CatFacts™

The whisker is a highly sensitive anatomical instrument, capable of detecting nearby objects, impending danger, and, apparently, an empty food bowl from considerable distance.

There are two kinds of cats: those who have seen the bottom of a cardboard box, and those who have not yet been presented with one.

A cat confronted with a closed door will invariably conclude that the door is at fault.

I love in the cat... that independent and almost ungrateful temper which prevents it from attaching itself to any one: the indifference with which it passes from the salon to the house-top.

It is not approbation but admiration that the cat demands from man; the dog accepts the purposes of life as given from above.

The cat, it is well known, can give a very satisfactory account of her time. Her lives are parallel to our own, not subordinate.

The sportsman is a quiet, domestic creature, fond of his comforts and his meals… The only thing which interferes with his domesticity is his tendency to absent himself from the house for hours together… If you come upon him at such times he is engaged in a prosaic kind of wholesale slaughter…

We should, if we thought proper, come to their call, but never with vulgar alacrity.

The cat’s life, as distinguished from the dog’s, is essentially independent…

They seemed to have an idea that we should answer to them and come when we were called, but mother told us on no account ever to do so, it would be false to every tradition of our class.

After fifty years of observation, I am prepared to state with some confidence that the cat is perfectly aware of what it is doing.

There is nothing, however absurd or impossible in animal or everyday life, that some people are not ready to credit and believe.

Like all knaves, they know how to conceal their intentions, to watch, wait, and choose opportunities for seizing their prey...

In the one I admired the manifestations of its inborn nature, and would on no account check or discourage such signs of high blood. Towards the other I felt there was a mutual and spiritual bond of affection, which I can better conceive than describe.

They are like sensitive plants, and shut themselves instinctively away from the human being who does not care for them.

Very different from that faithful animal the dog, whose sentiments are all directed to the person of his master, the Cat appears only to feel for himself, only to love conditionally, only to partake of society that he may abuse it...

I have studied many philosophers and many cats. The wisdom of cats is infinitely superior. [J'ai beaucoup étudié les philosophes et les chats. La sagesse des chats est infiniment supérieure.]

...cats love people--in their dignified, reserved way, and when they feel that their love is not wasted; that they reason, and that they seldom act from impulse.

Though these animals are gentle and frolicksome when young, yet they, even then, possess an innate cunning and perverse disposition, which age increases, and which education only serves to conceal.