Cat Coloring Pages

Cats hold still for exactly as long as it takes you to pick up a pencil, which is the whole appeal of drawing them. These 15 cat coloring pages catch them in the poses they actually hold: curled on a cushion, stretched with paws in the air, frozen mid stare at a fishbowl. Every design downloads as a free printable PDF sized for US Letter paper, and nothing behind the download button asks for an account.

The line art splits into simple and detailed. Simple sheets use thick outlines and large open shapes, which suits ages 3 to 7. Cat Sleeping Curled Up on a Cozy Cushion and Playful Kitten Batting at a Yarn Ball are the two to hand a preschooler first. Detailed sheets layer in individual fur strands and background texture. Fluffy Cat Grooming Itself and Cat Curled Under Autumn Leaves reward colored pencils and a slow hand.

Cat sheets work well as calm down activities because the subject matter is low stakes. There is no correct color for a cat. Ginger, gray tabby, tuxedo, calico and pure black are all real, so a child who picks purple is not wrong so much as early. Mother Cat With Tiny Kittens gives a group of siblings something to split up, one kitten each.

A tip for fur: stroke your pencil in the direction the fur grows, short marks following the curve of the body, and leave the paper white where light would hit the back and the top of the head. Flat, evenly filled fur is what makes a colored cat read as a cartoon rather than an animal.

More line art in this direction: Puppies, Dogs and Owls. If the fur studies on this page appeal, the tiger coloring pages run the same problem at a larger scale, since a tiger is a cat with a stripe pattern no two animals share.