The 30 Best Songs About Cats
tags:meow mix
Saluting the coolest member of the animal kingdom with feline favorites from Beyoncé, Taylor Swift, Elton John, Prince, and more
The Romans believed that cats could see ghosts. In Aztec and Mayan folklore, cats were esteemed as guides to the underworld. For the Greeks, cats shared a cosmic connection with the lunar cycle. In 16th century England, people were convinced that if a cat jumped over a human corpse, the deceased person would turn into a vampire. All of this stuff is true, of course. Cats are the coolest, smoothest, most mysterious members of the animal kingdom. (Their aloof indifference to you and your boring human bullshit is a theme of Ricky Gervais’ popular new animated Netflix show, Alley Cats.) That regal status is why songwriters in every musical genre love a good cat metaphor — whether it’s Elton John in “Honky Cat,“ the Grateful Dead in “China Cat Sunflower,” or Prince in “Velvet Kitty Cat.” So here are our 30 favorite cat songs of all time, from jazz to rockabilly to R&B to pop, from the 1970s soft rock of Al Stewart to the Greenwich Village folk of Phoebe Buffay. To quote the artist at Number 15, karma is a cat. Let’s meow it up.
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Jethro Tull, ‘…And the Mouse Police Never Sleeps’ (1978)
Image Credit: Brian Cooke/Redferns/Getty Images The English prog-rock band’s 11th album, Heavy Horses, was inspired by leader Ian Anderson’s life on his new country estate. For the rustic rocker “….And the Mouse Police Never Sleeps,” he salutes his cat Mistletoe, who must’ve had the mice around the place on constant high alert: “With claws that rake a furrow red/Licensed to mutilate,” Anderson sings. The end of the song turns its title into a scary, growled chant, enough to make any rodent scurry for the next farm.—Jon Dolan
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Phoebe Buffay, ‘Smelly Cat’ (1995)
Image Credit: NBCU Photo Bank/NBCUniversal/Getty Images Phoebe Buffay’s signature song was almost about a different household pet. “My dog was so smelly his name was Gouda, because he smelled like bad cheese,” said Friends writer Betsy Borns, who helped craft the song. We’re lucky that didn’t happen, because this stinky feline made for some great Friends moments, like when Lisa Kudrow taught it to Chrissie Hynde, or when Phoebe got to make an official Eighties-style music video, only to learn her voice was overdubbed. But she finally got her due in 2015, when Taylor Swift brought Kudrow onstage, in character, during the 1989 tour. Together, they delivered the tale of “Smelly Cat” to thousands in an arena. “This singer has only ever played in coffee houses before,” Swift joked. —Angie Martoccio
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Takako Minekawa, ‘Fantastic Cat’ (1996)
Image Credit: Tara Ziemba/Getty Images Takako Minekawa always had her own style. The Japanese synth mastermind was one of the most acclaimed artists to emerge from Tokyo’s shibuya-kei scene in the Nineties, along with fellow indie-techno eccentrics like Buffalo Daughter, Kahimi Karie, and Cornelius. On gems like Roomic Cube, she cut her electro grooves with vintage lounge pop. “Fantastic Cat” is her high-energy synth-pop ode to the world’s coolest neko, a groovy kitty who wears chic boots, plays with her Minimoog, and lives in a “candy canvas.” —Rob Sheffield
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Ted Nugent, ‘Cat Scratch Fever’ (1977)
Image Credit: Michael Putland/Getty Images The Motor City Madman had a Seventies hard-rock hit with the hot guitar riff and sex-addict metaphor of “Cat Scratch Fever.” Nugent reveals that he first contracted this highly infectious ailment “from the kitty next door” at the tender age of 10. “Well, I make a pussy purr/With the stroke of my hand,” he goes on to specify. It’s the highest-charting song of his career, reaching Number 30 on the Billboard Hot 100 in the spring of 1977.—J.D.
