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Nude with Cats

Date:

1901

Artist:

Pablo Picasso
Spanish, active France, 1881-1973

About this artwork

Status

Currently Off View

Department

Modern Art

Artist

Pablo Picasso

Title

Nude with Cats

Place

Spain (Artist's nationality:)

1901

Medium

Oil on cardboard

Inscriptions

Signed. l.r.: "Picasso"

Dimensions

44.3 × 40.8 cm (17 7/16 × 16 1/16 in.)

Credit Line

Amy McCormick Memorial Collection

Reference Number

1942.464

Copyright

© 2018 Estate of Pablo Picasso / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

Extended information about this artwork

Publication History

Galeries Vollard, Exposition de tableaux de F. Iturrino et de P. R. Picasso, exh. cat. (Galeries Vollard, 1901), p. 10, cat. 17, as La Folle aux Chats.

Reinhardt Galleries, Exhibition of Drawings, Paintings and Water Colors by Picasso, Matisse, Derain, Modigliani, Braque, Dufy, Utrillo, Vlaminck, Laurencin, Henri Rousseau, Gauguin, Redon, and Others, exh. cat. (Reinhardt Galleries, 1929), n.pag., cat. 3, as Woman and Cats.

"Reinhardt Galleries Show Paintings Recently Brought from Europe," Art News 28, 3 (October 19, 1929), pp. 4, 5 (ill.), as Woman and Cats.

Rhode Island School of Design, Modern French Art, exh. cat. (Rhode Island School of Design, 1930), n.pag., cat. 28, as Woman with Cat.

Christian Zervos, Pablo Picasso, vol. I, Œuvres de 1895 a 1906 (Cahiers d'Art, 1932), pl. 46, no. 93; n.pag., no. 93, as Nu et chats, Paris, 1901.

Eleanor Jewett, "Summer Show at Institute Is Worth Seeing," Chicago Daily Tribune, July 25, 1935, p. 13, as Woman with Cats.

Arts Club of Chicago, Loan Exhibition of Modern Paintings and Drawings from Private Collections in Chicago, exh. cat. (Arts Club of Chicago, 1938), n.pag., cat. 108, as Woman Playing with Cats.

Alfred H. Barr, Jr., Picasso: Fifty Years of His Art (Museum of Modern Art, 1946), p. 280, as Woman with Cats, 1901.

Joan Merli, Picasso, 2nd ed. (Editorial Poseidon, 1948), n.pag., fig. 55, as Desnudo y gatos, 1901.

Society of the 4 Arts, Spanish Painting, exh. cat. (Society of the 4 Arts, 1952), n.pag., cat. 35, as Woman with Cats.

John Ulbricht, Ten Directions by Ten Artists, exh. cat. (Denver Art Museum, 1954), n.pag., cat. 60, as Woman with Cat, 1901.

Art Institute of Chicago, Paintings in the Art Institute of Chicago: A Catalogue of the Picture Collection (Art Institute of Chicago, 1961), p. 356, as Woman with Cats, 1901.

Joe and Emily Lowe Art Gallery of the University of Miami, Renoir to Picasso 1914, exh. cat. (University of Miami, 1963), pp. 20; 58, cat. 90 (ill.), as Woman with Cats, 1901.

Jean Sutherland Boggs, Picasso and Man, exh. cat. (Art Gallery of Toronto, 1964), p. 29, cat. 8 (ill.), as Nude Woman with Cats/Nu et chats, Paris 1901.

Pierre Daix and Georges Boudaille, Picasso 1900-1906: Catalogue raisonné de l'oeuvre peint (Editions Ides et Calendes, 1966), pp. 44; 154; 156; 166, cat. V. 16 (ill.), as Nu aux chats, Paris, 1901.

Art Institute of Chicago, Picasso in Chicago: Paintings, Drawings, and Prints from Chicago Collections, exh. cat. (Art Institute of Chicago, 1968), pp. 11, cat. 2 (ill.); 112, as Nude with Cats, 1901.

Josep Palau i Fabre, Picasso vivent (1881-1907) (Ediciones Polígrafa, 1980), pp. 239, fig. 612; 249, no. 17 (ill.); 534, cat. 612, as La folla dels gats, Paris, 1901.

A. James Speyer and Courtney Graham Donnell, Twentieth Century European Paintings (University of Chicago Press, 1980), pp. 15; 62, no. 3C9; microfiche 3, no. C9 (ill.), as Woman with Cats, 1901.

Julia May Boddewyn, "Selected Chronology of Exhibitions, Auctions, and Magazine Reproductions, 1910-1957," in Michael FitzGerald, Picasso and American Art, exh. cat. (Whitney Museum of American Art/Yale University Press, 2006), pp. 336, 343, 347.

Asher Ethan Miller, "140. Pablo Picasso, Crazy Woman with Cats," in Cézanne to Picasso: Ambroise Vollard, Patron of the Avant-Garde, exh. cat. ed. Rebecca A. Rabinow (Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2006), p. 384, cat. 140.

Rebecca A. Rabinow, "Exhibitions chez Vollard, 1894-1911," in Cézanne to Picasso: Ambroise Vollard, Patron of the Avant-Garde, exh. cat. ed. Rebecca A. Rabinow (Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2006), p. 314, no. 17, as La Folle aux cats.

Gary Tinterow with research by Asher Ethan Miller, "Vollard and Picasso," in Cézanne to Picasso: Ambroise Vollard, Patron of the Avant-Garde, exh. cat. ed. Rebecca A. Rabinow (Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2006), p. 105, fig. 111.

Richard Kendall, "Chapter 2: Neighbors in Montmartre," in Picasso Looks at Degas, exh. cat. eds. Elizabeth Cowling and Richard Kendall (Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute/Museu Picasso, 2010), pp. 75, fig. 85.

The Picasso Project, Picasso's Paintings, Watercolors, Drawings and Sculpture: A Comprehensive Illustrated Catalogue 1885-1973, vol. 22, Turn of the Century, 1900-1901, Barcelona, Madrid and Paris (Alan Wofsy Fine Arts, 2010), pp. 235, cat. 1901-415 (ill.); 271; 276, as Nu aux chats, 1901.

Marilyn McCully, Picasso in Paris 1900-1907: Eating Fire, exh. cat. (Van Gogh Museum/Museu Picasso/Mercatorfonds, 2011), pp. 50; 54, pl. 25; 239, as Madwoman with Cats, Paris, 1901.

Enrique Mallen, ed., The On-Line Picasso Project, Sam Houston State University, n.d., https://picasso.shsu.edu/index.php?view=ArtworkInfo&OPPID=OPP.01:194 (accessed Oct. 2012), cat. 01:194 (ill.), as Nu aux chats, Paris, Late-May~Late-June/1901.

Stephanie D'Alessandro, Picasso and Chicago: 100 Years, 100 Works (Art Institute of Chicago/Yale University Press, 2013), pp. 19; 28; 33, pl. 2; 102, cat. 5.

Kenneth Brummel, Susan Behrends Frank, Marilyn McCully, Patricia Favero, Eduard Vallès, Sandra Webster-Cook, Picasso: Painting the Blue Period, exh. cat. (New York: DelMonico Books; Toronto: Art Gallery of Ontario; Washington D.C.: The Phillips Collection, 2021), 5, 34, 35, fig.29 (color ill.), 36, 134, 135 (color ill.), 301, 322.

Exhibition History

Paris, Galeries Vollard, Exposition de tableaux de F. Iturrino et de P. R. Picasso, June 25-July 14, 1901, cat. 17, as La Folle aux Chats.

New York, Reinhardt Galleries, Exhibition of Drawings, Paintings and Water Colors by Picasso, Matisse, Derain, Modigliani, Braque, Dufy, Utrillo, Vlaminck, Laurencin, Henri Rousseau, Gauguin, Redon, and Others, Oct. 12-Nov. 9, 1929, cat. 3, as Woman and Cats.

Providence, R.I., Rhode Island School of Design, Modern French Art, Mar. 11-31, 1930, cat. 28, as Woman with Cat.

Chicago, Art Institute, Summer Exhibition: Loan Collection of Old and Modern Masters from Chicago Collections, July 25-Oct. 13, 1935, no. 32, no cat.

Chicago, Arts Club, Loan Exhibition of Modern Paintings and Drawings from Private Collections in Chicago, Nov. 4-25, 1938, cat. 108, as Woman Playing with Cats.

Palm Beach, Fla., Society of the 4 Arts, Spanish Painting, Jan. 11-Feb. 6, 1952, cat. 35, as Woman with Cats.

Denver Art Museum, Ten Directions by Ten Artists, Jan. 7-Feb. 14, 1954, cat. 60, as Woman with Cat, 1901.

Chicago, Art Institute, Gallery of Art Interpretation: Presenting the Art Institute's Picassos, Sept. 12-Dec. 15, 1955, no cat., as Woman with a Cat, 1901.

Coral Gables, Fla., Joe and Emily Lowe Art Gallery of the University of Miami, Renoir to Picasso 1914, Feb. 8-Mar. 10, 1963, cat. 90 (ill.), as Woman with Cats, 1901.

Toronto, Art Gallery, Picasso and Man, Jan. 11-Feb. 16, 1964, cat. 8 (ill.), as Nude Woman with Cats/Nu et chats, Paris 1901; traveled to Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, Feb. 28-Mar. 31, 1964.

Chicago, Art Institute, Picasso in Chicago: Paintings, Drawings, and Prints from Chicago Collections, Feb. 3-Mar. 31, 1968, cat. 2 (ill.), as Nude with Cats, 1901.

New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Cézanne to Picasso: Ambroise Vollard, Patron of the Avant-Garde, Sept. 13, 2006-Jan. 7, 2007, cat. 140, fig. 111, as Crazy Woman with Cats, 1901; traveled to Chicago, Art Institute, Feb. 17-May 13, 2007 and Paris, Musée d'Orsay, June 18-Sept. 16, 2007.

Amsterdam, van Gogh Museum, Picasso in Paris 1900-1907: Eating Fire, Feb. 18-May 29, 2011, pl. 25, as Madwoman with Cats, Paris, 1901; traveled to Barcelona, Museu Picasso, June 30-Oct. 15, 2011 [as Devorar París: Picasso, 1900-1907].

Chicago, Art Institute, Picasso and Chicago, Feb. 20-May 12, 2013, cat. 5 (ill.).

Tornoto, Art Gallery of Ontario, Picasso: Painting the Blue Period, Oct. 9, 2021-Jan. 23, 2022 (extended from Jan. 16th), no. cat. no.; Washington D.C.; The Phillips Collection, Feb. 26-June 12, 2022.

Provenance

Possibly Pere Mañach, Paris, acquired as compensation from the artist, 1901 [New York 2006]. Paul Guillaume (1891-1934), Paris [Zervos 1932; Daix and Boudaille 1966]. Reinhardt Galleries, New York, by 1929 to at least 1930 [New York 1929; Providence, R.I. 1930]. Amy McCormick (Mrs. Robert R. McCormick, formerly Amie de Houle Adams, née Amie de Houle Irwin, May 15, 1874-Aug. 16, 1939) and Colonel Robert Rutherford McCormick (July 30, 1880-Apr. 1, 1955), Chicago, by July 1, 1935; given to the Art Institute, Nov. 12, 1942.

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Nude with Cats | The Art Institute of Chicago

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Continuing a look at art that has featured cats in one way or another, either as the subject of the work, or as an adjunct to it.
They say you're either a 'dog person' or a 'cat person.' I've always fallen into the latter category, so I thought I would do a themed feature for this series of posts, covering a large time span through art history.
The time span of approximately five-hundred artworks in the series (in roughly chronological order) is close to five hundred years - from 1525 (Francesco d'Ubertino Verdito) to 1999 (Louise Bourgeois).
This is part 3 of a 9-part series on Cats in Art. For earlier works see parts 1 and 2 also. Note: I have added portraits and dates of the artists where I was able to find them.

