Mamacita says: I love cats. They are essential to my happiness. Such small, soft, dainty, playful little creatures, and yet they control the workings of the universe and rule over all they encounter, often when we don’t even realize what’s happening. Besides, could there be anything more relaxing and pleasant than having a trusting, loudly purring little cat on your chest or beside you, at the end of a long, difficult day?  Or at the beginning of the day?  Or in the middle of the day?  People with no sense of humor will not understand a cat, of course; humor requires intellect, and cats require humor.  They also require a soul, and if there is no sense of humor, there is no soul.  Argue with me.  I dare you.  Bring it on.  Double dare.

1. I love my cats because I enjoy my home, and little by little, they become its catsvisible soul. –Jean Cocteau

2. The smallest feline is a masterpiece. –Leonardo da Vinci

3. Cats don’t like change without their consent. –Roger A. Caras

4. Prowling his own quiet backyard or asleep by the fire, he is still only a whisker away from the wilds. –Jean Burden

5. Cats are rather delicate creatures, and they are subject to a good many different ailments, but I never heard of one who suffered from insomnia. –Joseph Wood Krutch

6. If you want to know the character of a man, find out what his cat thinks of him. –Anonymous

7. If I called her she would pretend not to hear, but would come a few minutes later when it could appear that she had thought of doing so first. –Arthur Weigall

8. Even the stupidest cat seems to know more than any dog. –Eleanor Clark

9. My cats are compromised. I do not entirely trust them – they may be spies, like dolphins, reporting to some unknown authority. –Jan Morris

10. They say the test of literary power is whether a man can write an inscription. I say, “Can he name a kitten?” –Samuel Butler

11. The little furry buggers are just deep, deep wells you throw all your emotions into. -Bruce Schimmel

12. The cat has too much spirit to have no heart. –Ernest Menault

13. It always gives me a shiver when I see a cat seeing what I can’t see. –Eleanor Farjeon

14. If we treated every9one we meet with the same affection we bestow upon our favorite cat, they, too, would purr. –Martin Buxbaum

15. I wonder what goes through his mind when he sees us peeing in his water bowl. –Penny Ward Moser

16. If a cat does something, we call it instinct; if we do the same thing, for the same reason, we call it intelligence. –Will Cuppy

17. By and large, people who enjoy teaching animals to roll over will find themselves happier with a dog. –Barbara Holland

18. To err is human, to purr is feline. –Robert Byrne

19. The cat lets Man support her. But unlike the dog, she is no handlicker. Furthermore, unlike Man’s other great good friend, the horse, the cat is no sweating serf of Man. The only labor she condescends to perform is to catch mice and rats, and that’s fun. –Vance Packard

20. Cats have intercepted my footsteps at the ankle for so long that my gait, both at home and on tour, has been compared to that of a man wading through low surf. –Roy Blount, Jr.

21. A child is a person who can’t understand why someone would give away a perfectly good kitten. –Doug Larsen

22. Purring would seem to be, in her case, an automatic safety-valve device for dealing with happiness overflow. –Monica Edwards

23. Cats are smarter than dogs. You can’t get eight cats to pull a sled through snow. –Jeff Valdez

24. A meow massages the heart. –Stuart McMillan

25. With the qualities of cleanliness, discretion, affection, patience, dignity, and courage that cats have, how many of us, I ask you, would be capable of being cats? –Fernant Mery

26. When I play with my cat who knows whether I do not make her more sport than she makes me? –Michel de Montaigne

27. Cats can be very funny, and have the oddest ways of showing they’re glad to see you. Rudimace always peed in our shoes. –W.H. Auden

28. There is no more intrepid explorer than a kitten. –Jules Champfleury

29. Cats always know whether people like or dislike them. they do not always care enough to do anything about it. –Winifred Carriere

30. Always the cat remains a little beyond the limits we try to set for him in our blind folly. –Andre Norton

31. No matter how tired or wretched I am, a pussycat sitting in a doorway can divert my mind. –Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

32. Balanchine has trained his cat to perform brilliant jetes and tours en L’air; he says that at last he has a body worth choreographing for. –Bernard Taper