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The Miller Sisters, ‘Ten Cats Down’ (1956)
Image Credit: Sun Records “Ten Cats Down” is a scratch-and-claw rockabilly classic from the Miller Sisters, in the early days of Sun Records. The Tupelo duo of Elsie Jo and Mildred Miller did their first session with Sam Phillips in Memphis in 1954 — the week before Elvis Presley released “That’s All Right.” On “Ten Cats Down,” these wild gals really put their cat clothes on, flaunting their pads, paws, and claws on the dance floor with their suitors, chanting, “Rock, cat, rock!” —R.S.
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Megan Thee Stallion, ‘Kitty Kat’ (2021)
Image Credit: Jason Koerner/Getty Images One of the best taunting phrases in English involves cats: “Here, kitty kitty.” It’s also the chorus for Megan Thee Stallion’s “Kitty Kat,” a rap song full of bravado that calls out all of the Houston hottie’s enemies. Instead of pushing her naysayers away, she draws them in closer so she can spit bars at them directly. With bombastic production behind her, Megan walks down all the “pussies”: strangers talking about her on the internet, the label that tried to ruin her success, and other female emcees that try to compete with her prowess. The song establishes Megan as a big dog in the industry, and all the cats better run for shelter–Elise Brisco
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Weakerthans, ‘Plea From a Cat Named Virtue’ (2002)
Image Credit: Aaron Lynett/Toronto Star/Getty Images The Weakerthans were an indie-rock band from Winnipeg, Canada, led by singer-songwriter John K. Samson. This highlight from the band’s 2002 album, Reconstruction Site, is a study in apathy sung from the perspective of Samson’s cat. “Why don’t you ever want to play/I’m tired of this piece of string/You sleep as much as I do now, and don’t eat too much of anything,” the remonstrative feline implores over ironically anthemic guitars. If every slacker’s cat could talk this is what they’d say.—J.D.
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Cab Calloway, ‘Hep Cat’s Love Song’ (1941)
Image Credit: James Kriegsmann/Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images Songwriters looking to work cat imagery into their music have the Harlem jazz musicians of the 1930s and ’40s to thank. The cat began its pop-music life as slang for an especially cool jazz musician. In 1938, swing superstar Cab Calloway published The Hepster’s Dictionary, and recorded a version of it too. Calloway defines a hep cat as “a guy who knows all the answers … a highfalutin’ student of the Calloway vocab.” His finest cat-jazz jam is the 1941 tune “Hep Cat’s Love Song,” which features cool come-ons like “When I hug ya, you stay hugged/When I dig ya, you stay dug.” —J.D.
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Parliament, ‘I Call My Baby Pussycat’ (1970)
Image Credit: Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images Subtlety — who needs it? “I call my baby pussycat! I spell it P-U-S-S-Y!” George Clinton and his P-Funk collective were just getting their act together in 1970. At this early stage, Parliament and Funkadelic were basically the same band with two different names, sharing the same acid-fried rock concept where Jimi Hendrix meets James Brown. “I Call My Baby Pussycat” is the sex-crazed banger from Osmium, with Eddie Hazel wilding out on guitar, looking for love in the litter box. —R.S.
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Gene Vincent, ‘Cat Man’ (1957)
Image Credit: Charlie Gillett Collection/Redferns/Getty Images Rockabilly madman Gene Vincent became a greaser legend in the Fifties, yelping primitivist hits like “Be-Bop-a-Lula” and “Crazy Legs,” with his Virginia band the Blue Caps. But he really makes the fur fly in “Cat Man,” his feral ode to feline bloodlust. Vincent howls and moans like a tomcat in heat — paid, laid, and unspayed. Nick Cave covered “Cat Man” with the Birthday Party — but even Cave sounded like a tame calico by comparison. —R.S.