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Art and Artists, Paintings, Painters, Prints, Printmakers, Illustration, Illustrators

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Ontdek het erfgoed van Oost- en West-Vlaanderen! Grasduin doorheen de rijke collecties van musea, kerken en archieven en laat je verrassen.

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We are always open to learning more about our collections and updating the website. Does this record contain inaccurate information or language that you feel we should improve or change? Contact us here.

Please note that this particular artwork might not be on view when you visit. Don't worry-we have plenty of exhibitions for you to explore.

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The Holy Family with St. John the Baptist and a Cat

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Loïs Mailou #Jones at work at her easel in her #Paris studio Circa 1937 
with a little help from #Kitten!!

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Loïs Mailou #Jones at work at her easel in her #Paris studio Circa 1937 
with a little help from #Kitten!! https://t.co/6BKZlKI6L6

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Loïs Mailou #Jones at work at her easel in her #Paris studio Circa 1937
with a little help from #Kitten!! pic.twitter.com/6BKZlKI6L6
— Green and Stone (@greenandstone) October 29, 2016

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Loïs Mailou #Jones at work at her easel in her #Paris studio Circa 1937 
with a little help from #Kitten!! https://t.co/6BKZlKI6L6

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.metadata.attachment_props.original_text
Loïs Mailou #Jones at work at her easel in her #Paris studio Circa 1937 
with a little help from #Kitten!! https://t.co/6BKZlKI6L6

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.metadata.attachment_props.text
Loïs Mailou #Jones at work at her easel in her #Paris studio Circa 1937 
with a little help from #Kitten!!

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PressReader.com - Digital Newspaper & Magazine Subscriptions

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Digital newsstand featuring 7000+ of the world’s most popular newspapers & magazines. Enjoy unlimited reading on up to 5 devices with 7-day free trial.

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In the art world, cats often stood as symbols for Lucifer and the world’s evils. But they did get the occasional break, as Justine Hankins discovers.

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Fabulous felines: why female artists love stroking, painting and spoiling cats

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Suzanne Valadon fed hers caviar. Leonor Fini kept two dozen. And when Tracey Emin lost hers, the missing posters fetched £500 each. The writer of a new book about painters and moggies celebrates furry muses

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1. Startseite

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From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

A woman feeding cats in Rome

A cat lady is a cultural archetype or stock character, most often depicted as a woman, a middle-aged or elderly spinster or widow, who has many cats. The term may be pejorative, or it may be affectionately embraced.

"The old woman and her cats", 1811

Women who have cats have long been associated with the concept of spinsterhood, widowhood or even witchcraft. In more recent decades, the concept of a cat lady has been associated with "romance-challenged (often career-oriented) women".[1] Specifically, it has also been embraced by lesbians.[2]

A cat lady may also be an animal hoarder who keeps large numbers of cats without having the ability to properly house or care for them.[3] They may be ignorant about their situation, or generally unaware of their situation. People who are aware of it are not normally considered cat ladies.

Depending on context, the ordinarily pejorative word "crazy" may be prepended to "cat lady" to indicate either a pejorative[1] or a humorous and affectionate label.[4] Some writers, celebrities, and artists have challenged the gender-based "Crazy Cat Lady" stereotype, and embraced the term to mean an animal lover or rescuer who cares for one or multiple cats, and who is psychologically healthy.[5][6][7]

A 2019 study found no differences between cat owners and non-cat owners for anxiety, depression or experiences in relationships: "We suggest that our findings are, therefore, not consistent with a description of cat-owners as depressed, anxious or as having difficulty with human relationships."[8][9] However, a separate 1983 study found that pet owners tended to score higher than non-owners on social sensitivity and interpersonal trust, though there was no appreciative difference between dog and cat owners.[10]

The documentary Cat Ladies (2009) tells the stories of four women whose lives became dedicated to their cats. The film was directed by Christie Callan-Jones and produced by Chocolate Box Entertainment, originally for TVOntario. It was an official selection at the 2009 Hot Docs Festival, Silverdocs Festival, and San Francisco's DocFest.[11][12]

Naftali Berrill, Ph.D., Director of the New York Center for Neuropsychology and Forensic Behavioral Science, told AOL Health, "These may be people who have a very hard time expressing themselves to other people. They may find the human need for affection is met most easily through a relationship with a pet." This devotion can sometimes signal mental or emotional issues such as depression.[13]

Toxoplasma gondii

Some studies indicate a link between the parasite Toxoplasma gondii, which sexually reproduces exclusively in cats, and numerous psychiatric conditions, including obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) and schizophrenia,[14][15] whereas other studies have showed that T. gondii is not a causative factor in later psychoses.[16][17]

The compulsive hoarding of cats, a symptom of obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD), has long been associated with "crazy cat ladies".[18]

Crazy cat-lady syndrome is a term coined by news organizations to describe scientific findings that link Toxoplasma gondii to several mental disorders and behavioral problems.[19][20]

Cat ladies in popular culture include:

In the Adventures of Superman episode "Olsen's Millions" has Jimmy Olsen receiving a reward for rescuing a cat belonging to Mrs. Peabody (portrayed by Elizabeth Patterson), a Metropolis cat lady.

"Grandma Puggy" (portrayed by Steve Martin) is a widowed grandmother who had cats everywhere and whose hair got on the guests.

In Codename: Kids Next Door, the Crazy Old Cat Lady (voiced by Grey DeLisle) is a half-human half-feline villain who lives with thousands of black and white cats and possesses the power to control them.

In the CSI: Crime Scene Investigation episode "Cats in the Cradle", a cat lady named Ruth Elliot (portrayed by Ellen Geer) is revealed to have been murdered by a young girl named Jessica Trent (portrayed by Courtney Jines) after she and her sister Jackie (portrayed by Jennette McCurdy) wanted a cat which Ruth was unwilling to part with as she considered it one of her children.

Angela Martin is a character on The Office who is a cat lady.

In The Simpsons, the Crazy Cat Lady (voiced by Tress MacNeille) is a recurring character whose real name is Eleanor Abernathy.

In the Disney Channel series The Suite Life on Deck, schoolteacher Emma Tutweiller (Erin Cardillo) has 30 cats in her cabin.

Jefferson (portrayed by Tyler, The Creator) from the Adult Swim TV series Loiter Squad is a cat person.

In Futurama, Hattie McDoogal (voiced by Tress MacNeille) is an old woman who lives alone with her cats and often uses nonsense words and phrases, such as "kerjigger". She briefly serves as the landlady of Fry and Bender, and holds a single share of Planet Express, allowing her the decisive vote for its CEO. MacNeille also voices the Crazy Cat Lady on The Simpsons.

In The Loud House, Rita Loud's aunt Ruth (voiced by Grey DeLisle) is a cat lady.

In Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, the episode "Trent?!" features a musical number where the main character Rebecca and her friends make jokes about being cat ladies after Rebecca cuts off her sexual relationship.[citation needed ]

In a key scene in A Clockwork Orange (1971), the violent sociopath Alex DeLarge murders a paranoid cat lady, for which he is convicted and sentenced to a prison term during which he undergoes behavioral training to become a vastly different person.

In the black comedy The End (1978), Sally Field portrays Burt Reynolds' distracted cat lady girlfriend Mary Ellen, who is too absorbed in her feline pets to react to Burt's news that he is dying.

In a scene in Tim Burton's Batman Returns (1992) after being pushed to her breaking point by Max Schreck, Selina Kyle (portrayed by Michelle Pfeiffer) transforms from a cat lady into Catwoman.

In Catwoman (2004), Patience Phillips (portrayed by Halle Berry) visits a cat lady who tells her about how to embrace her new identity as Catwoman, claiming an Egyptian Mau called Midnight chose to give her cat-like superpowers.

In The Lego Movie (2014), Mrs. Scratchen-Post is a cat lady minifigure who is one of Emmet Brickowski's neighbors.

In Free Guy, the video game Free City has a cat lady named Phyllis (portrayed by Anabel Graetz) where she needs help from the players to find her cats.

In Puss in Boots: The Last Wish, when Puss in Boots is informed that he has one life left, he retreats to live in the house of cat lady Mama Luna.

The Cat Lady (2012) is a psychological horror adventure game developed by Remigiusz Michalski.

In The Sims 3's "Pets" expansion pack, there is a new town called "Appaloosa Plains", and one of the many residents in the town is an elderly woman with lots of cats. The household may be somewhat challenging, as the player has to care for all those cats and fulfill the Sims' own wishes and needs as well. If the cats are not properly cared for and fed, then they may all be taken away.

CatCon,[25] an event described as "The convention with cattitude", hosted seminars featuring actor Ian Somerhalder[26] and actress Mayim Bialik,[27] meet and greets with celebrity cats Lil BUB[28] and Nala,[29] and an adoption village where visitors can meet and adopt a cat or kitten.

National Cat Lady Day is celebrated 19 April, as a way to debunk the myth that cat ladies are dowdy spinsters. "Now it's chic to be a cat lady!" said CatCon creator Susan Michals.[citation needed ]

1. ^ a Kiri Blakeley (15 October 2009), "Crazy Cat Ladies", Forbes b

2. ^ Pasulka, Nicole (23 June 2016). "'Cat Knows How to Ignore Men': A Brief History of Lesbian Cat Ladies". The Cut. New York Media, LLC.

3. ^ Davis, Susan; Flaherty (illus), Jake (2002), "Prosecuting Animal Hoarders is like Herding Cats" (PDF), California Lawyer (September): 26, 28, 29, 67, archived from the original (PDF) on 29 May 2010

4. ^ Mark Ramirez (5 August 2009), "Do you believe in the Crazy Cat Lady?", timesunion.com, archived from the original on 3 December 2013

5. ^ GOSTIN, NICKI (15 September 2015). "Beth Ostrosky Stern: I am a crazy cat lady... and I'm proud of it". nydailynews.com.

6. ^ "It's time to smash the 'crazy cat lady' stereotype". MNN - Mother Nature Network.

7. ^ Williams, David, Meet The Men Proud to Be Crazy Cat Ladies, ABC News, Retrieved November 12, 2015

8. ^ Rob Picheta (21 August 2019). "'Crazy cat ladies' are not a thing, study finds". CNN.

9. ^ Parsons, Christine E.; Lebeau, Richard T.; Kringelbach, Morten L.; Young, Katherine S. (21 August 2019). "Pawsitively sad: pet-owners are more sensitive to negative emotion in animal distress vocalizations". Royal Society Open Science. 6 (8): 181555. Bibcode:2019RSOS....681555P. doi:10.1098/rsos.181555. PMC 6731714. PMID 31598218.

10. Hyde, K. R., Kurdek, L., & Larson, P. C. (1983). Relationships between pet ownership and self-esteem, social sensitivity, and interpersonal trust. Psychological Reports, 52(1), 110. ^ https://doi.org/10.2466/pr0.1983.52.1.110

11. ^ Jeannette Loakman. "Cat Ladies - the Documentary". Archived from the original on 25 February 2015.

12. ^ Cat Ladies at IMDb

13. ^ Huso, Deborah (November 2009). "Some Live Among Hundreds of Cats". AOL Health. Archived from the original on 19 November 2009.

14. ^ "How Your Cat Is Making You Crazy - Kathleen McAuliffe". The Atlantic. 6 February 2012.

15. ^ Webster, Joanne P.; Kaushik, Maya; Bristow, Greg C.; McConkey, Glenn A. (1 January 2013). "Toxoplasma gondii infection, from predation to schizophrenia: can animal behaviour help us understand human behaviour?". The Journal of Experimental Biology. 216 (1): 99-112. doi:10.1242/jeb.074716. ISSN 0022-0949. PMC 3515034. PMID 23225872.

16. ^ Gatewood, Johanzynn (22 February 2017). "Cat ownership not linked to mental health problems, study says". CNN.

17. ^ Solmi, F.; Hayes, J. F.; Lewis, G.; Kirkbride, J. B. (31 July 2017). "Curiosity killed the cat: no evidence of an association between cat ownership and psychotic symptoms at ages 13 and 18 years in a UK general population cohort". Psychological Medicine. 47 (9): 1659-1667. doi:10.1017/S0033291717000125. PMC 5939988. PMID 28222824.

