"Cat's in the Cradle" is a 1974 folk rock song by Harry Chapin from the album Verities & Balderdash. The single topped the Billboard Hot 100 in December 1974. As Chapin's only #1 hit song, it became the best known of his work and a staple for folk rock music.

The lyrics to the verses of the song were originally written as a poem by Chapin's wife, Sandy Chapin, who is credited as the song's co-writer. The poem itself was inspired by the awkward relationship between Sandy Chapin's first husband, James Cashmore, and his father, a New York City politician. She was also inspired by a country song she heard on the radio. More than a year later, after the birth of his own son, Harry added the music and the chorus. Label executive David Geffen selected the song as a single, over Chapin's objections.

The song is told in first-person by a father who is too busy to spend time with his son. Though the son repeatedly asks him to join in childhood activities, the father always responds with little more than vague promises of spending time together in the future, peppered with images from nursery rhymes. While the son longs to spend time with his father, he continues to admire his father. This shapes the son's future behavior, as shown in the slightly-altered line "But we'll get together then dad". The Ugly Kid Joe cover version does not make this lyrical change but rather alters the grammatical structure of the chorus from "When you coming home?" / "Son, I don't know when ..."to the final "When you coming home, son?" / "I don't know when ..."The final verse is a reverse of the roles; where the father asks his now grown-up son to visit, but the son responds with his father's line. The father then reflects that they are both alike.

The chorus refers to the following nursery rhymes:

"Cat's in the Cradle" is widely mistakenly credited to artist Cat Stevens, in part due to a mistitled MP3 version of the song widely circulated on the internet. As well the style and vocals sound akin to a Cat Stevens song, and the song and the singer both contain the word, 'Cat'. In 1977, Stevens' former label, Deram Records released a compilation album, Cat's Cradle. Jack Black contributed to this confusion, playing part of the song in a Saturday Night Livesketch where Black's character claimed the song was by Yusuf Islam, a.k.a. Cat Stevens. There are no known verifiable recordings of Cat Stevens performing the song, however, and a Cat Stevens fan web site assures readers that Stevens has never performed the song, "not live, not in the studio, and not even privately".

The cover of the song by Ugly Kid Joe is furthermore often confused for a cover by Guns n' Roses, a band which never recorded the song. This is due to an incorrect MP3 circulating on P2P networks; which contains the Ugly Kid Joe version even though the file credits it to Guns n' Roses.