What??!! If this is truly a memory of mine, and I believe it has to be, no wonder I'm not well!! What kind of mother would say such a thing??!! While I cannot answer that, I will leave you with a few more appropriate things to say about cats. They were all said by very important people, as you will see, and are much more in touch with the rightful place of cats in the lives of humans.
My relationships with cats has saved me from a deadly, pervasive ignorance. William S. Burroughs
Cats choose us; we don't own them. Kristin Cast
Time spent with a cat is never wasted. Colette and Sigmund Freud
What greater gift than the love of a cat? Charles Dickens
How we behave toward cats here below determines our status in heaven. Robert A. Heinlein
A cat has absolute emotional honesty; human beings, for one reason or another, may hide their feelings, but a cat does not. Ernest Hemingway
I have studied many philosophers and many cats. The wisdom of cats is infinitely superior. Hippolytus Taine
If man could be crossed with the cat it would improve the man, but it would deteriorate the cat. Mark Twain
There. That's better. Cats rule!! Smokey