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Melvins, ‘Boris’ (1991)
Image Credit: David Corio/Redferns/Getty Images Melvins opened their Bullhead album in the Year Punk Broke with “Boris,” and it’s still one of the heaviest, sludgiest songs in their repertoire. It also contains one of the best lyrics of the grunge era: “I say I can’t/But I really mean I won’t.” The song bowled over Tool’s Adam Jones so completely he once asked the band’s Buzz Osborne about it. “I said, ‘That song “Boris” really means a lot to me.’ And he says, ‘Oh, that song’s about my cat,’” Jones told Guitar World. “So it’s good to not get too analytical about this stuff.” Maybe so, but knowing this adds weight to the lyrics, especially “Boris likes a lot of little things to kick.” —Kory Grow
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Hiroshi Suzuki, ‘Cat’ (1976)
The late trombonist’s 1976 album was largely forgotten about for decades, until a 2015 reissue gave it a cult following and renewed appreciation. It’s now seen as a Japanese jazz essential, with tight, cohesive cuts (the delightful opener “Shrimp Dance,” the twinkly “Romance”), featuring his former Freedom Unity bandmates (Hiromasa Suzuki, Akira Ishikawa, Takeru Muraoka, and Kunimitsu Inaba). And while the title track is the shortest, it’s Suzuki at his finest — an exploration into deep grooves that drip with each note, effortlessly cool and suave — much like the black cat on the album cover. —A.M.
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T. Rex, ‘Cat Black (The Wizard’s Hat)’ (1969)
Image Credit: Peter Sanders/Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images
While Marc Bolan is best known for riding a white swan into a glam-rock haze, T. Rex got their start as the whimsical folk-rockers of tracks like this one from their 1969 LP, Unicorn — about “Catblack the wizard’s hat/Spun in lore from Dagamoor.” It’s not as bombastic a sound as Bolan is known for, but this track is still imbued with the band’s otherworldly lore — Tolkien-flecked, legend-laden, Keatsian. It’s the kind of song you’d hear trailing behind a caravan driven by a coven of witches and their black-cat familiars.—Brenna Ehrlich -
Kinks, ‘Phenomenal Cat’ (1968)
Image Credit: Chris Walter/WireImage Roughly three decades after T.S. Eliot wrote about a “phenomenal cat” named “Mr. Mistoffelees” (and a little more than a decade before Andrew Lloyd Webber immortalized the words), Ray Davies wrote “Phenomenal Cat,” a serene meditation on feline splendor, for the Kinks’ celebrated Village Green Preservation Society album. Davies’ cat had flown all over the world but decided life was best spent getting “big and fat” in a tree. “He just lived to eat ’cause it kept him fat,” Davies sings. “And that’s how he wanted to stay.” Ray’s brother Dave loved the song, telling Rolling Stone, “It’s a metaphor, saying, ‘You do have a soul.’ The cat is the coolest part of you.” He’s right, too.—K.G.
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Prince, ‘Velvet Kitty Cat’ (1984)
Image Credit: Jeffrey Mayer/Getty Images Prince was a master of the double entendre, especially when it came to singing about women and sex. Recorded in 1983, “Velvet Kitty Cat” is a silly, synth-y pop song that generally remains light and fun. However, with tongue-in-cheek lines such as “My velvet kitty cat, she’s man’s best friend/Furry, cuddly, and fat,” we’re reminded this is still a track from Prince’s prime. The song was originally intended for the Time or Vanity 6, but it didn’t see an official release until it found its way onto the 2017 posthumous Purple Rain Deluxe Edition and Purple Rain Deluxe Expanded Edition. —Yaasmiyn Alam
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Taylor Swift feat. Ice Spice, ‘Karma’ (2022)
Image Credit: Kevin Mazur/TAS23/Getty Images The only pop star whose personal stationery says “Feline Enthusiast.” The only pop star to proclaim herself a “Childless Cat Lady” in a public insult to MAGA. The only pop star to make a video with the Panic! at the Disco guy starring her real-life cats: Olivia, Meredith, and Benjamin. (Let’s not even mention that movie, OK?) Nobody but Taylor could get the whole world singing along with the theological postulate that “Karma is a cat/Purring on my lap ’cause it loves me.” —R.S.
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Tacocat, ‘Cat Fancy’ (2012)
Image Credit: Steven Dewall/Redferns/Getty Images Seattle punk rockers Tacocat have the perfect song for any child who subscribed to Cat Fancy, anxiously waiting at the mailbox for their monthly injection of cuteness. As Emily Nokes croons, “Who cares about world affairs?/Who cares about politics?… All cats all the time, that’s what you’re gonna get.” Simple, sweet, surfy, and straightforward, this song captures the pure joy of fiending for felines and cute cat pics. —B.E.