18. ^ D.J. Moran and Jennifer L. Patterson (16 June 2011). "When More Isn't Enough". Psychology Today.

19. ^ "How Your Cat Is Making You Crazy - Kathleen McAuliffe". The Atlantic. 2012-02-06. Archived from the original on 2013-06-03.

20. ^ "'Cat Lady' Conundrum - Rebecca Skloot". The New York Times. 2007-12-09. Archived from the original on 2017-01-18.

21. ^ "Celebrity cat lovers". Archived from the original on 15 August 2011.

22. ^ Sally Quinn on life in Grey Gardens Archived 6 June 2011 at the Wayback Machine, W magazine, 8 April 2009

23. ^ From the CBC archives: Winnipeg's cat lady Bertha Rand

24. ^ "Signature Editions".

25. ^ "CatCon". catconworldwide.com.

26. ^ Kelk, Lindsey. "Ian Somerhalder: "If I didn't have an infant, Nikki & I would open a cat café"".

27. ^ "CatConLA Shows the "Crazy Cat Lady" Stereotype Is Completely Wrong". L.A. Weekly. 8 June 2015.

28. ^ "The Cutest Cats and Humans We Saw at CatCon 2017". L.A. Weekly.

29. ^ "Cute cats, cat wine and cat-print dresses: Inside the cat lover's paradise that is CatCon 2017".

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Toggle the table of contents From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia A cat lady is a cultural archetype or stock character, most often depicted as a woman, a middle-aged or elderly spinster or widow, who has many cats. The term may be pejorative, or it may be affectionately embraced.

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westhoek verbeeldt beeldbank picturae memorix

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Loopt de Kattenstoet hier op zijn einde? De tribune is leeg en het volk stapt al op het plein. Let op het uniform van de toenmalige rijkswacht. We zien het kattenkoppel Minneke Poes en Cieper. Minneke Poes is een schenking van Zwevegem uit 1971 en Cieper (°1955) is een schenking van Montmartre (basculewijk).

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Houten kat op vier wielen dat vooruit kon worden getrokken. De kat is grijs beschilderd met een rode strik en rode wielen.

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Ontdek het erfgoed van Oost- en West-Vlaanderen! Grasduin doorheen de rijke collecties van musea, kerken en archieven en laat je verrassen.

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Ontdek het erfgoed van Oost- en West-Vlaanderen! Grasduin doorheen de rijke collecties van musea, kerken en archieven en laat je verrassen.

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Meisje met kat in de tuin, ca. 1944-1945

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Ontdek het erfgoed van Oost- en West-Vlaanderen! Grasduin doorheen de rijke collecties van musea, kerken en archieven en laat je verrassen.

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Acteur van Theater Van den Berghe als de Gelaarsde Kat

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Ontdek het erfgoed van Oost- en West-Vlaanderen! Grasduin doorheen de rijke collecties van musea, kerken en archieven en laat je verrassen.

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Ontdek het erfgoed van Oost- en West-Vlaanderen! Grasduin doorheen de rijke collecties van musea, kerken en archieven en laat je verrassen.

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Mensen op een kantoor met schrijfmachine en kat

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Grootmoeder en kleindochter met kat, Gent, ca. 1925-1926

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didactisch materiaal, belangstellingspunt: huisdieren - de kat, lager onderwijs

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Dit is een mapje met losse bladzijden rond het belangstellingspunt 'De huisdieren: De kat.'. Elisabeth Van Wettere stelde dit samen tijdens haar opleiding in de jaren 1930 aan de Aangenomen Stedelijke Normaalschool voor Onderwijzeressen. In het mapje zit een Spreekoefening: 'De kat'. Verder nog allerlei illustraties, onder meer tekeningen en een foto.

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Ontdek het erfgoed van Oost- en West-Vlaanderen! Grasduin doorheen de rijke collecties van musea, kerken en archieven en laat je verrassen.

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Op de voorzijde van dit vloeipapier staat reclame voor het koffiemerk Zwarte Kat. Links staat een tekening van een zwarte kat die voor een koffiepot zit. Daarover staat met witte letters de opdruk ‘koffie Zwarte Kat’. Een deel van de letters zijn later door de gebruiker van het vloeipapier ingekleur…

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Ontdek het erfgoed van Oost- en West-Vlaanderen! Grasduin doorheen de rijke collecties van musea, kerken en archieven en laat je verrassen.

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Ontdek het erfgoed van Oost- en West-Vlaanderen! Grasduin doorheen de rijke collecties van musea, kerken en archieven en laat je verrassen.

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The Cheshire Cat: Behind the Grin - Catster

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Learn more about in this article written about the cat experts at Catster! Catster is your go to source for cat news and expert insights.

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Maryam al-Balushi feeds her pets in her home in Oman.

AFP via Getty Images

AFP via Getty Images

AFP via Getty Images

AFP via Getty Images

AFP via Getty Images

AFP via Getty Images

You've gotta be kitten me!

A mother in Oman also cares for 480 cats and 12 dogs at her home.

Maryam al-Balushi, who lives in the aptly named capital of Muscat, saying she bonds with the kitties better than her human counterparts.

"I find that animals, especially cats and dogs, are more faithful than humans," al-Balushi told Agence France-Presse as cats dove off a nearby scratching post.

But she wasn't always crazy for kitties.

In 2008, her son bought a Persian cat which, at first, Balushi shunned.

"Like many mothers, I refused to look after it as I did not like animals and my son did not pay it much attention or look after its hygiene," the retired civil servant, 51, said.

But two years later, she found herself caring for another cat, sparking her fur-ever love for felines.

"I found myself totally immersed. I took care of her entirely, feeding her, bathing her and spending a lot of time with her," she said.

Balushi quickly became known in her neighborhood as a newfound animal lover, with departing expatriates abandoning their pets at her doorstep.

She bought her own home in 2014 - following complaints about her growing collection - and was able to take on more animals. She spends about $7,800 caring for the creatures, 17 of which are blind, and her house is full of cages.

Balushi said her pets have helped ward off depression. She also identifies with the strays, having once been an orphan herself.

"I was in a dark place and they were the lifeline that rescued me," she said.

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Pussy galore! Meet the woman who has 500 cats

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You've gotta be kitten me! A mother in Oman also cares for 480 cats and 12 dogs at her home. Maryam al-Balushi, who lives in the aptly named capital of Muscat, saying she bonds with the kitti...

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by Mark Murton

Original Air Date: November 22, 1989

Director: Alan Wareing
This review contains a couple of Kitty Carnage Warnings!
Cat Out Of The Bag Alert! This review contains multiple spoilers for this story arc.

Synopsis: The Doctor (Sylvester McCoy) takes Ace (Sophie Aldred) back to her home town of Peveril where the disappearance of her friends and the presence of a mysterious black cat leads him to the Planet of the Cheetah People and a showdown with his nemesis, The Master (Anthony Ainley).

Clockwork Kitties and Featured Felines: The first sighting of one of the black cats, or Kitlings as they're called in the story, finds it sitting on wall watching a man (Damon Jeffrey) wash his car in a quiet London street. (Note: Most of the Kitlings are portrayed by animatronic cats except when then are coming or going from a scene or need to perform other moving action. We'll trust that you'll be able to tell the difference.) The man is pursued by an unseen assailant. As he falls to the ground he his transported away in a flash of white light.

Next a Kitling is sitting on top of a car before jumping down and running off as the TARDIS materialises.

Nearby, hearing a disturbance in her garden, an elderly woman opens the window to shoo off the culprits and a black cat (also a Kitling?) runs away through the grass.

Another Kitling watches some boys play with a rugby ball on nearby Horsenden Hill (here we learn The Master is able to see through the Kitling's eyes).

As the boys run off, they pass The Doctor and Ace and the Doctor notices the Kitling running off into the grass.

In search of Ace's friends, the Doctor and Ace make their way to the local Youth Club where they encounter Patterson (Julian Holloway), an ex-army man and Youth Club leader. As Ace and Patterson talk, the Doctor spies a Kitling sitting outside the glass doors of the Club . . .

. . . which proceeds to hiss at him.

As the Doctor and Ace leave, the Kitling outside the glass runs off along the wall of the building.

The Kitling watches from the grass as they walk off.

Formulating a plan, the Doctor makes his way to a local shop for cat food. As he is making his choice a Kitling suddenly leaps out from behind the tins (complete with poor cat screech).

Kitty Carnage Warning! After the doctor leaves, the shop owners go into the back of the store looking for their pet cat, only to discover "something's eaten Tiger!" It's interesting to note that two versions of this scene were shot, one utilising offal from a local abattoir but that one was ultimately deemed too gruesome!

Soon after, a Kitling is sitting on a wall watching as a man jogs by. "He'll do very well," intones the Master.

Cat Burglar (Scene - and food - Stealer): The Doctor lays his trap of cat food on the pavement and waits behind a fence in a nearby garden. The food duly attracts one of the local cats but not the Kitling the Doctor is hoping for. This was an unscripted moment featuring a random local cat which they decided to leave in.

Meanwhile Ace is back on the hill, sitting on a roundabout, when she spots a Kitling on the grass nearby (eating the food placed there to keep it from running off!).

She approaches and picks it, then carries it to the swings. In a close-up, the Kitling hisses . . .

. . . before jumping out of her arms and running off.

This leads to an encounter with one of the horseback Cheetah People and Ace is whisked away to the Cheetah People's planet. The first thing she sees on her arrival is three Kitlings near the body of the car washer seen at the start of the story.

Back on Earth, the Doctor's trap has finally attracted one of the Kitlings.

He approaches stealthily but just as he is about to grab it he finds himself yanked back by Patterson, allowing the Kitling to run off.

Disabling Patterson, the Doctor resumes his pursuit and tracks the Kitling to some dustbins in an alley, but again it makes its escape.

The Doctor soon finds the Kitling sitting on another wall.

So he climbs up on the wall and crawls towards it . . .

Again Paterson interrupts allowing the Kitling to jump away, but as it does so it disappears in a flash of white light taking the Doctor and Patterson with it to the Cheetah People's planet.

On the Cheetah People's planet Ace watches two Kitlings feeding on another carcass.

Elsewhere on the planet, the Doctor and Patterson see a Kitling stretched out on the ground near some bones.

Back on earth, a milkman (Jack Talbot) on his rounds pauses to pet a Kitling on a wall.

Meanwhile, a Kitling is trotting by outside the Master's tent on the Cheetah People's planet.

Later the Master is standing on a hill holding a Kitling . . .

. . . which he sends to "seek them out".

The Kitling observes a fight taking place between a band of Cheetah People and the Doctor, Ace, Patterson and some of the humans who have been transported to the planet.

After the fight ends the Doctor encounters the Master who is standing on wall with a Kitling at his feet.

The Master explains that the former human inhabitants of the planet evolved into the Cheetah People who then send the Kitlings to other worlds to bring back prey. As he is talking, another angle shows the Kitling framed by a red sun.

Through the Kitling the Master selects another victim which then enables him to return to earth.

Kitty Carnage Warning! The Doctor and Ace follow and the trail leads to house where they find a dead cat and a distraught child (Adele Silva) who tells them "The bad cat killed it." This one is even less convincing than the dead "Tiger," disparagingly described on the DVD commentary track as looking more like a pyjama case!

Cat Cattle Call: They continue to track the Master and find a couple of (non-black) stray cats by some bin bags.

The final cat appearance in the story comes when the Master is seen outside the Youth Club holding a Kitling.

Behind the Scenes:

The original title for this three-part story was the cleverly punning Cat-Flap.

The inclusion of the poster for the musical Cats, which can be seen on the notice board at the Youth Club, was Sylvester McCoy's idea.

BBC policy is not to promote real brands on the channel and so fake tins of FURRY feline food were produced for the episode.

Despite this, tins of genuine brands WHISKAS and FELIX are clearly on view on the shelf in the shop, too. And when the Doctor is laying the food on the pavement there's also a tub of another popular brand, SHEBA, in shot!

