Cats are a mysterious kind of folk.

Cat, n. A soft, indestructible automaton provided by nature to be kicked when things go wrong in the domestic circle.

A cat is a small sneaky animal that manages to get by without any real relationships.

Cat: A pygmy lion who loves mice, hates dogs and patronizes human beings.

The animal which the Egyptians worshipped as divine, which the Romans venerated as a symbol of liberty, which Europeans in the ignorant Middle Ages anathematised as an agent of demonology, has displayed to all ages two closely blended characteristics — courage and self-respect. No matter how unfavourable the circumstances, both qualities are always to the fore. Confront a child, a puppy, and a kitten with a sudden danger; the child will turn instinctively for assistance, the puppy will grovel in abject submission to the impending visitation, the kitten will brace its tiny body for a frantic resistance. And disassociate the luxury-loving cat from the atmosphere of social comfort in which it usually contrives to move, and observe it critically under the adverse conditions of civilisation — that civilisation which can impel a man to the degradation of clothing himself in tawdry ribald garments and capering mountebank dances in the streets for the earning of the few coins that keep him on the respectable, or non-criminal, side of society. The cat of the slums and alleys, starved, outcast, harried, still keeps amid the prowlings of its adversity the bold, free, panther-tread with which it paced of yore the temple courts of Thebes, still displays the self-reliant watchfulness which man has never taught it to lay aside.

The cat . . . is for the man who appreciates beauty as the one living force in a blind and purposeless universe.

Cats are connoisseurs of comfort.

The cat is such a perfect symbol of beauty and superiority that it seems scarcely possible for any true aesthete and civilised cynic to do other than worship it.

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

Translation: I have studied many philosophers and many cats. The wisdom of cats is infinitely superior.

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

What a luxury a cat is, the moments of shocking and startling pleasure in a day, the feel of the beast, the soft sleekness under your palm, the warmth when you wake on a cold night, the grace and charm even in a quite ordinary workaday puss. Cat walks across your room, and in that lonely stalk you see leopard or even panther, or it turns its head to acknowledge you and the yellow blaze of those eyes tells you what an exotic visitor you have here, in this household friend, the cat who purrs as you stroke, or rub his chin, or scratch his head.

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.

Of all the things God created, from sunrises and rainbows, to black holes and humor, cats are the most fascinating to me.