Thoughts on Pets

On Pets, Pet Owners and Their World

“If a dog jumps in your lap, it is because he is fond of you; but if a cat does the same thing, it is because your lap is warmer.”
—Alfred North Whitehead (1861-1947), British mathematician, logician and philosopher

“We call them dumb animals, and so they are, for they cannot tell us how they feel, but they do not suffer less because they have no words.”
—Anna Sewell (1820-1878), author, Black Beauty, 1877

“I loathe people who keep dogs. They are cowards who haven't got the guts to bite people themselves.”
—August Strindberg (1849-1912), playwright

“Yesterday I was a dog. Today I’m a dog. Tomorrow I’ll probably still be a dog.
Sigh! There’s so little hope for advancement.”
—Charles M. Schulz (1922-2000), creator of “Peanuts”

“It’s funny how dogs and cats know the inside of folks better than other folks do, isn’t it?”
—Eleanor H. Porter (1868-1920), author, Pollyanna, 1912

“If you are a dog and your owner suggests that you wear a sweater, suggest that he wear a tail.”
—Fran Lebowitz, comic

“No animal should ever jump up on the dining-room furniture unless absolutely certain that he can hold his own in the conversation.”
—Fran Lebowitz, comic

“Animals are such agreeable friends — they ask no questions, they pass no criticisms.”
—George Eliot (1819-1880), author, Scenes of Clerical Life, 1857

“Cats regard people as warmblooded furniture.”
—Jacquelyn Mitchard, author, The Deep End of the Ocean

“Cats are smarter than dogs. You can't get eight cats to pull a sled through snow.”
—Jeff Valdez, comic

“Old age means realizing you will never own all the dogs you wanted to.”
—Joe Gores, comedian

“My dog is worried about the economy because Alpo is up to 99 cents a can. That's almost $7.00 in dog money.”
—Joe Weinstein, comic and writer

“If you pick up a starving dog and make him prosperous, he will not bite you. This is the principal difference between a dog and a man.”
—Mark Twain (1835-1910), humorist and author

“We are alone, absolutely alone on this chance planet: and, amid all the forms of life that surround us, not one, excepting the dog, has made an alliance with us.”
—Maurice Maeterlinck (1862-1949),
Nobel Prize-winning Belgian poet and playwright

“A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of.”
—Ogden Nash (1902-1971), humorist and poet

“On the Internet, nobody knows you're a dog.”
—Peter Steiner cartoon in The New Yorker, July 5, 1993

“I wonder if other dogs think poodles are members of a weird religious cult.”
—Rita Rudner, comic

“A boy can learn a lot from a dog: obedience, loyalty, and the importance of turning around three times before lying down.”
—Robert Benchley (1889-1945), humorist

“I like pigs. Dogs look up to us. Cats look down on us. Pigs treat us as equals.”
—Sir Winston Churchill (1874-1965), British prime minister

“Did you ever walk into a room and forget why you walked in? I think that’s how dogs spend their lives.”
—Sue Murphy

Compiled for The Cache Humane Society
By Ted Pease