Much has been said about the clearly fake animatronic cat seen in the story which was produced by FX Designer Malcolm James. James was given the task after he'd built an impressive animatronic dog for another BBC series. But the technology of the time and the show's notoriously small budget meant he was always fighting a losing battle, although the main problem was the fact that the general size of a cat's head meant it was impossible to make a puppet that a human hand could fit inside to animate the features. So it all had to be done with clunky electronics.

Furthermore, the cat "puppet", which the cast and crew quickly christened "Sooty" (not only a popular name for a black cat but also the name of a famous UK children's puppet!), was supposed to have only been used sparingly and fleetingly. But due to the recalcitrance of the three cat actors hired to play the Kitlings it had to be used far more than anticipated.

A crew member positions "Sooty" for a scene dropped from the broadcast version.

A further complication was that Sophie Aldred (Ace) was allergic to cats and so kept her distance as much as possible.

The reluctance of the hired cats to perform lead one enterprising local schoolboy to bring his black cat along and offer its services. This cat appears in the scene where the doctor climbs up on the wall after the Kitling. The boy was rewarded with £5 which lead to many other local children bringing their cats along in the hope of obtaining similar riches!

The hired cats also objected to the gel that was applied to their fur (which can best be seen on the cat eating the food laid by the doctor) in an attempt to make them look like feral alien cats which they attempted to lick off as soon as it was applied.

The trivia track on the DVD states that in the scene on Horsenden Hill: "It was intended at one point to have a Kitling watching the Doctor and Ace from the undergrowth . . . but the idea was dropped." Yet in this screen grab from the scene there does seem to be a Kitling in the grass behind Ace's right shoulder, though no cat / Kitling features in the broadcast scene.

Amazingly, the original animatronic cats have shown up online. One was restored while another sold in an online auction for 850.00 GBP.

There was also a paperback novelization of the story published.

Final Mewsings: The next stage of human evolution is to become more cat.
Relevant Links:

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Black cats called Kitlings (often played by animatronic substitutes) threaten the Doctor and Ace in this episode reviewed in detail by Mark Murton.

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Universal Pictures
Starring: Alec Baldwin, Michael Madsen, Jennifer Tilly
Directed by: Roger Donaldson

Cat Out of the Bag Alert! This review contains some spoilers for this film!

Synopsis: A remake of the 1972 Steve McQueen film. Doc McCoy (Alec Baldwin) and his wife Carol (Kim Bassinger) find themselves on the run when a large robbery goes awry.

Cat Burglar (Scene Stealer): One can debate whether or not elements of this film in any way improved upon the original film but in one instance there was a definite improvement, and that is the casting of an adorable tabby kitten to play the part of Kitty. The kitten has such a screen presence that his (or her) part was expanded upon that of the original.

Kitty first appears when an injured Rudy (Michael Madsen) takes hostage a veterinarian named Harold Carvey (James Stephens) and his wife Fran (Jennifer Tilly). The kitten remains on Rudy's chest during their first interactions.

The kitten is a real scene-stealer and even gets so comfortable that it falls asleep on Rudy's chest near the end of the scene.

This time Kitty is also clearly visible in the scene in the car in which a food fight breaks out. Wisely the kitten jumps into the back of the station wagon when the chicken and fries start to fly.

The most notable scene in which the kitten is given more screen time is when Rudy and Fran are in a hotel room lying on a bed. Fran is feeding Kitty some food. They keep calling for Harold to come out of the bathroom.

When Harold doesn't respond, Rudy picks up the kitten and carries it to the bathroom door.

Going into the bathroom, Rudy finds that Harold has hung himself. He walks past Harold, placing Kitty on the dead man's chest to cling in midair.

The kitten eventually makes its way to the floor as Rudy calls to Fran that it is time for them to leave.

Kitty is only seen briefly after this, poking out of the cardboard box Rudy carries into the hotel in El Paso.

Cat Cattle Call: There are also numerous cats in cages in the Carvey's veterinary office. The white cat with the calico markings on her head is a bit of scene stealer, too!

Final Mewsings: Cat actors know how to expand upon their limited roles.
Relevant Links:

To discuss this film and other cats in movies and on television, join us on
Facebook and Twitter.

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Universal Pictures Starring: Alec Baldwin, Michael Madsen, Jennifer Tilly Directed by: Roger Donaldson Cat Out of the Bag Alert! This review contains some spoilers for this film! Synopsis: A remake of the 1972 Steve McQueen film. Doc McCoy (Alec Baldwin) and his wife Carol (Kim Bassinger) find themselves on the run when a large robbery goes awry.

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CAT OF THE DAY 084: BREAKFAST AT TIFFANY’S

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CAT OF THE DAY 084: BREAKFAST AT TIFFANY’S (1961) Audrey Hepburn as Holly Golightly may get the lion’s share of the attention, but it’s her cat that is the true star of Breakfast …

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A cat is a cat. Except when it’s not. Here are just some of the narrative functions of CATS ON FILM. Please note: a cat can – and frequently does – belong to more than one categor…

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Cats were popular medieval pets, although they often held a moreambiguous role since they were kept as mousers as well as pets in manyhouseholds. However, when it is possible to glean from the source that the catwas being kept for companionship, I would classify it as a pet38

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Cats were popular medieval pets, although they often held a moreambiguous role since they were kept as mousers as well as pets in manyhouseholds. However, when it is possible to glean from the source that the catwas being kept for companionship, I would classify it as a pet38

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Title: The Artist's Sons, Pierre and Balthus as Adolescents

Artist: Baladine Klossowski (German, 1886-1969)

Medium: Watercolor, gouache, and charcoal on paper

Dimensions: 8 3/4 x 10 5/8 in. (22.2 x 27 cm)

Classification: Drawings

Credit Line: Purchase, Anna-Maria and Stephen Kellen Foundation Gift, 2009

Accession Number: 2009.442

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Baladine Klossowski | The Artist's Sons, Pierre and Balthus as Adolescents | The Metropolitan Museum of Art

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Title: The Artist's Sons, Pierre and Balthus as Adolescents Artist: Baladine Klossowski (German, 1886-1969) Medium: Watercolor, gouache, and charcoal on paper Dimensions: 8 3/4 x 10 5/8 in. (22.2 x 27 cm) Classification: Drawings Credit Line: Purchase, Anna-Maria and Stephen Kellen Foundation Gift, 2009 Accession Number: 2009.442

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Meehelpen? Ga naar etymologieWiki

poes zn. 'kat ( Felis catus)'
Vnnl. puys 'kat' in De Puys heeft luy ghemaut 'de poes heeft luid gemiauwd' [1617; iWNT puis III], hondtjes, puysjes 'hondjes, poesjes' [1635; iWNT], poes 'kat' [1683; iWNT]; nnl. poes bij uitbreiding ook 'aantrekkelijke vrouw' [1851; iWNT], poesje 'vagina' [1974; Koenen].
Wrsch. een klanknabootsend woord, dat het blazen van de kat weergeeft, of, waarschijnlijker, een lokroep voor de huiskat. Er bestaan diverse vergelijkbare woorden in de Germaanse en andere talen. Voor de Germaanse en andere Noordwest-Europese woorden geldt dat ze onderling verwant of ontleend kunnen zijn; maar deels zullen deze woorden onafhankelijk van elkaar zijn ontstaan. Poes is oorspr. de Oost-Nederlandse vorm, vergelijk de Nederduitse woorden hieronder. De klankwettige vorm *puis, met -ui- als in → < pgm. *mūs, was in de 17 e eeuw nog de gewone vorm, maar is daarna toch verouderd.
Nnd. puus, puus-katte, puus-man; nfri. poes; vne. pus [1530; OED3] ( ne. puss, pussycat); nde. pus, nno. pus.
Roemeens pisică 'kat'; Litouws puižė̃ 'id.'; Iers en Gaelisch pus 'id.'; Albanees pisë 'lokroep voor de kat'; Singalees pūs, Tamil pusai. Bovendien is het woord in diverse overzeese talen terechtgekomen door toedoen van zeevarende Hollanders (Van der Sijs 2006a).
Lit.: Philippa 2004

poes* [vrouwelijke kat] {1683} een woord dat vermoedelijk het blazen van de kat weergeeft en in ettelijke talen voorkomt: nederduits pus, engels puss, deens pus, iers, gaelisch pus, albaans piso, roemeens pisica, tamil pusai. Het woord poes heeft in het nederlands een oude oe; normaal ware te verwachten dat de oe via uu tot ui zou worden, maar dat is niet gebeurd doordat het om een huiselijk woord gaat; vgl. evenwel puisje vangen ( vgl. puis). De uitdrukking niet voor de poes zijn wil eig. zeggen, dat een vogel of een muis aan de dood ontsnapt.

poes 1 znw. v. 'vleinaam voor de kat', maar ook dial. 'etensrest, kliek' en zelfs 'slijk, modder'. Als naam van de kat vinden wij het woord ook in nnd. pūs, ne. puss, nde. nzw. dial. pus, nnoorw. dial. puse. Men heeft gedacht aan een lokwoord voor de kat, maar dat is met het oog op de andere betekenissen niet waarschijnlijk; daar het ook aanduidt 'poezele, jonge vrouw' zal men moeten uitgaan van een begrip 'rond, mollig lichaam' en dan behoort het verder tot oe. pusa, posa, on. pūss 'tas, buidel', mhd. sich pfūsen 'zich opblazen' en gr. bustós 'volgestopt' (IEW 101). - Zie ook poen 2 en puit.

poes I (kat), nog niet bij Kil. Met oe < û = oudnnl. puis "poes" (nog dial.: Goer. püs, en in een puisje vangen "belletje trekken"). = ndd. pûs, fri. poes, eng. puss, de. en dial. zw. pus, noorw. dial. pus( e) "poes". Onomatop. roepwoord; bij 't ontstaan kunnen afll. van germ. pū̆s- "zwellen, blazen" (zie poezel) meegewerkt hebben. NBrab. komt pies "poes" voor.

poeskens, zn. mv.: berkenkatjes. Zo genoemd naar de zachtige, wollige bloeiwijze, zacht als een kattenvacht. Een poes is nl. een kat.

poes s.nw. ( vulgêr)
Vulva.
Uit gewestelike Ndl. poes (1599). 'n Opvallende verskil tussen Ndl. poes en Afr. poes, waarop reeds deur Mansvelt (1884) gewys is, is die gebruik van die Ndl. woord as die alg. benaming vir 'n kat, terwyl dit in hierdie bet. in Afr. heeltemal onbekend is. Daarteenoor is poes 'vulva' in Afr., hoewel vulgêr, 'n alg. term, terwyl poes in Ndl. 'alleen in die gemeene taal voor 't vrouwelijk schaamdeel gebruikt (wordt)' (Mansvelt 1884, ook aangehaal in WNT). In Van Dale (1999) word dit geëtiketteer as 'informeel', en dat dit meestal in die verkleinw. voorkom. Volgens Franken (1953a: 26) kom poes 'vulva' by Kiliaan (1599) voor, terwyl die vroegste sitaat in WNT uit 1642 dateer. Franken wys daarop dat dit veral in die Saksiese streke van Ndl. voorkom en in die aangrensende Nederduitse gebiede, en hy skryf die verbreidheid in Afr. toe aan die 'oorweënde aantal Nederduitse koloniste veral in die tweede helfte van die 18de eeu'. Volgens WNT is poes 'vulva' 'wellicht identiek of zeer nauw verwant met poes', d.i. 'kat'. In die bet. 'kat' dateer die woord uit 1561 (Van der Sijs 2001).
Eng. pussy, Oos-Fries pusse, gewestelike Sweeds pusu, Yslands puss.

poes: " cunnus"; Frank (TE 25-6) toon aan dat in OFri., Ned. en dial. aan weerskante v. d. grens tussen Noord- en Suid-Nederland enersyds en Duitsland andersyds poes en wv. daarvan in bet. " cunnus " gebr. word, v. ook Mans (KHI) en Kloe (HGA 139).

