21 Cat Quotes From Writers And Naturalists, With Sources

Here are 21 cat quotes from poets, novelists, a veterinarian, naturalists, and humorists, from Christopher Smart around 1760 to Terry Pratchett and a Get Fuzzy comic strip. Each one names the book, poem, or letter it comes from, with the year, so you can find the page yourself.

The quotes are sorted into three groups: writers on cats, quotes about how cats behave, and short funny cat quotes for a card or a photo caption. This page keeps to lines with a named writer and a named work. Cat sayings with no known author are not included, because there is no source to give.

Cat Quotes From Writers

Hippolyte Taine

“I have studied many philosophers and many cats. The wisdom of cats is infinitely superior.”

Taine was a French critic and historian. He put this line at the front of Vie et opinions philosophiques d’un chat (1858), a book about a cat, and the English above is the translation.

Christopher Smart

“For I will consider my Cat Jeoffry. For he is the servant of the Living God duly and daily serving him.”

The English poet Christopher Smart wrote this in Jubilate Agno, a long poem he wrote between 1759 and 1763. Jeoffry was his cat, and the poem goes on to describe him in many more lines.

Samuel Johnson

“Why yes, Sir, but I have had cats whom I liked better than this;” and then, “but he is a very fine cat, a very fine cat indeed.”

James Boswell recorded this in Life of Johnson (1791). Samuel Johnson said it about his cat Hodge, after Boswell remarked that Hodge was a fine cat. Boswell also wrote that Johnson used to go out and buy oysters for Hodge himself.

Saki

“Cats have nine lives, you know,” said Sir Wilfrid heartily. “Possibly,” answered Tobermory; “but only one liver.”

This comes from the story “Tobermory” in Saki’s The Chronicles of Clovis (1911). Tobermory is a cat that a guest, Mr. Appin, has taught to speak, and Sir Wilfrid is one of the people at the house party.

T. S. Eliot

“The Naming of Cats is a difficult matter,
It isn’t just one of your holiday games;”

These are the first two lines of “The Naming of Cats” in Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats (1939), by the American-born English poet T. S. Eliot. The poem goes on to say that a cat must have three different names.

Doris Lessing

“If a fish is the movement of water embodied, given shape, then cat is a diagram and pattern of subtle air.”

Doris Lessing, the British writer who won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2007, wrote this in chapter 2 of Particularly Cats (1967).

Kingsley Amis

“Nothing divided people more deeply than how they felt about cats.”

This is a line from the novel Difficulties with Girls (1988), on page 274.

Robert A. Heinlein

“How you behave toward cats here below determines your status in Heaven.”

A character says this in Heinlein’s novel To Sail Beyond the Sunset (1987), in chapter 11, on page 163.

James Herriot

“Cats are connoisseurs of comfort.”

James Herriot was the pen name of James Alfred Wight, a veterinarian and writer. The line is in the introduction to James Herriot’s Cat Stories (1994) and again in the story “Moses Found Among the Rushes.”

Ernest Hemingway

“One cat just leads to another.”

Hemingway wrote this in a letter to Hadley Mowrer on November 25, 1943. The letter is printed on page 555 of Ernest Hemingway: Selected Letters 1917 to 1961, edited by Carlos Baker (1981).

C. S. Lewis

“Yes, it is strange that anyone should dislike cats. But cats themselves are the worst offenders in this respect. They very seldom seem to like one another.”

C. S. Lewis wrote this in a letter dated July 31, 1962, collected in Letters to an American Lady.

Margaret Benson

“The cat is, above all things, a dramatist; its life is lived in an endless romance though the drama is played out on quite another stage than our own”

This is from The Soul of a Cat and Other Stories (London: William Heinemann, 1901), page 157.

Quotes About How Cats Behave

Joseph Wood Krutch, on asking

“Cats seem to go on the principle that it never does any harm to ask for what you want.”

Joseph Wood Krutch, an American writer, critic, and naturalist, wrote this in the “February” chapter of The Twelve Seasons (1949).

Joseph Wood Krutch, on sleep

“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.”

This is from the same “February” chapter of The Twelve Seasons.

Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson, on contentment

“The cat does not merely experience contentment, he exudes it. You cannot be in the presence of a contented cat and not have some of that contentment rub off on you. Which surely is a good part of the reason we love cats so.”

Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson, an American author, wrote this in chapter 3 of The Nine Emotional Lives of Cats: A Journey Into the Feline Heart (2002).

Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson, on purring

“Unlike a human smile, purring cannot be, as far as anyone knows, faked.”

This line is from the same book, The Nine Emotional Lives of Cats.

Short And Funny Cat Quotes

Terry Pratchett, on worship

“In ancient times cats were worshiped as gods; they have not forgotten this.”

Terry Pratchett was an English humorist and the author of the Discworld fantasy novels. This line is credited to him in Ghost Cats by Dusty Rainbolt (2007) and in Chicken Soup for the Soul: What I Learned from the Cat (2009).

Terry Pratchett, on seals

“Cats don’t hunt seals. They would if they knew what they were and where to find them. But they don’t, so that’s all right.”

This is from The Unadulterated Cat (1989), Pratchett’s short book of cat commentary.

Terry Pratchett, on geometry

“After all, from a purely geometrical point of view a cat is only a tube with a door at the top.”

This is also from The Unadulterated Cat, in a passage about giving a cat a pill.

Douglas Adams

“I think all cats are wild. They only act tame if there’s a saucer of milk in it for them.”

The English author and satirist Douglas Adams wrote this in Last Chance to See (1991), where he is talking about feral cats.

Darby Conley

“Cats don’t have friends. They have co-conspirators.”

Darby Conley, an American cartoonist, drew this in his comic strip Get Fuzzy on May 31, 2015.

More To Read About Cats

Any of the short lines above would fit on a cat lover shirt. For a look at what cats really do, a cat-behavior expert at the University of Bristol, John Bradshaw, author of Cat Sense, told National Geographic that the tail-up, leg-rubbing greeting cats give people is the same one they give each other, and that a cat does not do it to a cat it sees as lower in rank. Read more about the head bunt in cats.

Cats are also careful about grooming. Pamela Perry, D.V.M., a resident in animal behavior at the Cornell University College of Veterinary Medicine, says cats typically spend thirty to fifty percent of their day grooming themselves.

Studies have shown that people with pets can be more satisfied with their lives. In a 2016 survey of 263 American adults, published in Anthrozoös, Katherine Jacobs Bao and George Schreer found that pet parents were more satisfied with their lives than people without pets. The two groups did not differ on the other wellbeing measures the survey used.

Read more about the Maine Coon, the large breed with a long coat, or about feline high-rise syndrome. If you are saying goodbye to a cat, read more about urns for cats.

Cat Quote FAQ

Did Sigmund Freud say that time spent with cats is never wasted?

No. Wikiquote lists “Time spent with cats is never wasted” under misattributed quotes. It is frequently credited to Freud, but there is no evidence Freud ever said it.

Did Ernest Hemingway say that cats never hide their feelings?

Not in the usual wording. Wikiquote lists “Human beings, for one reason or another, may hide their feelings, but a cat does not.” under disputed quotes, as a misworded version of “People hide their feelings for various reasons, but cats never do.” That sentence is reported secondhand, through a biographer and Hemingway’s brother.

Sources

• James Boswell, The Life of Samuel Johnson (1791), Project Gutenberg.
• Saki, The Chronicles of Clovis (1911), Project Gutenberg.
• Cats, Wikiquote, for the Hemingway letter, Lewis, Benson, Krutch, Adams, and Conley citations.
• Hippolyte Taine, Wikiquote.
• Christopher Smart, Wikiquote.
• T. S. Eliot, Wikiquote.
• Doris Lessing, Wikiquote.
• Kingsley Amis, Wikiquote.
• Robert A. Heinlein, Wikiquote.
• James Herriot, Wikiquote.
• Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson, Wikiquote.
• Terry Pratchett, Wikiquote.
• Sigmund Freud, Wikiquote, misattributed quotes.
• Ernest Hemingway, Wikiquote, disputed quotes.
• Pamela Perry, D.V.M., Cats that Lick Too Much, Cornell Feline Health Center.
• Christine Dell’Amore, What Do Cats Think About Us? You May Be Surprised, National Geographic (2014).
• Katherine Jacobs Bao and George Schreer, Pets and Happiness, Anthrozoös (2016), abstract, Wayback Machine copy.