33. Cats, like women, should be respected as individuals rather than admired as decoration, but there’s no harm, given a choice, in taking up with a strikingly attractive specimen of either. –Barbara Holland

34. God made the cat in order that man might have the pleasure of caressing the tiger. –Fernand Mery

35. Cats are dangerous companions for writers because cat watching is a near-perfect method of writing avoidance. –Dan Greenburg

36. If cats could talk, they wouldn’t. –Nan Porter

37. Way down deep, we’re all motivated by the same urges. Cats have the courage to live by them. –Jim Davis

38. Artists like cats; soldiers like dogs. –Desmond Morris

39. Cats are the ultimate narcissists. You can tell this because of all the time they spend on personal grooming. Dogs aren’t like this. a dog’s idea of personal grooming is to roll in a dead fish. –James Gorman

40. When it comes to the advantages of cats versus dogs as pets, there is no competition. Try going away for a weekend, leaving your German Shepherd alone with a bowl of dry food, some water, and a litter box. –Robert Stearns

41. Cat hate reflects an ugly, stupid, loutish, bigoted spirit. –William S. Burroughs

42. I’ve met many thinkers and many cats, but the wisdom of cats is infinitely superior. –Hippolyte Taine

43. A cat is there when you call her – if she doesn’t have something better to do. –Bill Adler

44. An ordinary kitten will ask more questions than any five-year-old. –Carl Van Vechten

45. Everything that moves, serves to interest and amuse a cat. He is convinced that nature is busying herself with his diversion; he can conceive of no other purpose in the universe. –F.A. Paradis de Moncrif

46. No animals should ever jump upon the dining-room furniture unless absolutely certain he can hold his own in the conversation. –Fran Lebowitz

47. Did St. Francis really preach to the birds? Whatever for? If he really liked birds he would have done better to preach to the cats. –Rebecca West

48. No amount of time can erase the memory of a good cat, and no amount of cats5masking tape can ever toally remove his fur from your couch. –Leo Dworken

49. The playful kitten, with its pretty little tigerish gambols, is infinitely more amusing than half the people one is obliged to live with in the world. –Lady Sydney Morgan

 

50. Most of us rather like our cats to have a streak of wickedness. I should not feel quite easy in the company of any cat that walked about the house with a saintly expression. –Beverly Nichols

51. My cat does not talk as respectfully to me as I do to her. –Colette

52. Every cat is really the most beautiful woman in the room. –E.V. Lucas

53. Cleanliness in the cat world is usually a virtue put above godliness. –Carl Van Vechten

54. Your cat will never threaten your popularity by barking at three in the morning. He won’t attack the mailman or eat the drapes, although he may climb the drapes to see how the room looks from the ceiling. –Helen Powers

55. No matter how much cats fight, there always seem to be plenty of kittens. –Abraham Lincoln

56. 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 its title? –mark Twain

57. Cats don’t bark and act brave when they see something small in fur or feathers, they kill it. Dogs tend to bravado. They’re braggarts. In the great evolutionary drama the dog is Sergeant Bilko, the cat is Rambo. –James Gorman

58. There is something about the presence of a cat. . . that seems to take the bite out of being alone. –Louis J. Camuti, DVM

59. Cats seem to go on the principle that it never does any harm to ask for what you want. –Joseph Wood Krutch

60. At dinner time he would sit in a corner, concentrating, and suddely they would say, “Time to feed the cat,’ as if it were their own idea. –Lilian Jackson Braun

61. The cat does not offer services. The cat offers itself. Of course he wants care and shelter. You don’t buy love for nothing. Like all pure creatures, cats are practical. –William S. Burroughs

62. Meow is like aloha – it can mean anything. –Hank Ketchum

63. No tame animal has lost less of its dignity or maintained more of its ancient reserve. The domestic cat might rebel tomorrow. –William Conway

64. Living with a cat is like being married to a career woman who can take domesticity or let it alone, so you’d better be nice to her. –Margaret Cooper Gay

65. I will always remember the olive-eyed tabby who taught me that not all relationships are meant to last a lifetime. Sometimes just an hour is enough to touch your heart. –Barbara L. Diamond