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Norma Tanega, ‘Walkin’ My Cat Named Dog’ (1966)
Image Credit: Caroline Gillies/BIPS/Hulton Archive/Getty Images The Greenwich Village folk singer Norma Tanega scored a bizarre worldwide hit in 1966 with “Walkin’ My Cat Named Dog.” Her NYC apartment building didn’t allow dogs, so she named her cat “Dog” and took it for walks around the city. (Tanega also became the longtime girlfriend of a more famous pop star: Dusty Springfield.) “Walkin’” became an unlikely U.S. Top 40 hit (it reached Number 22) and blew up even bigger overseas. —R.S.
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Janet Jackson, ‘Black Cat’ (1989)
Image Credit: Fryderyk Gabowicz/picture alliance/Getty Images A funky jam from Janet Jackson’s classic LP Rhythm Nation 1814, “Black Cat” opens with one of the most intense tiger roars ever committed to wax. The song is a cautionary tale about drug abuse and gang violence with a tough heavy-metal guitar riff. “Don’t understand why you insist/On ways of living such a dangerous life,” she sings. The message is pretty clear: Get it together before it’s too late, because you only have nine lives to live. —J.D.
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Pink Floyd, ‘Lucifer Sam’ (1967)
Image Credit: Andrew Whittuck/Redferns/Getty Images A highlight from Pink Floyd’s psychedelic Summer of Love masterpiece The Piper at the Gates of Dawn, driven by Syd Barrett’s demented dive-bombing rockabilly guitar and his wonder at the mysterious ways of his Siamese cat, Sam. In the lyrics, Sam is transmogrified into a metaphor for another guy who’s always prowling around Syd’s girlfriend. “Be a hip cat, be a ship’s cat/Somewhere, anywhere,” Barrett sings with terrified urgency. Rarely has hanging around with your pet while stoned taken on such stark emotional resonance.—J.D.
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Father John Misty, ‘Goodbye Mr. Blue’ (2022)
Image Credit: Mauricio Santana/Getty Images A feline-folk masterwork, in this elegiac highlight from Father John Misty’s 2022 album Chloë and the Next 20th Century, the singer-songwriter is in the midst of a devastating breakup, and a beloved Turkish Angora is the final shared possession linking FJM and his soon-to-be ex. “This may be the last time/Last time I put on my shoes/Go down to the corner/And buy the damn cat the expensive food,” he sings over a gently flowing acoustic guitar that brings to mind the Harry Nilsson of “EVerybody’s Talkin’.” When Mr. Blue gets sick and dies, the couple share one final moment of poignant togetherness.–J.D.
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Coasters, ‘Three Cool Cats’ (1959)
Image Credit: Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images The B-side to the Coasters’ rock & roll classic “Charlie Brown,” written by songwriting legends Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller. With an appropriately sly, slinky beat, it’s the story of three cool cats hanging around on the corner, “in a beat up car/Dividing up a nickel candy bar,” watching three cool chicks stroll by and deciding which cat is going to go after which girl. The Beatles did the song in their earliest days as the Quarrymen and demoed it for Decca Records in 1962, with George Harrison on vocals, and it’s been covered by a number of other artists. —J.D.
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David Bowie, ‘Cat People Putting Out Fire’ (1982)
Image Credit: Chris Walter/WireImage Goth-y, syrupy, and dark, Bowie’s contribution to the 1982 sexy horror film Cat People is about a slinkier kind of feline. Bowie’s velvet baritone — juxtaposed with Giorgio Moroder’s New Wave-washed production — hones in on a Sphinx-like entity with eyes “colder than the moon,” gazing out onto eternity. Kitty has claws, though, whipping Bowie up into a lather akin to “putting out fire with gasoline,” a phrase he turns into a glorious refrain buoyed by a female chorus. But it’s not a cat fight — it’s an erotic slow-burn that erupts into an inferno. —B.E.
