seem to go on the principle that it never does any harm to ask for what you want.
Joseph Wood Krutch
18.) Don’t let the cat out no matter what it tells you.
Unknown
19.) No amount of time can erase the memory of a good cat, and no amount of masking tape can ever totally remove his fur from your couch.”
Leo Dworken
20.) Of all God’s creatures, there is only one that cannot be made a 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
21.) Cats are the dominant species. It’s best to just realize this and adjust.
Unknown
22.) When a woman reaches a certain age, she starts to collect cats. This is known as many paws.
Unknown
23.) I had been told that the training procedure with cats was difficult. It’s not. Mine had me trained in two days.
Bill Dana
Famous Cat Quotes
24.) Curiosity killed the cat.
James Allan Mair
25.) Cats have it all: admiration, endless sleep, and company only when they want it.
Rod McKuen
26.) By associating with the cat, one only risks becoming richer.
Colette
27.) A cat has absolute emotional honesty: human beings, for one reason or another, may hide their feelings, but a cat does not.
Ernest Hemingway
28.) Dogs look at us as their gods, horses as their peers, but the cats look to us as their subjects.
Winston Churchill
29.) Cats are intended to teach us that not everything in nature has a purpose.
Garrison Keillor
30.) A cat has beauty without vanity, strength without insolence, courage without ferocity, all the virtues of man without his vices.
Lord Byron
31.) There are two means of refuge from the miseries of life: music and cats.
Albert Schweitzer
32.) Are cats lazy? Well, more power to them if they are. Which one of us has not entertained the dream of doing just as he likes, when and how he likes, and as much as he likes?
Fernand Mery
33.) Man is civilized as comprising a cat.
George Bernard Shaw
34.) When Rome burned, the emperor’s cats still expected to be fed on time.
Seanan McGuire
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Inspirational Cat Sayings
35.) There are few things in life more heartwarming than to be welcomed by a cat.
Tay Hohoff
36.) 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
37.) You can keep a dog, but it is the cat who keeps people because cats find humans useful domestic animals.
George Mikes
38.) Way down deep, we’re all motivated by the same urges. Cats have the courage to live by them.
Jim Davis
Short Cat Quotes
39.) Cats are connoisseurs of comfort.
James Herriot
40.) There are no ordinary cats.
Colette
41.) A cat is a puzzle for which there is no solution.
Hazel Nicholson
42.) To err is human, to purr is feline.
Robert Byrne
43.) I wish that my writing was as mysterious as a cat.
Edgar Allan Poe
44.) One cat just leads to another.
Ernest Hemingway
45.) The cat is, above all things, a dramatist.
Margaret Benson
46.) Curiosity killed the cat.
Ben Johnson
47.) A meow massages the heart.
Stuart McMillan
48.) If cats could talk, they wouldn’t.
Nan Porter
49.) Dogs eat. Cats dine.
Ann Taylor
50.) You can not look at a sleeping cat and feel tense.
Jane Pauley
51.) A cat will be your friend but never your slave.
Theophile Gautier
52.) Cats are a mysterious kind of folk.
Sir Walter Scott
53.) In a cat’s eye, all things belong to cats.
Unknown
54.) I have lived with several Zen Masters – all of them cats.
Eckhart Tolle
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Kitten Quotes
55.) A kitten gets himself into every kind of trouble.
Champfleury
56.) The smallest feline is a masterpiece.
Leonardo da Vinci – Read more about da Vinci’s interest in cats.
57.) An inquisitive kitten is the best reminder of what youth is all about.
Unknown
58.) An ordinary kitten will ask more questions than any five years old.
Carl van Vechten
59.) Kittens are born with their eyes shut. They open them in about six days, take a look around, then close them again for the better part of their lives.
Stephen Baker
60.) A kitten is, in the animal world, what a rosebud is in the garden.
Robert Southey
61.) There is one order of beauty which seems made to turn heads. It is a beauty like that of kittens, or very small downy ducks making gentle rippling noises with their softbills, or babies just beginning to toddle.
