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There stands before you, grey like all the other greys but one whom you
won't confuse, having seen her once, with any other grey cat, she who
rejects the names of queens, the childish diminutives, and is called- as if
she were the only one in the world- Cat.
-Colette
I have studied many philosophers and many cats. The wisdom of cats is
infinitely superior.
It's funny how cats know the inside of folks better than other folks do,
isn't it?
The cat Bastet sat perched on the rim of the tub, watching me through
slitted golden eyes. She was fascinated by baths. I suppose total
immersion in water must have seemed to her a peculiar method of cleansing
oneself.
Like those great sphinxes lounging through eternity in noble attitudes upon
the desert sand, they gaze incuriously at nothing, calm and wise.
-Charles Baudelaire
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.
The Egyptians have observed in the eyes of a cat, the increase of moonlight.
The cat laps moonbeams in the bowl of water, thinking them to be milk.
Dynasties of cats, as numerous as the dynasties of the Pharaohs, succeeded
each other under my roof.
-Theophile Gautier
The animal which the Egyptians worshipped as divine, which the Romans
venerated as a symbol of liberty, which Europeans in the ignorant Middle
Ages anathematized as an agent of demonology, has displayed to all ages two
closely blended characteristics - courage and self-respect... 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.
A kitten is the delight of a household. All day long a comedy is played by
this incomparable actor.
You may... if you try hard enough, be able to enter into a very small part
of a cat's world... But the world of a kitten is almost impenetrable and you
must rest content, mostly, to play the role of spectator. Unless you are
tragically handicapped by the lack of any sense of humor you should be able
to enjoy yourself.
Of all animals, he alone attains the Contemplative Life. He regards the
wheel of existence from without, like a Buddha.
-Andrew Lang
-Hippolyte Taine
-Eleanor H. Porter
-Elizabeth Peters
-Patricia Dale-Green
-Edward Topsell
-Hindu Proverb
-Saki
-Jules Champfleury
-Philip Brown
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