Rudyard Kipling Quotes

Cats are unpredictable because they're wild and domestic at the same time. Watching a cat's behavior is like a small window into the wild.

People who wish to salute the free and independent side of their evolutionary character acquire cats. People who wish to pay homage to their servile and salivating roots own dogs.

Furthermore, unlike Man's other great good friend the horse, the cat is no sweating serf of Man. The only labor she condescends to perform is to catch mice and rats, and that's fun.

Hear and attend and listen; for this befell and behappened and became and was: O my Best Beloved, when the tame animals were wild.

Cats are the wildest of the tame and the tamest of the wild

Some kinds of animals burrow in the ground; others do not. Some animals are nocturnal, as the owl and the bat; others use the hours of daylight. There are tame animals and wild animals. Man and the mule are always tame; the leopard and the wolf are invariably wild, and others, as the elephant, are easily tamed.

I had a very famous trainer tell me once, 'You can usually train a wild animal but never tame a wild animal, ever.' They are always going to be wild, no matter what anybody says.

Throw a stick, and the servile dog wheezes and pants and shambles to bring it to you. Do the same before a cat, and he will eye you with coolly polite and somewhat bored amusement.

I think all cats are wild. They only act tame if there´s a saucer of milk in it for them.

Animals can learn, but it is not by learning that they become dogs, cats, or horses. Only man has to learn to become what he is supposed to be.

Dogs are not like cats, who amusingly tolerate humans only until someone comes up with a tin opener that can be operated with a paw. Men made dogs, they took wolves and gave them human things - unnecessary intelligence, names, a desire to belong, and a twitching inferiority complex. All dogs dream wolf dreams, and know they're dreaming of biting their Maker. Every dog knows, deep in his heart, that he is a Bad Dog.

It is just this rage for consideration that has betrayed the dog into his satellite position as the friend of man. The cat, an animal of franker appetites, preserves his independence. But the dog, with one eye ever on the audience, has been wheedled into slavery, and praised and patted into the renunciation of his nature. Once he ceased hunting and became man's plate-licker, the Rubicon was crossed. Thenceforth he was a gentleman of leisure; and except the few whom we keep working, the whole race grew more and more self-conscious, mannered and affected.

Even dogs and horses have their actions modified by association with human beings; they form different habits because human beings are concerned with what they do.

Cats, as you know, are quite impervious to threats.

The cat is domestic only as far as suits its own ends.

I know a lot of animal communicators and I think a lot of them are just good behaviorists because they pick up on a lot little posture things like how the eyes look, the posture of the cat ears, is it tense? They're picking up just a lot of their body cues from the dog, the cat or the horse.

Cats didn't start as mousers. Weasels and snakes and dogs are more efficient as rodent-control agents. I postulate that cats started as psychic companions, as Familiars, and have never deviated from this function.

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

I just don't believe people can tame animals.

You can’t give your heart to a wild thing.

whereas the dog strives to lessen the distance between himself and man, seeks ever to be intelligent and intelligible, and translates into looks and actions the words he cannot speak, the cat dwells within the circle of her own secret thoughts.

The cat will keep his side of the bargain. He will kill mice, and he will be kind to babies when he is in the house, just so long as they do not pull his tail too hard. But when he has done that, and between times, and when the moon gets up and night comes, he is the Cat that walks by himself, and all places are alike to him. Then he goes out to the Wet Wild Woods or up on the Wet Wild trees or on the Wet Wild roofs, waving his wild tail and walking by his wild lone.

The phrase 'domestic cat' is an oxymoron.

Dogs own space and cats own time.

A cat can be social, but a dog, we've bred this hyper social animal that's really truly different and will do stuff for us just to please us with praise and stroking.