poes 'vrouwelijke kat' -> Fries poes 'vrouwelijke kat'; Engels puss 'eigennaam voor kat; fictieve eigennaam voor haas en tijger; koosnaam voor vrouw; (vulgair) vrouwelijk schaamdeel'; Deens pus, pusekat, kattepus 'vrouwelijke kat'; Noors pus, pusekatt 'vrouwelijke kat' (uit Nederlands of Nederduits); Indonesisch pus-pus! 'tussenwerpsel: kom, poes!'; Ambons-Maleis pus 'roepnaam van een kat'; Jakartaans-Maleis pus, pus-pus 'roepnaam voor een kat'; Javaans dialect pus 'roepnaam voor kat'; Kupang-Maleis pus 'vrouwelijke kat'; Madoerees pus 'roepnaam van een kat'; Menadonees pus 'roepnaam van een kat'; Singalees pūs 'vrouwelijke kat'; Munsee-Delaware pó:ši:š 'vrouwelijke kat'; Unami-Delaware pó:šï:s 'vrouwelijke kat'; Loup puspus 'vrouwelijke kat'; Mahican póschees, poschesh 'vrouwelijke kat'; Mohegan-Pequot bopoose 'katachtige'; Mohawk takús 'vrouwelijke kat'; Negerhollands poeschi, pusi, pushi, pussie 'vrouwelijke kat' (uit Nederlands of Engels); Berbice-Nederlands pusi, pusiki 'vrouwelijke kat; vrouwelijk schaamdeel'; Papiaments pushi (ouder: poesji) 'vrouwelijke kat; vrouwelijk schaamdeel (ouder ook: feeks)'; Sranantongo puspusi (ouder: poesi) 'vrouwelijke kat'; Arowaks pusu 'kat' <via Sranantongo>; Karaïbisch pusipusi 'vrouwelijke kat' <via Sranantongo>.

poes, roepwoord ook poesje, poessie, poespoes, is overgenomen als: Loup puspus; Mahican póschees, poschesh; Mohawk takús, met het voorvoegsel ta-; Mohegan-Pequot bopoose; Munsee Delaware póshish; Unami Delaware póshis.

poes. Toen Nederlanders begin zeventiende eeuw naar de oostkust van Amerika trokken, kwamen zij in contact met de indianen die er al woonden, met name langs de rivieren Hudson, Mohawk, Delaware en Housatinic in de huidige staten New York, New Jersey, Delaware en Connecticut. Omstreeks 1600 waren de Nederlanders aan de kust belangrijke handelaren, met wie de indianen graag producten uitwisselden. Voor het drijven van handel was enige elementaire kennis van de taal van de ander nodig, en de indianen leerden dan ook diverse Nederlandse woorden, die zij als leenwoorden opnamen in hun taal. De taalkundige Peter Bakker heeft een inventarisatie gemaakt van de Nederlandse leenwoorden in Noord-Amerikaanse indianentalen. Overigens bestaan alleen het Munsee Delaware en het Mohawk nog; de andere indianentalen waarmee de Nederlanders contact hadden, zijn inmiddels verdwenen.

Interessant is dat alle indianentalen waarvan bekend is dat zij Nederlandse leenwoorden hebben opgenomen, het Nederlandse woord poes kennen: in het zogenoemde Loup kende men puspus, wat duidelijk de Nederlandse roepnaam poespoes is. In het Mahican kende men póschees, poscheh, teruggaand op 'poesje', in het Munsee Delaware was pó:šiš bekend (uitgesproken met een lange /o/), en in het Mohawk ten slotte kende men takús, waarin de p-, die in die taal onbekend is, vervangen is door k; het element ta- is een voorvoegsel. Het is begrijpelijk dat de indianen het woord poes voor een bij hen tot dan toe onbekend dier hebben overgenomen, maar wat mij verraste was dat de Nederlanders kennelijk onmiddellijk hun poezen meenamen op de lange zeetochten naar een nieuw continent, ongetwijfeld als muizenvangers.

Het woord poes is relatief jong in het Nederlands: het wordt op schrift pas sinds 1561 vermeld, hoewel het waarschijnlijk wat ouder zal zijn. Het woord is klanknabootsend gevormd, naast de vorm puus, puis; daarbij is het dier ofwel genoemd naar de lokroep van de mens ( psss, psss), ofwel naar het geluid dat het dier produceert als het blaast. Het Nederlandse woord is verwant met het Middelnederduitse pus. Kennelijk hadden de bewoners van de Lage Landen al eerder hun katten en de liefkozende benaming hiervoor meegenomen naar andere landen, want het Engelse puss gaat waarschijnlijk terug op het Nederlandse poes. In het Engels komt puss pas sinds de zestiende eeuw voor, juist in de periode dat er veel Nederlandse en Vlaamse handelslieden naar Engeland trokken, met medeneming van allerlei nieuwe technieken (waardoor het Engels veel Nederlandse leenwoorden overnam, zie zwengel). Omstreeks 1530 is sprake van 'pus my cat', en in 1565 van 'Pusse pusse, where art thou'. In het Engels wordt puss vooral gebruikt als roepnaam, niet als algemene naam voor de kat. Omdat het woord in het Engels eerder wordt vermeld dan in het Nederlands, vermoed ik dat het woord in het Nederlands ouder moet zijn dan 1561. Anderzijds zijn niet alle bronnen er zeker van dat het Engelse woord ontleend is aan het Nederlands. In het Noors en Deens is pus (ook in kattepus en pussekat) geleend uit het Middelnederduits of het Nederlands.

De Nederlanders namen hun poezen natuurlijk niet alleen mee naar Noord-Amerika, maar ook naar de andere nieuwe continenten waarheen zij in de zeventiende eeuw trokken. Ook hier werd het Nederlandse woord geleend: in het Sranantongo noemt men een poes puspusi (of is dit uit het Engels, dus indirect geleend?); ook mispoes is hier geleend, als mawpusi! In het Papiaments van de Nederlandse Antillen kent men pushi. Tot slot is het Nederlandse poes in Azië bekend geworden: in het Indonesisch is pus of pus-pus geleend als lokroep voor een kat. In het Singalees kent men pūs; dit kan ook ontleend zijn aan het Engels, omdat de Engelsen vanaf 1796 de heerschappij over Sri Lanka van de Nederlanders overnamen - het woord is dan indirect aan het Nederlands ontleend.

Mede dankzij de Nederlanders hebben katten - en hun loknaam - dus vele landen en werelddelen veroverd.

1099. Zijn kat (of poes) sturen (of zenden),

d.w.z. niet verschijnen; niet komen, waar men verwacht wordt; Prov. Comm. 699: Tseynt menich sinen hont, daer hi selve niet comen en wil; mlat.: Mittimus interdum quo nolumus ire catellum (Wander II, 856); Valentijn, O.I. II, 2, 128 a; Tuinman II, 201: Hy stiert zyn kat, dat zegt men van yemand, die ergens zelf niet komt, noch daar na omziet, zo dat men zich van hem niet meer bedienen kan, dan of hy zyn kat had gezonden; Harreb. I, 387: Hij stuurt zijn kat, men zegt dit van iemand, wien men te vergeefs wacht, en past het byzonderlijk toe op den persoon, die de voldoening eener achterstallige rekening lang laat uitblijven; Van Eijk, 44; Ndl. Wdb. VII, 1793; De Tijd, 29 April 1914, p. 5 k. 1: Zij wenschten de aanwezigheid van Zijne Excellentie ( Theobald von Bethmann Hollweg) in de begrootingscommissie. Maar Theo zond zijn poes in den vorm van een brief aan den voorzitter; De Bo, 498: Hij zendt er zijne katte naar toe, hij wacht zich wel van daar te gaan; hd. er schickt seine Katze, bekümmert sich selbst um die Sache nicht (Wander II, 1204).(Aanv.) Volgens Ndl. Wdb. VII, 1418 ook: Zijn kap sturen of zenden.

1849. Voor de poes (of de kat) zijn,

d.w.z. verloren zijn, eig. gezegd van een muis of een vogel, die een prooi voor de poes is, dus onherroepelijk verloren is; vgl. De Telegraaf, 16 Dec. 1914 (avondbl.), p. 1 k. 4: Men moet daar (in de loopgraven) 's nachts afgelost worden, anders is men voor de poes. Men riskeert daar zijn huid, maar 't is voor 't vaderland. Vgl. voor het garen zijn (jachtterm) en het Zuidnederlandsche hij is een vogel voor de kat (= verloren; Welters, 95 en vgl. Schuermans, 226 a; Waasch Idiot. 329 b; De Bo, 498 a en aldaar 201 b: voor de busse (kuiltje bij 't knikkeren) zijn, ongeneeslijk zijn, moeten sterven). Niet voor (of van) de poes zijn, d.i. geen kleinigheid zijn, niet eenvoudig, gemakkelijk zijn, niet mis zijn; syn. niet van de kat zijn (verouderd); vgl. Falkl. V, 206: Avonturen die lang niet voor de poes zijn; bl. 218: Deze vraag is lang niet voor de poes; Nw. School, III, 329: Maar 't (examen) is niet voor de poes. Je moet dóórzetten; Antw. Idiot. 984; Loquela, 398. Van personen: niet van geringe waarde zijn; niet gemakkelijk zijn, zijn man staan (vgl. V. Janus, 294; 296; Molema, 330 a; Nw. School, III, 293: Nee, dan is die Pool toch niet voor de poes); eig. gezegd van spijzen, die niet aan de kat gegeven worden, dus: geen spijs zijn, die men weggooit of aan de kat geeft; vgl. het fr. c'est de la bouillie pour les chats; hd. das ist für die Katze, dat is iets van weinig waarde, van weinig beteekenis; nd. vör de Hun'n gahn (kamen), te gronde gaan (Reuter, 49 b). Synoniem was: hij is voor de plank; - voor de pieren; Harreb. II, 187 b; 180 b; Ndl. Wdb. VII, 1792; 1793; Van Eijk II, 43; Nal. 42; zie n o. 741.

Zoek dit woord op in het WNT, MNW, VMNW, ONW.

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Meehelpen? Ga naar etymologieWiki poes zn. 'kat ( Felis catus)' Vnnl. puys 'kat' in De Puys heeft luy ghemaut 'de poes heeft luid gemiauwd' [1617; iWNT puis III], hondtjes, puysjes 'hondjes, poesjes' [1635; iWNT], poes 'kat' [1683; iWNT]; nnl. poes bij uitbreiding ook 'aantrekkelijke vrouw' [1851; iWNT], poesje 'vagina' [1974; Koenen].

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( Publiek domein )

(Klinkt wat vriendelijker dan kat.)

klein huisdier dat miauwt en spint en dat gehouden wordt als gezelschapsdier of voor het vangen van muizen en ratten; huiskat; kat

Ook als roepnaam. Zowel in toepassing op dieren van het vrouwelijk als van het mannelijk geslacht.

Semagram (extra betekenisinformatie)

Een poes...

is een zoogdier; is een dier

Algemene voorbeelden

De poezen worden in het vizier gehouden als zouden ze verwaarloosd en drager van parasieten zijn! Bedenkelijke argumenten. De relatief kleine "tuinpoezen" die zich schuil houden bij dierenvrienden zijn kerngezond, goed gevoed en vaak handtam. De ware toedracht is dat niet iedereen het kan stellen met poezen in zijn buurt.

http://home.tiscali.be/norbert.thieren/pers.htm,

Zo'n dag waarop je je verslaapt, over de poes struikelt, daarbij het pak melk uit je handen laat vallen, je fiets met een platte band aantreft en dan, maar snel de auto genomen, niet op kunt schieten omdat er een schip door moet en het hele verkeer dus vast zit.

http://www.supervisionair.nl/Troost.htm

+ Meer voorbeelden

Woordfamilie

Als deel van een afleiding

Als rechterlid in samenstellingen en samenkoppelingen

Als linkerlid in samenstellingen en samenkoppelingen

vrouwelijke kat; vrouwtjeskat; wijfjeskat; kattin

Semagram (extra betekenisinformatie)

Een poes...

is een kat; is een zoogdier; is een dier

[Geslacht] is een vrouwtje

Algemene voorbeelden

Voor de paring volgt de kater de poes en snuffelt aan haar flanken.

http://www.natuurbeleving.be/zoogdieren/Wilde_Kat_Felis-sylvestris.html

Na drie weken kun je zien of het een kater of een poes is.

http://users.pandora.be/ggjv/Honden/kInfo.htm

Soms is het een lust om te zien hoe vindingrijk een kater kan zijn bij een moeilijk te benaderen poes.

http://www.felikat.org/felikat.htm

+ Meer voorbeelden

Semagram (extra betekenisinformatie)

Een poes...

is een vrouw

Algemene voorbeelden

Dries Smits speelt Solness meesterlijk [...]. Zijn jonge boekhoudster heeft hij onder de duim, een jong poesje dat op haar teentjes tegen hem op leunt en zijn schouder kopjes geeft. De Hilde van Katrien de Becker is ook een aanhalige poes, maar van een andere klasse. Sensueel, grillig, met brandende blikken en listige klauwen.