66. Cats are intended to teach us that not everything in nature has a function. –Garrison Keillor

67. If man could be crossed with the cat, it would improve man, but deteriorate the cat. –Mark Twain

68. If a dog jumps up into 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

69. I have found my love of cats most helpful in understanding women. –John Simon

70. Unlike us, cats never outgrow their delight in cat capacities, nor do they settle finally for limitations. Cats, I think, live out their lives fulfilling their expectations. –Irving Townsend

71. Like a graceful vase, a cat, even when motionless, seems to flow. –George F. Will

72. A house without either a cat or a dog is the house of a scoundrel. –Portuguese Proverb

73. Refined and delicate natures understand the cat. Women, poets, and artists hold it in great esteem, for they recognize the exquisite delicacy of its nervous system; indeed, only coarse natures fail to discern the natural distinction of the animal. –Jules Champfleury

74. A man has to work so hard so that something of his personality stays alive. A tomcat has it so easy; he has only to spray and his presence is there for years on rainy days. –Albert Einstein

75. Dogs eat. Cats dine. –Ann Taylor

76. If you want to be a psychological novelist and write about human beings, the best thing you can do is keep a pair of cats. –Aldous Huxley

77. Some people say that cats are sneaky, evil, and cruel. True, and they have many other fine qualities as well. –Missy Dizick

78. Cats are living adornments. –Edwin Lent

79. There’s no need for a piece of sculpture in a home that has a cat. –Wesley Bates

80. There are few things in life more heartwarming than to be welcomed by a cat. –Tay Hohoff

81. There are two means of refuge from the misery of life – music and cats. –Albert Schweitzer

82. The cat could very well be man’s best friend but would never stoop to admitting it. –Doug Larson

83. After scolding one’s cat one looks into its face and is seized by the ugly suspicion that it understood every word. And has filed it for reference. –Charlotte Gray

84. A cat can be trusted to purr when she is pleased, which is more than can be said for human beings. –William Ralph Inge

85. The reason cats climb is so that they can look down on almost every other animal – it’s also the reason they hate birds. –K.C. Buffington

86. A cat is an example of sophistication minus civilization. –Author Unknown

87. I believe cats to be spirits come to earth. A cat, I am sure, could walk on a cloud without coming through. –Jules Verne

88. I wish I could write as mysterious as a cat. –Edgar Allan Poe

89. Are we really sure the purring is coming from the kitty and not from our very own hearts? –Emme Woodhull-Bäche

90. The cat is the only animal which accepts the comforts but rejects the bondage of domesticity. –Georges Louis Leclerc de Buffon

91. The cat is domestic only as far as suits its own ends. –Saki

92. You see, wire telegraph is a kind of a very, very long cat. You pull his tail in New York and his head is meowing in Los Angeles. Do you understand this? And radio operates exactly the same way: you send signals here, they receive them there. The only difference is that there is no cat. –Albert Einstein

93. When your kitty purrs to you, doesn’t it break your heart that you can’t purr back? –Candea Core-Starke

94. There is, incidentally, no way of talking about cats that enables one to come off as a sane person. –Dan Greenberg

95. Cats can be cooperative when something feels good, which, to a cat, is the way everything is supposed to feel as much of the time as possible. –Roger Caras

96. People meeting for the first time suddenly relax if they find they both have cats. And plunge into anecdote. –Charlotte Gray

97. Cats never strike a pose that isn’t photogenic. –Lillian Jackson Braun

98. When a cat chooses to be friendly, it’s a big deal, because a cat is picky. –Mike Deupree

99. If purring could be encapsulated, it’d be the most powerful anti-depressant on the pharmaceutical market. –Alexis F. Hope

100. I put down my book, The Meaning of Zen, and see the cat smiling into her fur as she delicately combs it with her rough pink tongue. “Cat, I would lend you this book to study but it appears you have already read it.” She looks up and gives me her full gaze. “Don’t be ridiculous,” she purrs, “I wrote it.” –Dilys Lang

I’ll stop now, not because I can’t think of any more, but because if I don’t stop now, I never will.