Lyrics for All Cats Are Grey as interpreted by oofus

All Cats Are Grey Lyrics
I never thought that I would find myself
In bed amongst the stones
The columns are all men
Begging to crush me
No shapes sail on the dark deep lakes
And no flags wave me home

In the caves
All cats are grey
In the caves
The textures coat my skin
In the death cell
A single note
Rings on and on and on...

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GothicBlade
04-11-2003

Rated 0 
So unlike other cure songs... its like, 6 minutes long, with barely 40 seconds of vocals. Very sad. All I can think of is a man imprisoned, perhaps in a cave somewhere, lost forever.

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rainydayboy
04-16-2003

Rated 0 
oh oh such a beuuuuutiful song, shit. yeah i was imagining a guy in a cave too. he has such obscure lyrics, god i wish i knew what he was talkign about. i would give anything to be in his mind for like a day.

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movitz
04-24-2003

Rated 0 
The cave is probably a metaphor that describes an imprisoned state of mind. And the feeling of being locked in forever with grey cats - maybe that are deteriorating - is just as haunting as the song can be in its morbid beauty. I love it.

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The_Codfather
06-25-2004

Rated 0 
As far as i can see it the cats are grey because of the light, like early morning light, it makes everything dull and the same colour, i suppose this could relate to his state of mind at the time, and certainly one that i can relate to, a feeling of nothingness, when you just don't feel anything, it's all "grey".

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saturnine
09-17-2004

Rated 0 
when i hear this song, i think about the gormenghast novels by mervyn peake. i know the drowning man was based on these books, but im not sure about this one. there is a charachter in the books that owns hundereds of white cats and lives in a monstrosity of a castle who's corridors carry on forever and ever. and id think that in the dark cells of the castle, the cats would look grey. who knows. but i also think about a man traped in a cave where the lights slowly begin to fade and everything starts to turn grey until there is no colour left at all.

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Th0rn
05-29-2005

Rated +1 
To me, the caves symbolize depression. Even amongst people, the person is alone -- other people are just stone columns that are impending doom via pressure: "begging to crush me." In the depths of depression, there are no markers toward escape, there is only a terribly isolated feeling. The deep lakes of introspection offer no sensible reprieve, either. "No shapes sail on the dark deep lakes
And no flags wave me home." Everything that could once inspire happiness becomes drab, incapable of inspiring any feeling whatsoever: "In the caves
All cats are grey."

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sarah89
10-02-2005

Rated 0 
This is from a time when Smith was going through a great depression, so of course the song is about being depressed. I don't believe he intended to write a song about a man in a cave, but a lonely man. A man who feels he has no one, but other "grey cats" who are equally depressed as he is.

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Mengia
01-13-2006

Rated 0 
Something which made me laugh, the term "grey cat" can be used for a bisexual...
Obviously not what the songs about though, just thought it was a humourous note. I do love what someone said about when it's dark you can't see the cats colour; and it's just grey. I hadn't really paid much attention to the lyrics before I read them just now, but this is one of my favorite cure songs... and very sad...

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harsh stone white
01-16-2006

Rated 0 
the whole album just paints the picture of "grey" depression like the cover of the album. this song's lyrics make perfect sense in that light and i've never thought about it meaning anything else. "pornography" is an anxious, angry, bitter, sick depression, and "faith" is the grey kind, where you're pretty hopeless but it's calmer at least. there's a few anxious songs but it's nothing like "porno"

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Wurby Tictoc
01-23-2006

Rated 0 
It's about death in the absence of an afterlife. There is no heaven or hell, he is just lying in his grave surrounded by the dead (grey cats) and gazing up at their gravestones (stones, columns).

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fuckoffanddieok
03-30-2006

Rated +1 
wurby is right

death with an absence of afterlife.

an athiests view of death

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ZombieCultHero
04-03-2006

Rated 0 
I believe i read somewhere that this is about being lost in a cave forever. But i really like Wurby's take on the song, i've never thought about it that way.
This is one of the best Cure songs ever written, and one of my personal favorites. The spinning drums, the smooth bass, and the soft, gloomy keyboards never fail to hypnotize me.

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All Cats are Grey
09-14-2006

Rated 0 
Well...obviously this is one of my favorite songs...It sounds like a perspective of death...a dead man in his grave...for example:
"I never thought that I would find myself
In bed amongst the stones"
in bed amongst the stones is like gravestones...well at least it is to me.
also the death cell part kinda made me think of a cell like...being his grave. his coffin. well...thats just me..

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koolzies
10-30-2006

Rated 0 
This always reminded me of Marie Antoinette. What do you know, it's in the movie. I think it's because of the lines:

"I never thought that I would find myself
In bed amongst the stones
The columns are all men
Begging to crush me"

People wanted her dead, basically.

