Many writers have sought to capture the essence of the cat in words. The following is a collection of literary quotations on feline nature and the cat’s ability to inspire (or interfere with) the creative process.
Literary Descriptions of Cats
“I love cats because I enjoy my home; and little by little, they become its visible soul.” ~Jean Cocteau
“A dog, I have always said, is prose; a cat is a poem.” ~Jean Burden
“If a fish is the movement of water embodied, given shape, then a cat is a diagram and pattern of subtle air.” ~Doris Lessing
“Do you see that kitten chasing so prettily her own tail? If you could look with her eyes, you might see her surrounded with hundreds of figures performing complex dramas, with tragic and comic issues, long conversations, many characters, many ups and downs of fate.” ~Ralph Waldo Emerson
“Minnaloushe creeps through the grass / Alone, important and wise / And lifts to the changing moon / His changing eyes.” ~W. B. Yeats
“In its flawless grace and superior self-sufficiency I have seen a symbol of the perfect beauty and bland impersonality of the universe itself, objectively considered, and in its air of silent mystery there resides for me all the wonder and fascination of the unknown.” ~H. P. Lovecraft
“Cats, no less liquid than their shadows, offer no angles to the wind. They slip, diminished, neat, through loopholes less than themselves.” ~A. S. J. Tessimond
“Cats, like butterflies, need no excuse.” ~Robert A. Heinlein
“To understand a cat, you must realize that he has own gifts, his own viewpoint, even his own morality.” ~Lilian Jackson Braun
“A kitten is the delight of the household; all day long a comedy is played out by an incomparable actor.” ~Jules François Felix Fleury-Husson, under the pen name Champfleury
“He lives in the halflights in secret places, free and alone – this mysterious little great being whom his mistress calls ‘My cat’.” ~Margaret Benson
“Macavity, Macavity there’s no one like Macavity / There never was a cat of such deceitfulness and suavity / He always has an alibi and one or two to spare / At whatever time the deed took place – Macavity wasn’t there!” ~TS Elliot
“The cat has always been associated with the moon. Like the moon it comes to life at night, escaping from humanity and wandering over housetops with its eyes beaming out through the darkness.” ~Patricia Dale-Green
“The great charm of cats is their rampant egotism, their devil-may-care attitude toward responsibility, their disinclination to earn an honest dollar.” ~Robertson Davies
“You now have learned enough to see / That cats are much like you and me / And other people whom we find / Possessed of various types of mind / For some are sane and some are mad / And some are good and some are bad / And some are better, some are worse — / But all may be described in verse.” ~T. S. Eliot
Quotations on Writers and Cats
“I wish I could write as mysterious as a cat.” ~Edgar Allan Poe
“A catless writer is almost inconceivable. It’s a perverse taste, really, since it would be easier to write with a herd of buffalo in the room than even one cat; they make nests in the notes and bite the end of the pen and walk on the typewriter keys.” ~Barbara Holland
“Poets generally love cats – because poets have no delusions about their own superiority.” ~Marion Garretty
“Prose books are the show dogs I breed and sell to support my cat.” ~Robert Graves
“Authors like cats because they are such quiet, lovable, wise creatures, and cats like authors for the same reasons.” ~Robertson Davies
“Cats are dangerous companions for writers because cat watching is a near-perfect method of writing avoidance.” ~Dan Greenburg
“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
“Perhaps it is because cats do not live by human patterns, do not fit themselves into prescribed behaviour, that they are so united to creative people.” ~Andre Norton
“Because of our willingness to accept cats as superhuman creatures, they are the ideal animals with which to work creatively.” ~Roni Schotter
“As an inspiration to the author, I do not think the cat can be over-estimated. He suggests so much grace, power, beauty, motion, mysticism. I do not wonder that many writers love cats; I am only surprised that all do not.” ~Carl Van Vechten
“They say the test of literary power is whether a man can write an inscription. I say, ‘Can he name a kitten?’” ~Samuel Butler
Jennifer Copley - Jennifer Copley, BFA, BEd, has a diverse base of expertise that includes research, writing, education, pet care, and various other ...
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