+ Meer voorbeelden

Woordfamilie

Als rechterlid in samenstellingen en samenkoppelingen

(vulgair)

vrouwelijk geslachtsdeel; vagina

Semagram (extra betekenisinformatie)

Een poes...

is een lichaamsdeel; is een zaak

Algemene voorbeelden

Ze slaat vervolgens haar benen om zijn hals en drukt haar bedekte poes op zijn mond om na een tijdje ook het slipje uit te trekken zodat ze een directe genitale geeft.

http://www.erotica4all.com/Gids/index.html

+ Meer voorbeelden

(neologisme)

designerdrug die de synthetische stof 3-MMC, 3-methylmethcathinone, bevat; 3-MMC

Semagram (extra betekenisinformatie)

Poes...

is een designerdrug; is een drug; is een stof

[Eigenschap of hoedanigheid algemeen] is verslavend

[Gevolg of resultaat] zou een blij gevoel, meer energie en meer zin in seks geven

[Legitimiteit] is verboden

Algemene voorbeelden

Niemand zong een lied, wel toverde iemand een zakje 3-MMC tevoorschijn - een ongezellige naam, al schijnt het spul ook wel 'poes' genoemd te worden. Vier mannen rondom een koffietafel, meer liggend dan zittend, zich lavend aan de poes.

https://www.volkskrant.nl/cultuur-media/poes-de-afgeleide-van-miauw-miauw~bb7d5235/?utm_campaign=shared_earned&utm_medium=social&utm_source=copylink,

+ Meer voorbeelden

Etymologie

Aard herkomst

inheems woord

Vroegste datering

2020

Benoemingsmotief

Waarschijnlijk refereert dit woord aan miauw miauw, de bijnaam van designerdrug 4-MMC.

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(Klinkt wat vriendelijker dan kat.) klein huisdier dat miauwt en spint en dat gehouden wordt als gezelschapsdier of voor het vangen van muizen en ratten; huiskat; kat Ook als roepnaam. Zowel in toepassing op dieren van het vrouwelijk als van het mannelijk geslacht. Een poes...

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U hebt waarschijnlijk gehoord van de Noah-syndroom, een aandoening die steeds meer mensen treft. Het is een zeer ernstig probleem, niet alleen voor hen maar ook voor de harige, aangezien het gebrek aan hygiëne zowel voor sommigen als voor anderen tot ziekten kan leiden.

Maar waar bestaat deze aandoening uit? namelijk, Hoe herken je het? Als je ook wilt weten wat je kunt doen om te helpen, dan vertel ik je dat hieronder.

Noah-syndroom is een psychische stoornis die bestaat uit de opeenstapeling van dieren op een ongecontroleerde manier, of het nu katten, honden, vogels, ... wat dan ook. De getroffen persoon kan waardering voor hen voelen, maar omdat ze ziek zijn, realiseren ze zich niet de schade - vooral emotioneel - die het veroorzaakt door ze op te sluiten in een ruimte die steeds kleiner wordt en zich in een zeer precaire situatie bevindt.

Wat zijn de symptomen?

Symptomen van deze aandoening zijn de volgende:

Dwangmatige en overmatige ophoping van grote aantallen dieren.

Onvermogen om dieren goed te houden.

Ontkenning van het probleem.

Harige dieren en mensen lijden.

Hoe kan ik je helpen?

Als u een geval van het syndroom van Noah kent, moet u dit doen neem contact op met een Protective of Animals (niet kennel). Zij zou samen met de gemeenteraad de leiding hebben over het onderzoek van de zaak, zou proberen tot overeenstemming te komen met de getroffen persoon zodat de dieren op de meest vreedzame manier kunnen worden afgevoerd en zou, indien nodig, de betreffende zaak indienen. klacht.

Los animales geen zoon cosas. Ze mogen nooit als objecten worden behandeld. Als we er een mee naar huis nemen, moeten we samen met hem verantwoordelijk zijn, ervoor zorgen dat hij alles heeft wat hij nodig heeft (water, voedsel, genegenheid, een schone en veilige plek om te wonen), en veterinaire zorg. Hun geluk zal ervan afhangen ... en in zekere zin ook het onze.

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Het syndroom van Noach is een psychische stoornis die steeds meer mensen en ook veel dieren treft. Lees wat het is en wat u kunt doen om ze te helpen.

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poes(je) - de betekenis volgens Woordenboek Van Eufemismen

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Voor mensen die niet houden van de technische term vagina* is dit wellicht het meest gebruikte substituut voor een bekend (maar door velen verafschuwd) drieletterwoord. Deze betekenis werd al opgetekend in de zeventiende eeuw (‘Pans Fluytje, ofte heydens banket’. 1675). Uit dezelfde periode stamt de…

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From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Recanati Annunciation

Artist
Lorenzo Lotto

Year

c. 1534

Medium

Oil on canvas

Dimensions

166 cm × 114 cm (65 in × 45 in)

Location

Museo Civico Villa Colloredo Mels, Recanati

The Recanati Annunciation (Italian: Annunciazione di Recanati) is an oil-on-canvas painting by the Italian Renaissance painter Lorenzo Lotto, executed around 1534 and housed in the Civic Museum of Villa Colloredo Mels, Recanati, Italy.

The work may date to the artist's sojourn in Venice, from where it would be shipped to the Marche around 1527. Otherwise, it may date to a later period when Looto moved there to execute other works. Today it is generally assigned to a date after the Crucifixion of Monte San Giusto (1533-1534).

The commissioners were perhaps the Brotherhood of the Recanati Traders, who moved to a new seat in 1533 and would therefore use the work for the latter's decoration.

The canvas is mentioned for the first time in 1601.

The painting depicts a bedroom where an Annunciation takes place following an unusual scheme: the angel is on the right, holding a white lily, and has got in from a loggia which opens to a garden (the hortus conclusus). His right arm is pointing at the Father God who has shown in a cloud and is blessing Mary from inside the loggia. Mary is portrayed in the left foreground, looking at the spectator and raising her hands in a surprised gesture.

Stylistically, Lotto used expressive gestures and somewhat under-size heads. The number of carefully painted details show the influence of Northern European paintings: they include the baldachin bed, the small window with sealed glasses, the shelf with a small still life, the hatstand, the stool with an hourglass, the prie-dieu and a scared cat which is fleeing. The baldachin was inspired by a relief by Andrea Sansovino at Loreto.

Detail of the shelf and window

The Madonna who faces the viewer and the angel who tries to draw her attention are taken instead from Titian works. According to Italian art historian Giulio Carlo Argan:

Titian's Virgin is a praying queen who nobly turns to receive the divine messenger in her palace. Lotto's Virgin is a good girl; the message takes her by surprise while praying in her room; she cannot even turn her head; her gesture, almost a defensive one, is that of somebody who is struck at the back by a sudden call

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From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Recanati Annunciation Artist Lorenzo Lotto Year c. 1534 Medium Oil on canvas Dimensions 166 cm × 114 cm (65 in × 45 in) Location Museo Civico Villa Colloredo Mels, Recanati The Recanati Annunciation (Italian: Annunciazione di Recanati) is an oil-on-canvas painting by the Italian Renaissance painter Lorenzo Lotto, executed around 1534 and housed in the Civic Museum of Villa Colloredo Mels, Recanati, Italy.

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How and why did "pussy" become the slang word for vagina?

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Answer (1 of 11): > Pussy as a slang term for the female pudenda is thought to derive ultimately from Low German puse "vulva" or Old Norse puss "pocket, pouch". It didn't arise in English with a sexual meaning until the 19th century, but prior to that it had been used to refer to women in gener...

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Is uw relatie echt zo speciaal dat u Valentijn moet vieren? Nu alles dicht is, hebt u misschien al beseft waarom het leven zoveel saaier is: omdat u veel minder singles ontmoet die het leven divers en spannend houden.

Tekst

Illustratie

donderdag 11 februari 2021 om 3.25 uur

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Het is pas fijn als er (ook) singles zijn

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Is uw relatie echt zo speciaal dat u Valentijn moet vieren? Nu alles dicht is, hebt u misschien al beseft waarom het leven zoveel saaier is: omdat u veel minder singles ontmoet die het leven divers en spannend houden.

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Animal hoarding of rabbits

Animal hoarding, sometimes called Noah syndrome, is keeping a higher-than-usual number of animals as domestic pets without the ability to properly house or care for them, while at the same time denying this inability. Compulsive hoarding can be characterized as a symptom of a mental disorder rather than deliberate cruelty towards animals. Hoarders are deeply attached to their pets and find it extremely difficult to let the pets go. They typically cannot comprehend that they are harming their pets by failing to provide them with proper care. Hoarders tend to believe that they provide the right amount of care for them. The American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals provides a "Hoarding Prevention Team", which works with hoarders to help them attain a manageable and healthy number of pets.

An animal hoarder keeps an unusually large number of pets for their premises, and fails to care for them properly. A hoarder is distinguished from an animal breeder, who would have numerous animals as the central component of their business; this distinction can be problematic, however, as some hoarders are former breeders who have ceased selling and caring for their animals, while others will claim to be breeders as a psychological defense mechanism, or in hopes of forestalling intervention. Gary Patronek, director of the Center for Animals and Public Policy at Tufts University, defines hoarding as the "pathological human behavior that involves a compulsive need to obtain and control animals, coupled with a failure to recognize their suffering". According to another study, the distinguishing feature is that a hoarder "fails to provide the animals with adequate food, water, sanitation, and veterinary care, and... is in denial about this inability to provide adequate care." Along with other compulsive hoarding behaviors, it is linked in the DSM-IV to obsessive compulsive disorder and obsessive compulsive personality disorder. The DSM-5 includes a diagnosis of hoarding disorder.

Alternatively, animal hoarding could be related to addiction, dementia, or even focal delusion.

The number of animals involved alone is not a determinative factor in identifying hoarding. Instead, the issue is the owner's inability to provide care for the animals and the owner's refusal to acknowledge that both the animals and the household are deteriorating. For instance, in one animal hoarding case, 11 cats were seized from a trailer. The deputy police officer testified that the trailer smelled so strongly of feline waste that despite experiencing severe congestion at the time of the investigation, she had a hard time staying in there for more than a few minutes. The deputy further testified that she could not step anywhere in the trailer without stepping on fresh, old, or smeared fecal matter, and that even the stove and sink were filled with bio-hazardous waste. Yet, a Canadian woman, who died leaving 100 properly fed, spayed/neutered, vaccinated, and groomed cats, was not considered an animal hoarder because her animals were properly cared for.

The Hoarding of Animals Research Consortium (HARC) identifies the following characteristics as common to all hoarders:

Accumulation of numerous animals, which has overwhelmed that person's ability to provide even minimal standards of nutrition, sanitation, and veterinary care;

Failure to acknowledge the deteriorating condition of the animals (including disease, starvation, and even death) and the household environment (severe overcrowding, very unsanitary conditions); and−

Failure to recognize the negative effect of the collection on their own health and well-being, and on that of other household members.