T.S. Eliot
62.) When you’re alone with your kitten, you don’t have to act your age.
Jo Kittinger, The Joy of Cats
Good Kitten Quotations
63.) 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
64.) It is impossible to keep a straight face in the presence of one or more kittens.
Cynthia E. Varnado
65.) They say the test of literary power is whether a man can write an inscription. I say, “Can he name a kitten?
Samuel Butler
66.) No matter how much cats fight, there always seem to be plenty of kittens.
Abraham Lincoln
67.) The trouble with a kitten is that it eventually becomes a cat.
Ogden Nash
68.) Kittens believe that all nature is occupied with their diversion.
F.A. Paradis de Moncrif
69.) A kitten is chiefly remarkable for rushing about like mad at nothing whatever and generally stopping before it gets there.
Agnes Repplier
Cheshire Cat Quotes
70.) Not all who wander are lost.
71.) We’re all mad here. I am mad; you are mad.
72.) I knew who I was this morning, but I have changed a few times since then.
73.) How do you run from what is inside your head?
74.) Have I gone mad? I am afraid so; you are entirely bonkers. But I will tell you a secret… all the best people are.
75.) If you’re gonna make it to the top, get a grip on this rock, and get a grip on yourself.
76.) Can you stand on your head?
77.) The uninformed must improve their deficit, or die.
78.) Goodbye, sweet hat.
79.) Imagination is the only weapon in the war with reality.
80.) You are too naïve if you do believe life is innocent, laughter, and fun.
81.) I am not crazy; my reality is just different from yours.
82.) Every adventure requires a first step.
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland Cheshire Cat Sayings
83.) Only a few find the way; some don’t recognize it when they do – some… don’t ever want to.
84.) I went to a hunting party once, and I didn’t like it. Terrible people. They all started hunting me!
85.) I could hardly afford to lose my head.
86.) How fine you look when dressed in rage. Your enemies are fortunate your condition is not permanent. You’re lucky, too. Red eyes suit so few.
87.) Haste makes waste, so I rarely hurry. But if a ferret were about to dart up my dress, I’d run.
88.) And no scheme of ours can raise any sort of smile.
89.) Well, some go this way, and some go that way. But as for me, myself, personally, I prefer the shortcut.
90.) The proper order of things is often a mystery to me.
91.) I never get involved in politics.
The Cheshire Cat Legend
The Cheshire Cat is a fictional character in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, written by Lewis Carroll. He’s perhaps best known for his mischievous grin.
But, believe it or not, the Cheshire Cat actually predates the novel.
It’s been part of English culture before 1865 when the novel was written. The origin of the Cheshire Cat has more than one answer.
Some attribute the name to the county of Cheshire which has many dairy farms that might please a cat on the search for milk and cream. Other stories involve a particular type of cheese that was molded into a cat shape or a sign maker whose attempts at painting lions looked more like cats.
Cat in the Hat Quotes
92.) I know it is wet and the sun is not sunny, but we can have lots of good fun that is funny.
93.) He should not be here, ” said the fish in the pot. ” he should not be here when your mother is not.
94.) Cat, you ruined mom’s dress!
Honey, it was ruined when she bought it.
95.) Look at me!
Look at me NOW!
It is fun to have fun
But you have to know how.
96.) And this mess is so big
And so deep and so tall,
We cannot pick it up.
There is no way at all!
97.) Too wet to go out
And too cold to play ball.
So we sat in the house.
We did nothing at all.
98.) “Now look what you did!”
Said the fish to the cat.
“Now look at this house!”
See Dr Seuss Quotes
Literary Cat Quotes
99.) My relationships with my cats have saved me from a deadly, pervasive ignorance.
William S. Burroughs
100.) Cats will outsmart dogs every time.
John Grogan, Marley & Me
101.) Cats, like men, are flatterers.
Walter Savage Landor
102.) Are cats strange animals or do they so resemble us that we find them curious as we do monkeys?
