Skip to content

Cats do not give us too many chances. Abuse a cat's trust twice and you could be history, for cats are much less forgiving than dogs and will often lose their trust in you should you behave badly. A dog gives you infinite slack; not so a cat.

— Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson The Nine Emotional Lives of Cats (2002)

Another quote →

Topics

Pets

More quotes by Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson

Unlike a human smile, purring cannot be, as far as anyone knows, faked.

The Nine Emotional Lives of Cats (2002)

The idea, to a cat, that somebody else owns him is ludicrous.

The Nine Emotional Lives of Cats (2002)

"Every day I get many calls, from all over the world about how awful you are. How awful this article is. How bad it all is for psychoanalysis."

Almost all analysts in America are physicians and psychiatrists, and the medical profession is layered into a strict hierarchy. Every psychiatrist in a hospital is chief of some service, or head of some department.

The cat does not merely experience contentment, he exudes it. You cannot be in the presence of a contented cat and not have some of that contentment rub off on you. Which surely is a good part of the reason we love cats so.

The Nine Emotional Lives of Cats (2002)

All Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson quotes →

You may also like

All breathing, existing, living, sentient creatures should not be slain, nor treated with violence, nor abused, nor tormented, nor driven away.

Mahavira

A dog cannot relate his autobiography; however eloquently he may bark, he cannot tell you that his parents were honest but poor.

Bertrand Russell Human Knowledge: Its Scope and Limits (1948)

Histories are more full of Examples of the Fidelity of dogs than of Friends.

Alexander Pope

True human goodness, in all its purity and freedom, can come to the fore only when its recipient has no power.

Milan Kundera The Unbearable Lightness of Being (1984)

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.