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dri-ft
12-11-2006

Rated 0 
i like the thought that it is about death, and lying in a grave. However I don't think the grey cats=the dead. I think what is meant is that all cats are grey when you are looking up at them from beneath the soil. You know?

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itsdanky
01-16-2007

Rated 0 
They did start doing a lot of drugs at this time.

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sbfisher
03-26-2007

Rated 0 
I believe this song can only be about death, probably metaphorical (depression and lifelessness). Most Cure songs are the most about creating a mood and feeling with imagery.

The place is a cave or crypt of some kind since he says it's a cave and mentions columns (holding up something) and also "dark deep lakes" which might mean underground lakes.

And when are you "in bed amongst the stones"? You really only lie and "sleep" on stones when you are dead. Dead people lie in crypts of stone, often underground.

The columns "all men begging to crush me" also suggest carved columns of people already entombed. Though possibly they could be simply normal columns or even natural pillars, but he feels them wanting to smash him permanently on his stone slab.

There is no life here "no shapes sail on the dark deep lakes" and no way to get out "no flags wave me home."

I don't think there are literally cats in this cave, but by saying "in the caves all cats are gray" he's simply saying that no matter what color something is, it's all gray since it's gray from lack of light.

"The textures coat my skin" seems to be about feeling the darkness and perhaps dust of the other dead covering him and as he slowly fades to be dead like everything else there.

The last part "in the death cell, a single note rings on and on and on" seems to be a reference to hearing the death knell of his own death (as in John Donne's poem that says "never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee"). This seems to be the last sensation as death overcomes him.

This song is all about a feeling of numbness and death.

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minervo
06-10-2007

Rated 0 
This song is so eerie and disturbing, yet calm... I love it!

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robot in disguise
07-10-2007

Rated 0 
i agree it being about an atheist's viewpoint of the afterlife, or in this case, no afterlife, just an everlasting nothingness..."i never thought that i would find myself, in bed amongst the stones"-lying in a grave "no shapes sail on the dark deep lakes and no flags wave me home"-no heaven or hell waiting.
during the faith album he was completely reevaluating his faith in (i think it was) christianity. (possibly one of the branches of christianity, cathlocism i'm sorry i don't know much about church, it angers me so i try to ignore it)
he said " i was looking deep within myself to see what faith i had if any " and the whole album is based on religion, particularly songs like the holy hour just him observing the church and thinking.

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cagliostro
08-16-2007

Rated 0 
This is surely one of the most beautiful song of the group.
Every time I listen it, I fell a serene melancolhy remembering me that we have to die, but not now.
About to give a meaning on the words of this song, I think that is like to interpretate an artistic picture: every critic give (feel) his vision that is filtered by his proper experience, that could be often very different from the author meaning. Only Smith, and perhaps neither him, know the real meaning of his words!!!
Often the artists first tranlate in sound their feeling and then add the words to autointerpretate their own songs.
I can only imagine:
1) the cave is an obscure church
2) tha cats are people without interest (people that is prayng) by the vision of a depressed man
3) the textures on the skin are the colored stained glass reflex of the church
4) the death cell is his mind altered by depression or heroine or phsycofarmacs or by his own genial obsession, or all of them
5) The ring or single note is the future death

Fausto
Excuse for my bad english

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laurelinwyntre
08-17-2007

Rated 0 
"All cats are grey in the dark"
-english proverb

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rizzen
11-20-2007

Rated 0 
Smith didn't write this song .. Tolhurst did .. and he wrote is after his mom died. Great song either way.

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Dejah Thoris
04-03-2008

Rated 0 
"It's all pink on the inside when the lights are out" is the same type of meaning to "All cats are grey". It's all the same...we're all the same inside...there's no use trying to change things...definitely a melancholy, morose thought coupled with a haunting melody/background. Rizzen is right - Lol wrote this after his mum's death. Siiiiiiigggghhhhhh....

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ductape
05-13-2008

Rated 0 
wow... i never saw it as being in a grave - a "cave" surrounded by (grave) "stones"...makes so much sense - he never considered his death (being "in bed") and the columns each represent a person. the coffin itself could be the "death cell". and what I came here to say actually ties in well with the death of someone without faith, who just lies in the graveyard...

I always thought "all cats are grey" comes from a reasonably famous logic example, viz. "All cats are grey. Spot is a cat. Therefore Spot is grey." I know that sounds ridiculous but perhaps using it is showing the loneliness and emptiness of someone reliant on logic rather than Faith.

I hadn't heard laurelinwyntre's proverb but a quick google brings it up. And makes a lot more sense than what I said - perhaps the logic example is based on the proverb though.

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LesHutch
09-24-2008

Rated 0 
robot in disguise has nailed it.....it's about death and nothingness.....you die and that's it...

"No flags wave anyone home"....there aint any angels, deceased family or anyone waiting for you on the other side.....

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