Compulsive hoarding can be characterized as a symptom of mental disorder rather than deliberate cruelty towards animals. Hoarders are deeply attached to their pets and find it extremely difficult to let the pets go. They typically cannot comprehend that they are harming their pets by failing to provide them with proper care. Hoarders tend to believe that they provide the right amount of care for their pets. The American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals provides a "Hoarding Prevention Team", which works with hoarders to help them attain a manageable and healthy number of pets.

In the United States, animal hoarders can be prosecuted under state animal cruelty laws for failing to provide a certain level of care to their animals. The following provides some examples of the standards currently in effect. In Alaska, the cruelty statute defines a minimum standard of care for animals that includes (1) food and water sufficient to maintain each animal in good health; (2) an environment compatible with protecting and maintaining the good health and safety of the animal; and (3) reasonable medical care at times and to the extent available and necessary to maintain the animal in good health. Likewise, in Colorado, a person commits cruelty to animals if he or she knowingly, recklessly, or with criminal negligence deprives an animal of necessary sustenance, neglects any animal, allows the animal to be housed in a manner that results in chronic or repeated serious physical harm, or fails to provide the animal with proper food, drink, or protection from the weather consistent with the species, breed, and type of animal involved. In Colorado's animal cruelty statute, "neglect" means failure to provide food, water, protection from the elements, or other care generally considered to be normal, usual, and accepted for an animal's health and well-being consistent with the species, breed, and type of animal.

Since failure to provide proper care for animals is an act of omission or neglect rather than an affirmative act, the failure to care for an animal is considered a misdemeanor offense in most states. For instance, in Alaska, if an animal owner fails to provide the aforementioned standards of care, the state has prima facie evidence of a failure to care for an animal. If the prosecutor can prove the owner's failure to care for an animal was done with criminal negligence and the failure to care for the animal caused its death or severe physical pain or prolonged suffering, then the owner may be guilty of a Class A misdemeanor. In Colorado, failure to provide an animal with the proper standard of care is a Class 1 misdemeanor. In Virginia, each owner must provide for each of his companion animals: adequate feed; adequate water; adequate shelter that is properly cleaned; adequate space in the primary enclosure for the particular type of animal depending upon its age, size, species, and weight; adequate exercise; adequate care, treatment, and transportation; and veterinary care when needed to prevent suffering or disease transmission. Violation of these standards is a Class 4 misdemeanor. A second or subsequent violation may result in a higher grade misdemeanor. Likewise, under Virginia's animal cruelty statute, any person who deprives any animal of necessary food, drink, shelter or emergency veterinary treatment is guilty of a Class 1 misdemeanor.

Penalties for failing to provide proper care or medical care to animals under state animal cruelty statutes can include fines, animal forfeiture, the cost of care for the seized animals, and jail time. Since animal hoarding is sometimes associated with mental illness, a situation may arise when an alleged animal neglecter is found incompetent to stand trial due to a mental disability and thus remains the rightful owner of the animals he or she has neglected (i.e. the animals were not forfeited). In the Matter of a Protective Order for Jean Marie Primrose, for example, after a tip from a veterinarian, police confiscated 11 cats from a woman's feces and urine covered, rat infested trailer in Oregon; the cats were then placed in the care of a rescue organization. The woman was charged with criminal second degree animal neglect. After being diagnosed with a mild case of mental retardation, however, the judge found the woman unable to aid and assist in her own defense. The second degree charge was thereby dismissed. Since the woman was not convicted of a crime, her rights to the 11 cats were not forfeited. Yet, from the time the cats were seized to the time of the dismissal, the rescue organization accrued more than $30,000 in cat care fees. The rescue organization therefore placed a lien on the cats, meaning the woman could not get her cats back until she paid off her debt. After the dismissal of the case, however, the woman never made any attempt to contact the rescue organization about returning her cats. The fate of the cats therefore remained in limbo. The rescue organization could have either kept the cats and kept accruing care fees because not being rightful owners, they could not place the cats into homes, or forgiven the debt and returned the cats to the woman. Since the rescue organization felt the woman was incapable of adequately caring for the cats and since the organization did not want to invest more money that would likely remain uncompensated, the organization filed a petition for a limited protective order as a fiduciary for the care and placement of the cats. The probate court ruled against organization, but the appeals court overturned the lower court's order and held that the probate court did indeed have authority to enter a limited protective order under ORS 125.650 as a "fiduciary necessary to implement a protective order." The probate court, then, granted the limited protective order and the organization was allowed to place the cats into new homes. This case was considered a landmark by the Animal Legal Defense Fund.

In addition to jail time, animal forfeiture, and fines, a state, such as California, may allow courts to order psychological counseling at the court's discretion or may require the defendant to undergo anger management, such as the case in Colorado. Prosecutors may also be able to request bans on future pet ownership or request limits on the number of animals a convicted hoarder may keep. For instance, in ALDF v. Conyers, over one hundred dogs and nine birds were confiscated from the defendants' home. About 70 of those dogs had severe oral disease, disintegrating jaws, and scarred corneas. One dog, who was caged in the basement, could barely stand up and kept soiling himself, which lead to his skin being scalded from the urine and feces. An officer also noticed the dog's tongue hanging out of his mouth, but later learned that his tongue was sticking out because his jaw had disintegrated. The Animal Legal Defense Fund moved for a permanent injunction to enjoin defendants from owning animals from the date of the court's final judgment to 10 years.

Although animal hoarders can be prosecuted under state animal cruelty laws, many scholars maintain that basic animal cruelty laws are inefficient in prosecuting hoarders. As Stephan Otto, director of legislative affairs for the Animal Legal Defense Fund explains: "Only a handful of states allow felony charges for the worst kinds of animal neglect . . . They also need stronger laws that take into account when multiple numbers of animals were in involved in a case." HARC's research on 56 animal hoarding cases illustrates Otto's point:

In sixteen cases, individuals were charged with one count of animal cruelty for their entire group of animals rather than one count of cruelty for each animal involved. In several other cases, hoarders were only charged with one count of failure to license or provide a rabies vaccination when there were dozens of animals involved.

Only two states have laws regarding the hoarding of animals: Illinois and Hawaii.

Hawaii, on the other hand, specifically outlaws animal hoarding. In 2008, animal hoarding became a misdemeanor offense. Hawaii's Penal Code now provides:

(1) A person commits the offense of animal hoarding if the person intentionally, knowingly, or recklessly;

(a) Possesses more than fifteen dogs, cats, or a combination of dogs and cats;

(b) Fails to provide necessary sustenance for each dog or cat; and

(c) Fails to correct the conditions under which the dogs or cats are living, where conditions injurious to the dogs', cats', or owner's health and well-being result from the person's failure to provide necessary sustenance.

(2) Animal hoarding is a misdemeanor.

Hawaii's law specifically criminalizes hoarding, while depriving an animal of necessary sustenance can also constitute a separate offense of animal cruelty. The hoarding law differs from ordinances that limit the number of pets a person can have because it only prohibits keeping more than fifteen dogs and cats if the owner fails to provide necessary care for the animals and that failure causes injury to the animals or the owner.

An important aspect of the law is that prosecutors may be able to charge hoarders with one count of animal hoarding that covers all of the animals. When hoarding is prosecuted under state animal cruelty laws, prosecutors must charge hoarders with multiple counts of animal cruelty-one for each animal on the premises. By creating the offense of "hoarding", Hawaii's law seems to allow prosecutors to charge hoarders with one count of animal hoarding that covers every animal the person has hoarded, easing the prosecution's burden of providing documentation of each individual animal's injury. This will also decrease the cumbersome burden multiple charges can place on courts. Prosecutors will also be able to bring separate charges of animal cruelty for individual animals whose injuries are easiest to document.

Hawaii's statute does not mandate psychological counseling for convicted hoarders or restrict future animal ownership.

Anti-hoarding legislation has been proposed, but not passed, in several other states.

While a state may not have an animal hoarding specific statute, its municipalities may have animal hoarding specific ordinances. For instance, the city of Alto, Georgia's ordinance specifically prohibits hoarders. The ordinance defines a hoarder as a person or entity that:

(a) Collects animals and fails to provide them with humane/adequate care;

(b) Collects dead animals that are not properly disposed of as required by this article; or

(c) Collects, houses, or harbors animals in filthy, unsanitary conditions that constitute a health hazard to the animals being kept, and/or to the animals or residents of adjacent property.

If a person is convicted of being a hoarder under this ordinance, that person may not own, possess, or have on his premises in Alto any animal for one year from the date of conviction. The person may also be punished by a fine not to exceed $1,000.00 and/or by imprisonment in the common jail of the town not to exceed six months.

The Animal Law Coalition has a Model Animal Hoarding Specific Ordinance (available under "Resources" at its website) that can be adapted by various communities.

Some pet limitation ordinances, however, provide exemptions to the pet restrictions. For instance, in Great Falls, Montana, a person who owns or harbors any more than the number of dogs and cats permitted by the ordinance for a period of more than thirty (30) days must obtain a multiple animal permit. Additionally, a breeder can be exempt from the ordinance by obtaining a Multiple Animal Hobby Breeder Permit. These exemptions are, no doubt, provided to lessen the opposition and problems of pet limitation ordinances.

Prosecuting animal hoarding cases is "complex, time consuming, and costly; as made evident in the Primrose case, the high cost of caring for animals rescued from hoarders, who often must be cared for at the rescuer's expense, is a huge disincentive for prosecuting these types of cases. Especially since the animal rescue operation may never be compensated for its expenses. Further, as Dr. Gary Patronek explains, "[p]rosecutors don't really have the tools they need to fully go after these cases . . . and they often don't have the support of other agencies that they need." This lack of communication among various governmental agencies, such as code enforcement, the health department, and animal control, impedes the detection of animal hoarders and thereby the prosecution of hoarders. Further, since animal hoarding cases do not get widespread attention, they do not garner community support, which is also a disincentive for prosecution. Additionally, officials may opt to forgo charges or enter into lenient plea-bargains in exchange for custody of the animals because they fear that the animals will languish in shelters while prosecution is pending. These attempts to "strike a balance between helping both the hoarder and the animals involved" are generally ineffective because of high recidivism rates among hoarders. When hoarders are prosecuted, there is broad inconsistency in the number and severity of charges brought. These inconsistencies may arise because some prosecutors and judges discourage multiple charges, believing that they "clog" the system. The difficulty of proving each charge also accounts for these inconsistencies. In order to bring one charge of cruelty for each animal, prosecutors and animal agencies must provide proof of cruelty to each animal, matching each animal with its count number. Adversely, charging the hoarder with only one count reduces the burdens on the system, the prosecutors, and the animal agencies, but undermines the severity of the charges. Laws that create a separate offense of animal hoarding may solve this problem by allowing one count of hoarding to be brought in every case that encompasses the hoarding aspect of the charge rather than focusing on each individual count of cruelty.

In the United Kingdom, an RSPCA spokeswoman said the society was campaigning for legislation to monitor people who take in large numbers of animals.

The health issues in animal hoarding encompass a variety of concerns related to both individual and public health. Animal hoarding is the cause of many severe health risks that threaten the hoarded animals, individuals living in hoarding residences, and surrounding neighbors.

Due to the harmful effects on the health of the animals involved, animal hoarding is considered a form of cruelty to animals. Hoarders often fail to provide basic care for their animals, thus resulting in disease and often death. The primary animal health issues involved are malnourishment and problems related to overcrowding and neglect. Consequences of hoarding are long-lasting and continue to affect the animals even after they have been rescued and provided with better care.

Many of these health problems continue to cause suffering even after the animals are rescued. Strained animal shelters or humane societies, forced to prioritize when dealing with numerous rescued animals, may be unable to provide immediate treatment to many animals. Furthermore, many of the rescued animals, due to health or behavioral problems, may not be suitable for adoption. Euthanasia, even in cases where the animals are not beyond rehabilitation, is often the only option for rescued animals. The effects of hoarding on the health and socialization of the animals involved are severe and lasting, taking heavy tolls on both their physical and psychological well-being.

