The only escape from the miseries of life are music and cats.

The line frames two consolations—art (music) and companionship (cats)—as antidotes to life’s suffering. Read charitably, it is less a literal claim that these are the only “escapes” than a wry, humane observation about what reliably restores the spirit when circumstances are bleak: aesthetic experience that lifts one beyond the self, and the quiet, nonjudgmental presence of an animal. The pairing also suggests balance: music as an intellectual/spiritual refuge, cats as a domestic, tactile comfort. The aphoristic form turns private solace into a general truth about resilience and the small mercies that make hardship bearable.