John Updike Quotes

You have learned enough to see that cats are much like you and me.

A cat has absolute emotional honesty: human beings, for one reason or another, may hide their feelings, but a cat does not.

Few animals display their mood via facial expressions as distinctly as cats.

I communicate much better with cats, usually. I know them and their body language - as my own cats know mine very well. Cats are adept at reading subtle signals.

Are cats strange animals or do they so resemble us that we find them curious as we do monkeys?

I just don't get cats. To me, they're a waste of fur.

My mom was kinda like a cat. She slept a lot.

You can keep a dog: but it is the cat who keeps people, because cats find humans useful domestic animals.

Sunday, January 27, 1884. -- There was another story in the paper a week or so since. A gentleman had a favourite cat whom he taught to sit at the dinner table where it behaved very well. He was in the habit of putting any scraps he left onto the cat's plate. One day puss did not take his place punctually, but presently appeared with two mice, one of which it placed on its master's plate, the other on its own.

Cats can work out mathematically the exact place to sit that will cause most inconvenience.

Cats yawn because they realize that there's nothing to do.

As to sagacity, I should say that his judgement respecting the warmest place and the softest cushion in a room is infallible, his punctuality at meal times is admirable, and his pertinacity in jumping on people's shoulders till they give him some of the best of what is going, indicates great firmness.

I would like to see anyone, prophet, king or God, convince a thousand cats to do the same thing at the same time.

If you shamefully misuse a cat once she will always maintain a dignified reserve toward you afterward. You will never get her full confidence again.

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.

I've never understood why women love cats. Cats are independent, they don't listen, they don't come in when you call, they like to stay out all night, and when they're home they like to be left alone and sleep. In other words, every quality that women hate in a man, they love in a cat.

I do not know what the cat can have eaten. Usually I know exactly what the cat has eaten. Not only have I fed it to the cat, at the cat's insistence, but the cat has thrown it up on the rug, and someone has tracked it all over onto the other rug. I do not know why cats are such habitual vomiters. They do not seem to enjoy it, judging by the sounds they make while they are doing it. It's their nature. A dog is going to bark. A cat is going to vomit.

If a cat sits on a hot stove once, it will never sit on a cold one either.

A cat will blink when struck with a hammer.

The Cat on your hearthstone to this day presages, By solemnly sneezing, the coming of rain!

A cat's got her own opinion of human beings. She don't say much, but you can tell enough to make you anxious not to hear the whole of it.

A well-trained cat doesn't exist because a cat remains a cat.

You cannot expect everything even from the friendliest cat. It is still a cat.

My cat brought me a toy. I thanked her and threw it. She sat there gave me a look that made me realize people and dogs are the crazy ones.