“When a cat greets you, he makes a big operation of it, bumping, stropping your legs, buzzing like mischief. But when he leaves, he just walks off and never looks back. Cats are smart.”

— Robert A. Heinlein, book Tunnel in the Sky

Source: Tunnel in the Sky (1955), Chapter 2, “The Fifth Way” (p. 42)

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Robert A. Heinlein557

American science fiction author 1907–1988

Eileen Wilks Mortal Danger

Source: Mortal Danger

“When your daddy walked through the house he was so big he filled it up. That was my first mistake. Not to make him leave room for me.”

August Wilson Fences

Source: Fences

“He is like a cat. And all cats are thieves.”

Agatha Christie (1890–1976) English mystery and detective writer

Murder for Christmas (1939, Holiday for Murder, Hercule Poirot’s Christmas)

“You don't take your cat with you to go bird shopping. Not because the cat isn't polite, but because he's a cat.”

Jim Butcher book Changes

Source: Changes

“You like the party?
Is it in honour of anything?
My cat's birthday.
Where's your cat?
I don't know, he ran away.”

Cassandra Clare book City of Bones

Source: City of Bones

“When man resolved to imitate walking, he invented the wheel, which does not look like a leg. In doing this, he was practicing surrealism without knowing it.”

Guillaume Apollinaire (1880–1918) French poet

““Oh yes,” said the Emperor. “That’s what you have to do when you approach the Celestial Presence—that’s me.”
“Well, I’m afraid that no cat in the world ever bowed to an emperor,” said Jason. “They just won’t do it, Ichigo, and you’re wasting your time if you try to force them. A cat does what he wants, when he wants, emperor or not.””

Lloyd Alexander (1924–2007) American children's writer

Source: Time Cat (1963), Chapter 8 “Master of Imperial Cats” (p. 79)

“When a cat flatters… he is not insincere: you may safely take it for real kindness.”

Walter Savage Landor Imaginary Conversations

Source: Imaginary Conversations

“The problem comes up because we ask the question in the wrong way. We supposed that solids were one thing and space quite another, or just nothing whatever. Then it appeared that space was no mere nothing, because solids couldn't do without it. But the mistake in the beginning was to think of solids and space as two different things, instead of as two aspects of the same thing. The point is that they are different but inseparable, like the front end and the rear end of a cat. Cut them apart, and the cat dies. Take away the crest of the wave, and there is no trough.
Here is someone who has never seen a cat. He is looking through a narrow slit in a fence, and, on the other side, a cat walks by. He sees first the head, then the less distinctly shaped furry trunk, and then the tail. Extraordinary! The cat turns round and walks back, and again he sees the head, and a little later the tail. This sequence begins to look like something regular and reliable. Yet again, the cat turns round, and he witnesses the same regular sequence: first the head, and later the tail. Thereupon he reasons that the event head is the invariable and necessary cause of the event tail, which is the head's effect. This absurd and confusing gobbledygook comes from his failure to see that head and tail go together: they are all one cat.
The cat wasn't born as a head which, sometime later, caused a tail; it was born all of a piece, a head-tailed cat. Our observer's trouble was that he was watching it through a narrow slit, and couldn't see the whole cat at once.”

Alan Watts (1915–1973) British philosopher, writer and speaker

Source: The Book on the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are (1966), p. 26-27

“Making money ain't nothing exciting to me. … You might be able to buy a little better booze than some wino on the corner. But you get sick just like the next cat, and when you die you're just as graveyard dead as he is.”

Louis Armstrong (1901–1971) American jazz trumpeter, composer and singer

Ebony magazine, November 1964 http://books.google.com/books?id=G98DAAAAMBAJ&q=%22making+money+ain't+nothing+exciting+to+me%22+%22You+might+be+able+to+buy+a+little+better+booze+than+some+wino+on+the+corner+But+you+get+sick+just+like+the+next+cat+and+when+you+die+you're+just+as+graveyard+dead+as+he+is%22&pg=PA138#v=onepage

“When a cat greets you, he makes a big operation of it, bumping, stropping your legs, buzzing like mischief. But when he leaves, he just walks off and never looks back. Cats are smart.”

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