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Charles Bukowski adored cats, and like everything he appreciated, they found a way into his work. They pop up in his novels, short stories, essays, and poems, often serving as a metaphor for the way he wished to live: Unconcerned yet wise and bold.

His publisher put out a collection of his writings on cats, under the title On Cats, in 2017.

Bukowski Quotes On Cats

“In my next life I want to be a cat. To sleep 20 hours a day and wait to be fed. To sit around licking my ass. Humans are too miserable and angry and single-minded.”

~ Charles Bukowski

“And a cat never knows fear—finally—he only winds up into the spring of the sea and the rock, and even in a death-fight he does not think of anything except the majesty of darkness.”

~ Charles Bukowski

“If you’re feeling bad, you just look at the cats, you’ll feel better, because they know that everything is, just as it is. There’s nothing to get excited about. They just know. They’re saviors. The more cats you have, the longer you live. If you have a hundred cats, you’ll live 10 times longer than if you have 10. Someday this will be discovered, and people will have a thousand cats and live for ever.”

~ Charles Bukowski

"The more cats you have, the longer you live. If you have a hundred cats, you’ll live ten times longer than if you have ten. Someday this will be discovered, and people will have a thousand cats and live forever." ~ Charles Bukowski#NationalCatDay #Cats pic.twitter.com/G0k9FOHdbj — Bukowski Quotes (@bukowskiquoteus) October 29, 2019

“and now sometimes I’m interviewed, they want to hear

about

life and literature and I get drunk and hold up my cross-

eyed

shot runover de-tailed cat before them and I say, ‘look,

look

at this!’

but they don’t understand, they say something like, ‘you

say you’ve been influenced by Celine . . .’

‘no,’ I hold the cat up before them, ‘by what happens, by

things like this, by this, by this! . . .'”

~ Charles Bukowski

“yesterday the cat walked calmly up the driveway

with the mockingbird alive in its mouth,

wings fanned, beautiful wings fanned and flopping,

feathers parted like a woman’s legs in sex,

and the bird was no longer mocking,

it was asking, it was praying

but the cat

striding down through centuries

would not listen.”

~ Charles Bukowski

“they complain but never

worry.

they walk with a surprising dignity.

they sleep with a direct simplicity that

humans just can’t

understand…

when I am feeling low all I have to do is watch my cats and my courage returns.

I study these creatures.

they are my teachers.”

~ Charles Bukowski

“A cat walks by and shakes Shakespeare

off his back.

I don’t want to draw

like Mondrian,

I want to draw like a sparrow eaten by a cat.”

~ Charles Bukowski

“I’ve got these two kittens who are rapidly growing into

cats and

we sleep on the same bed at night–the problem being that

they are early risers:

I am often awakened by claws running across my

face.

these,

all they do is run, eat, sleep, shit and

fight

but at moments they are still and they look

at me

with eyes

far more beautiful than any human eyes I have ever

seen.

they are good guys…

I expect any number of cat poems from them

of which this is the

first.

“my god,” they will say, “all Chinaski writes about

are cats!”

“my god,” they used to say, “all Chinaski writes about

are whores!”

the complainers will complain and keep buying my

books: they just love the way I irritate

them.”

~ Charles Bukowski, from “a nature poem for you”

“as I am sitting here

in front of this machine

my cat Ting

sits behind me

on the back of the

chair.

now

as I type this

he steps upon an open

drawer

and out across the

desk.

now his nose is over this

paper and he watches me

type

then he leaves off

goes over and sticks his

nose into a coffee

cup.

now he’s back

his head across this

piece of paper

he sticks his paw down

into the ribbon

I hit the key and he leaps

off.

now he just sits and

watches me

type.

I’ve moved my wine glass

and bottle

to the other side of the

machine.

the radio plays bad piano

music.

Ting just sits and looks

at this typer.

do you think he wants to

be a

writer?

or was he one

in the past?”

~ Charles Bukowski, from “My Cat, The Writer”

“my cat shit in my archives

he climbed into my Golden State Sunkist

orange box

and he shit on my poems

my original poems

saved for the university archives.

that one-eared fat black critic

he signed me off.”

~ Charles Bukowski, “a reader”

“warm light alone tonight in this house, alone with 6 cats who tell me without effort all that there is to know.”

~ Charles Bukowski













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