John Steinbeck
103.) 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 Cats Quotes
104.) I love cats because I enjoy my home, and little by little, they become its visible soul.
Jean Cocteau
105.) I have felt cats rubbing their faces against mine and touching my cheek with claws carefully sheathed. These things, to me, are expressions of love.
James Herriot
106.) A happy arrangement: many people prefer cats to other people, and many cats prefer people to other cats.
Mason Cooley
107.) 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
108.) A kitten is the delight of a household. All day long a comedy is played out by an incomparable actor.
Jules François Felix Fleury-Husson
109.) It is a very inconvenient habit of kittens that whatever you say to them, they always purr.
Lewis Carroll
Cat Love Quotes
110.) The problem with cats is that they get the same exact look whether they see a moth or an axe murderer.
Paula Poundstone
111.) No cat purrs unless someone is around to listen.
Elizabeth Marshall Thomas
112.) The only thing a cat worries about is what’s happening right now.
Lloyd Alexander
113.) A cat understands how to be pleasant in the morning. He doesn’t talk.
Tamora Pierce
114.) The key to a successful new relationship between a cat and human is patience.
Susan Easterly
115.) Meow means ‘woof’ in cat.
George Carlin
Quotes About Cats
116.) I have a cat, a striped cat with tickling whiskers and green electric eyes. She has the softest fur in the world. When I pet her, she purrs as if she has a drum near her heart.
Joy Harjo
117.) Like all pure creatures, cats are practical.
William S. Burroughs
118.) Cats know how to obtain food without labor, shelter without confinement, and love without penalties.
W. L. George
119.) Cats are inquisitive, but hate to admit it.
Mason Cooley
120.) 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
121.) Cats can work out mathematically the exact place to sit that will cause the most inconvenience.
Pam Brown
122.) My cat is not insane; she’s just a really good actress.
P.C. Cast
Quotes About Cat Lovers
123.) 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 humankind.
Cleveland Amory
124.) Kittens are angels with whiskers.
Alexis Flora Hope
125.) Of all the things God created, from sunrises and rainbows to black holes and humor, cats are the most fascinating to me.
Jarod Kintz
126.) Perhaps one reason we are fascinated by cats is because such a small animal can contain so much independence, dignity, and freedom of spirit.
Lloyd Alexander
127.) It is impossible for a lover of cats to banish these alert, gentle, and discriminating friends, who give us just enough of their regard and complaisance to make us hunger for more.
Agnes Repplier
Cool Cat Quotes
128.) The key to a successful new relationship between a cat and a human is patience.
Susan Easterly
129.) Cats are kindly masters, just so long as you remember your place.
Paul Gray
130.) A cat understands how to be pleasant in the morning. He doesn’t talk.
Tamora Pierce
131.) Cats have a sense of humor, as is shown in their extreme love of play. A middle-aged cat will often play as unreservedly as a kitten, though he knows perfectly well it is only a game.
William Lyon Phelps
132.) There are two means of refuge from the miseries of life: music and cats.
Albert Schweitzer
133.) Perhaps it is because cats do not live by human patterns and do not fit themselves into prescribed behavior that they are so united to creative people.
Andre Norton
134.) Happiness is a lot of things, really a lot. But undoubtedly – and cats.
Marta Ketro
135.) Cats are endless opportunities for revelation.
Leslie Kapp
About Cats
Cats are valued around the world for their ability to hunt small rodents, their companionship, and their ease of care. The ancient Egyptians venerated cats, but the domestication of cats dates even further back to Cypress and China.
The cat is the second most popular pet in America after fish but ahead of dogs. With such many owners, it’s easy to see how interesting quotations have become more prevalent.
By Michael O’Halloran
Michael O’Halloran founded Greeting Card Poet in 2014 and has worked as its publisher and editor ever since. He has co-authored four books on kids’ trivia and four on coaching. Previously, Michael was the president of Magnetic Poetry. He has invented and brought to market over 75 new gift and toy products, most of which involve wordplay. Mike is married and a father of four daughters.
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