Cat Vibe: Book Quotes About Cats

A new set of book quotes is here to brighten your day with a touch of purrfection, as cats bring to the world. Let’s enjoy a bunch of various quotes about cats and kittens by different authors and thinkers.

***
when I am feeling
low
all i have to do is
watch my cats
and my
courage
returns

(Charles Bukowski)

***
Cats and humans have been partners for over ten thousand years. And what you realize when you’ve lived with a cat for a long time is that we may think we own them, but that’s not the way it is. They simply allow us the pleasure of their company.

(Genki Kawamura)

***
I have lived with several Zen masters — all of them cats.

(Eckhart Tolle)

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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)

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If cats looked like frogs we’d realize what nasty, cruel little bastards they are. Style. That’s what people remember.

(Terry Pratchett)

***

“What’s your name,’ Coraline asked the cat. ‘Look, I’m Coraline. Okay?’
‘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.

(Neil Gaiman)

***
Cats are intended to teach us that not everything in nature has a purpose.

(Garrison Keillor)

***
A cat has absolute emotional honesty: human beings, for one reason or another, may hide their feelings, but a cat does not.

(Ernest Hemingway)

***
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)

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Time spent with a cat is never wasted.

(Colette)

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The smallest feline is a masterpiece.

(Leonardo da Vinci)

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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)

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

(Jules Verne)

***
I am the Cat who walks by himself, and all places are alike to me.

(Rudyard Kipling)

***
That’s the great secret of creativity. You treat ideas like cats: you make them follow you.

(Ray Bradbury)

***
I sometimes longed for someone who, like me, had not adjusted perfectly with his age, and such a person was hard to find; but I soon discovered cats, in which I could imagine a condition like mine, and books, where I found it quite often.

(Julio Cortázar)

***
Women and cats will do as they please, and men and dogs should relax and get used to the idea.

(Robert A. Heinlein)

***
To err is human, to purr is feline.

(Robert Byrne)

***
Witches were a bit like cats. They didn’t much like one another’s company, but they did like to know where all the other witches were, just in case they needed them.

(Terry Pratchett)

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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)

***
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)

***
Arise from sleep, old cat,
And with great yawns and stretchings…
Amble out for love

(Issa, Japanese Haiku)

***
Cats gravitate to kitchens like rocks gravitate to gravity.

(Terry Pratchett)

***
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)

***
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 Naming of Cats is a difficult matter,
It isn’t just one of your holiday games;
You may think at first I’m as mad as a hatter
When I tell you, a cat must have THREE DIFFERENT NAMES.
First of all, there’s the name that the family use daily,
Such as Peter, Augustus, Alonzo or James,
Such as Victor or Jonathan, or George or Bill Bailey –
All of them sensible everyday names.
There are fancier names if you think they sound sweeter,
Some for the gentlemen, some for the dames:
Such as Plato, Admetus, Electra, Demeter –
But all of them sensible everyday names.
But I tell you, a cat needs a name that’s particular,
A name that’s peculiar, and more dignified,
Else how can he keep up his tail perpendicular,
Or spread out his whiskers, or cherish his pride?
Of names of this kind, I can give you a quorum,
Such as Munkustrap, Quaxo, or Coricopat,
Such as Bombalurina, or else Jellylorum –
Names that never belong to more than one cat.
But above and beyond there’s still one name left over,
And that is the name that you never will guess;
The name that no human research can discover –
But THE CAT HIMSELF KNOWS, and will never confess.
When you notice a cat in profound meditation,
The reason, I tell you, is always the same:
His mind is engaged in a rapt contemplation
Of the thought, of the thought, of the thought of his name:
His ineffable effable
Effanineffable
Deep and inscrutable singular Name.

(T.S. Eliot)

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