Time & Perspective Quote by Cleveland Amory

The joke lands because it reverses the usual hierarchy with a single, dry pivot: humans aren’t the patient caretakers of difficult pets; cats are the long-suffering adults stuck with a charmingly inept species. Cleveland Amory frames it as common knowledge ("as anyone... well knows"), a mock-authoritative throat-clearing that makes the punchline feel less like a gag and more like an observed law of nature. The humor is aristocratic: cats are cast as creatures of refinement, humans as clumsy roommates who don’t quite understand the house rules.

Amory’s specific intent isn’t merely to flatter cats (though he does). It’s to skewer human self-importance, especially the modern assumption that animals are accessories to our lives. By calling human shortcomings "limitations", he borrows the language usually reserved for children, the elderly, or the disabled, then applies it to the supposedly dominant species. The subtext is a critique of anthropocentrism disguised as pet talk: if you’ve ever mistaken obedience for love, or attention for ownership, the cat quietly corrects you. It doesn’t perform gratitude; it tolerates.

Context matters. Amory was a historian and a prominent animal welfare advocate, a public figure who treated sentimentality as a tool but not a crutch. The line reflects a mid-century cultural shift: pets moving from working animals to emotional companions, and with that shift, an uneasy negotiation over power, affection, and autonomy. Cats, with their famous refusal to be managed, become his perfect vehicle for saying what polite society hates to hear: we are not as in charge as we think.