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Beyoncé, ‘Kitty Cat’ (2006)
Image Credit: Michael Caulfield/WireImage Felines are many things: soft, cunning, dominant, and the perfect metaphor for a woman’s dignity. Beyoncé does an exceptional job at landing this comparison in her B’DAY deep cut, “Kitty Kat.” Over a funked-out Neptunes beat, queen Bey lays out all the failed conditions of the Performance Improvement Plan she put her man on and why she’ll be rescinding her offer of love and “sweet little nookie.” Coming home late? Making her sleep alone? Not calling back? Wack sex game? Time to put her paws on a new Tom cat.–E.B.
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The Grateful Dead, ‘China Cat Sunflower’ (1969)
Image Credit: Chris Walter/WireImage
“God knows how I wrote ‘China Cat Sunflower,’” the legendary Dead lyricist Robert Hunter once told us. “I find that writing on pot, I throw an amazing amount of stuff away that looked groovy to me while I’m stoned and doesn’t look groovy afterwards.” Thankfully, he kept this one, and it became one of the band’s most beloved and recognizable gems. Jerry Garcia and Bob Weir’s riffs shimmer and interact with each other, like two cats about to playfully pounce for the same snack, which sounds a lot like the trippy journey Hunter went on when he wrote the track in Mexico. “This cat took me in all these cat places,” he said. Sounds like a dream vacation. —A.M. -
The Stray Cats, ‘Stray Cat Strut’ (1981)
Image Credit: Chris Walter/WireImage Brian Setzer holds the rare distinction of being the only person in the past 69 years to take Carl Perkins literally when he sang, “Go, cat, go!” His band, the Stray Cats, played rockabilly like Perkins, and on the band’s theme song, “Stray Cat Strut,” Setzer, whose spirit animal is a “black and orange stray cat sittin’ on a fence,” did his hero proud with lyrics that are the cat’s whiskers: He meows, struts with his tail in the air, and exudes feline cool, so much so he doesn’t even bother chasing mice around. He’s got cat class, and he’s got cat style. —K.G.
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Elton John, ‘Honky Cat’ (1972)
Image Credit: Robert Altman/Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images Elton John has always been a friend to the feline community, but never more so than in his 1972 smash “Honky Cat.” Elton was heavily into Southern-man cosplay in those days, drawling about his “redneck ways” over funky horns and New Orleans-style piano, chanting, “Get back, honky cat!” The same album, Honky Chateau, has his second-furriest cat anthem, “Hercules,” though it’s just a whisker ahead of his 2004 drag-ball tribute, “They Call Her the Cat.” —R.S.
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Squeeze, ‘Cool for Cats’ (1978)
Image Credit: Fin Costello/Redferns/Getty Images Look, some of the lyrics to this 1979 hit haven’t aged all that well, and, no, the song doesn’t have anything to do with actual cats (it’s named after a British TV show from the Fifties). But that chorus is so catchy, and that punk-y disco beat is so bouncy. Let it hit you in the right mood and you’ll be saying it’s cool to be a cat, too. —Simon Vozick-Levinson
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Al Stewart, ‘Year of the Cat’ (1976)
Image Credit: Richard E. Aaron/Redferns/Getty Images Scottish soft-rock bard Al Stewart had his signature hit with “Year of the Cat,” a smooth short story that provided the title track for his finest album. It’s the tale of a tourist enjoying a “morning from a Bogart movie/In a country where they turn back time.” His trip is upended when he meets a mystery woman who “looks at him coolly” and “comes in incense and patchouli.” The title alludes to astrology, though the cat could also be the patchouli-scented temptress herself.—J.D.
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The Cure, ‘The Lovecats’ (1983)
Image Credit: Fin Costello/Redferns/Getty Images No rock star has ever been more of an honorary cat than Robert Smith. Maybe boys don’t cry, but the Cure frontman always knows how to meow, and “The Lovecats” is his ode to feline romance. He shows off his repertoire of purrs and hisses over that frisky jazz bass line. (Once in the Eighties, Smith appeared on the cover of Melody Maker in tabby drag, with the headline: “Careless Whiskers.”) These “Lovecats” slip down the city streets by night, purring, “Should we have each other with cream?” Robert, goth kitties around the world give you four paws up, forever. —R.S.