Animal hoarding also causes many health problems for the people involved. Hoarders, by definition, fail to correct the deteriorating sanitary conditions of their living spaces, and this gives rise to several health risks for those living in and around hoarding residences. Animal hoarding is at the root of a string of human health problems including poor sanitation, fire hazards, zoonotic diseases, envenomation, and neglect of oneself and one's dependents.

Poor sanitation practices, a general characteristic of hoarding households, pose health risks to both animals and humans. In typical hoarding residences, animal waste is found coating interior surfaces, including beds, countertops, and cupboards. In one case, floors and other surfaces were found to be covered in a six-inch layer of feces and garbage.

In addition to severe odors which may pose a nuisance to neighbors, animal waste poses serious health risks through both the spread of parasites and the presence of noxious ammonia levels. OSHA, the United States agency regulating air quality standards in work-related environments, has identified an ammonia level of 300 parts per million as life-threatening for humans; in many hoarding cases the atmospheric ammonia level in the housing space approaches this number, requiring the use of protective clothing and breathing apparati during inspections or interventions. In an extreme case, the ammonia level in the hoarder's house was 152 parts per million even after ventilation.

Hoarders are frequently found to collect large numbers of inanimate objects in addition to animals, giving rise to clutter as well. Hoarded objects can include newspapers, trash, clothing, and food; the clutter inhibits normal movement around the house, hampering household maintenance and sanitary food preparation, heightening the risk of accidents, and contributing to the overall level of squalor. A lack of functioning toilets, sinks, electricity, or proper heating (often due to hoarders not paying bills, though poor maintenance may also be a cause) further exacerbates the problem. Fire hazards comprise yet another health issue tied to poor sanitation; the clutter found in many hoarding households prevents workable fire escape plans and serves as possible fuel when located close to heat sources. The risk is amplified when hoarders, due to inoperative heating systems, seek alternate heating methods such as fireplaces, stoves, or kerosene heaters.

Another human health issue caused by animal hoarding is the risk of zoonotic diseases. Defined as "human diseases acquired from or transmitted to any other vertebrate animal", zoonotic diseases can often be lethal and in all cases constitute a serious public health concern. Examples of well-known zoonotic diseases include bubonic plague, influenza, and rabies. Common domesticated animals constitute a large portion of animals carrying zoonoses, and as a result, humans involved in animal hoarding situations are at particular risk of contracting disease. Zoonoses that may arise in hoarding situations-through vectors such as dog, cat, or rat bites-include rabies, salmonellosis, catscratch fever, hookworm, and ringworm. One zoonosis of special concern is toxoplasmosis, which can be transmitted to humans through cat feces or badly-prepared meat, and is known to cause severe birth defects or stillbirth in the case of infected pregnant women. The risk of zoonotic diseases is amplified by the possibility of community epidemics.

Self-neglect and child/elder abuse

The problems of self-neglect and elder and child abuse are also health problems associated with animal hoarding. Self-neglect can be defined as "the inability to provide for oneself the goods or services to meet basic needs", and has been shown to be an "independent risk factor for death". While self-neglect is a condition generally associated with the elderly, animal hoarders of any age can and do experience it. This is demonstrated by the fact that hoarders' lifestyles often match the degenerate sanitary conditions that surround them. Child and elder abuse arise when dependents are living with the hoarder. According to one study, dependents lived with hoarders in over half of the cases. As with his or her animals, the hoarder often fails to provide adequate care for dependents both young and old, who suffer from a lack of basic necessities as well as the health problems caused by unsanitary conditions. In one case, two children of a couple hoarding 58 cats and other animals were forced to repeat kindergarten and first grade because of excessive absence due to respiratory infections. Self-neglect and neglect of dependents make up a major human health concern of animal hoarding.

Evidence suggests that there is "a strong mental health component" in animal hoarding, though it has not been firmly linked to any specific psychological disorder. Models that have been projected to explain animal hoarding include delusional disorder, attachment disorder, obsessive-compulsive disorder, zoophilia, dementia, and addiction. Direct evidence for most is lacking, however.

Another model that has been suggested to explain animal hoarding is attachment disorder, which is primarily caused by poor parent-child relationships during childhood. It is characterized by an inability to form "close relationships [with other humans] in adulthood". As a result, those with attachment disorder may turn to animals for companionship. Interviews with animal hoarders have revealed that hoarders have often experienced domestic trauma in childhood, which is the basis of the evidence for this model.

Obsessive-compulsive disorder

Perhaps the strongest psychological model put forward to explain animal hoarding is obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). An overwhelming sense of responsibility for something is characteristic of people with OCD, who then take unrealistic measures to fulfill their perceived duty. Animal hoarders often feel a strong sense of responsibility to take care of and protect animals, and their solution-that of acquiring as many animals as they possibly can-is unrealistic. Further, the hoarding of inanimate objects, practiced by a majority of animal hoarders, is a fairly common occurrence in people with OCD. These connections between animal hoarding and obsessive-compulsive disorder suggest that OCD may be a useful model in explaining animal hoarding behavior. However, this theory has also been refuted by some; Dr. Akimitsu Yokoyama theorizes that animal hoarding could be explained using Asperger syndrome.

On the Animal Planet TV series Confessions: Animal Hoarding, friends and family of animal hoarders intervene to offer them support to make a change in the form of psychological help and veterinary care or placement for their pets.

In the animated series The Simpsons, animal hoarding is represented by the semi-recurring character Crazy Cat Lady Eleanor Abernathy. She is a mentally ill old woman covered by cats, who is often seen speaking in gibberish and throwing cats at people.

In Ann Bannon's novel Journey to a Woman, Vega's mother and grandfather own an excessive number of cats and could be considered to be animal hoarders.

In webtoon Lookism, an arc featuring an animal hoarder who nabbed both Daniel Park and Johan Song's dogs.

1. ^ Saldarriaga-Cantillo, Alejandra, and Juan Carlos Rivas Nieto (2015). "Noah syndrome: a variant of Diogenes syndrome accompanied by animal hoarding practices". Journal of Elder Abuse & Neglect. 27 (3): 270-275. doi:10.1080/08946566.2014.978518. PMID 25397353. S2CID 3828174.

2. Davis, Susan; Flaherty (illus), Jake (2002). "Prosecuting Animal Hoarders is like Herding Cats" (PDF). California Lawyer (September): 26, 28, 29, 67. Archived from the original (PDF) on July 3, 2004.

3. Hoarding of Animals Research Consortium (HARC) (2004). "Commonly asked questions about hoarding". Archived from the original on 2010-01-12.

4. Patronek, Gary J. (2006). "Animal hoarding: its roots and recognition". Veterinary Medicine. 101 (8): 520-530.

5. Berry, Colin; Patronek, Gary; Lockwood, Randall (2005). "Long-Term Outcomes in Animal Hoarding Cases". Animal Law. 11: 167-194.

6. ^ American Psychiatric Association (2013). Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (Fifth ed.). Arlington, VA: American Psychiatric Publishing. ISBN 978-0-89042-555-8.

7. ^ Avery, Lisa (2011-04-15). "From Helping to Hoarding to Hurting: When the Acts of "Good Samaritans" Become Felony Animal Cruelty". Valparaiso University Law Review. 39 (4): 815-858.

8. ^ "Once Neglected, Now Protected - ALDF Wins Historic Ruling for Abused Animals". Animal Legal Defense Fund. Animal Legal Defense Fund. 2007. Archived from the original on 2014-04-13.

9. ^ ASPCA (2010). "Frequently Asked Questions About Animal Hoarding". ASPCA. ASPCA. Archived from the original on 2014-04-16.

10. Patronek, G J (1999). "Hoarding of animals: an under-recognized public health problem in a difficult-to-study population". Public Health Reports. 114 (1): 81-87. doi:10.1093/phr/114.1.81. PMC . PMID 9925176.

11. ^ "The Hoarding of Animals Research Consortium (HARC)". Tufts University. Archived from the original on 2011-01-17.

12. Patronek, Gary (18 November 2007). "Large scale removal and rescue of animals" (PDF). Hoarding of Animals Research Consortium. Tufts University. Archived from the original (PDF) on October 13, 2006.

13. ^ Arluke, Arnie; et al. (May 2002). "Health Implications of Animal Hoarding". Health & Social Work. 27 (2): 125-136. doi:10.1093/hsw/27.2.125. PMID 12079167.

14. "animal disease." Encyclopædia Britannica. 2007. Encyclopædia Britannica Online. 8 Dec. 2007 <http://search.eb.com/eb/article-63292>.

15. ^ Last, Ed. John M. (2007). "zoonosis". A Dictionary of Public Health: Oxford Reference Online. Oxford University Press.

16. ^ John M. Last "animals as carriers of disease" The Oxford Companion to Medicine. Stephen Lock, John M. Last, and George Dunea. Oxford University Press 2001. Oxford Reference Online. Oxford University Press. Brigham Young University (BYU). 8 December 2007.

17. ^ "toxoplasmosis" A Dictionary of Public Health. Ed. John M. Last, Oxford University Press, 2007. Oxford Reference Online. Brigham Young University. 8 December 2007.

18. ^ Dyer, Carmel Bitondo; Goodwin, James S.; Pickens-Pace, Sabrina; Burnett, Jason; Kelly, P. Adam (September 2007). "Self-Neglect Among the Elderly: A Model Based on More Than 500 Patients Seen by a Geriatric Medicine Team". American Journal of Public Health. 97 (9): 1671-1676. doi:10.2105/AJPH.2006.097113. PMC . PMID 17666694.

19. Frost, Randy (2000). "People Who Hoard Animals". Psychiatric Times. 17 (4). Archived from the original on 2010-05-03.

20. ^ Philips, Allie (2011). Defending the Defenseless: A Guide to Protecting and Advocating for Pets. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. p. 125. ISBN 9781442202146.

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Animal hoarding, sometimes called Noah syndrome, is keeping a higher-than-usual number of animals as domestic pets without the ability to properly house or care for them, while at the same time denying this inability. Compulsive hoarding can be characterized as a symptom of a mental disorder rather than deliberate cruelty towards animals.

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Courtney Kistler is a 28-year-old single gal who lives in New York City. She's sociable, outgoing and attractive. But that hasn't stopped Kistler's mother from worrying that her daughter, a freelance marketer, will never catch a husband--because she owns three cats.

"[My parents] think it's a little weird," she says of her multiple cat ownership. In fact, Kistler's mother has been known to ask her cat-loving daughter: "What if you want to bring a guy home? What would he think?"

While Kistler's last boyfriend wasn't too fond of her felines (he refused to pet them), the two men she dated before that (who both grew up with cats) were fine with them. Still, her mother worries. Says Kistler: "She's bought into the stereotype, and what am I going to do? I can't deny it exists."

Laura Adamson, a 23-year-old graduate student in Gainesville, Fla. recently learned some of the negative responses that can befall a single woman with a cat. After she adopted a kitten that had been tied up in a pillowcase tossed to the side of the road, Adamson began telling people her new pet's miracle story. Instead of being awed, some of her listeners called her a "crazy cat lady." She adds: "Usually they follow it up with 'Do you take the cat for walks?' or 'Does it eat at the table with you?' "

Friends started sending her cat video clips, and her boyfriend bought her a slew of cat lady paraphernalia for Christmas, including a card customized with a picture of her and Eleanor Abernathy, known as the Crazy Cat Lady from The Simpsons. "I don't know why it's not like this with women who get a dog," she laments.

Women who own cats have become synonymous with old spinsters or, more recently, with romance-challenged (often career-oriented) women who can't find a man. In the recent comedy The Ugly Truth, beautiful Katherine Heigl's hopeless love life is instantly conveyed by her cat ownership.

Even cat loving women can fall prey to this way of thinking. Betsy Saul, owner of one cat and cofounder of animal adoption site Petfinder.com, says that when she visited a married couple who had 17 rescued cats, she found herself wondering of the husband, "How can he put up with this?"

Et tu, Betsy?

"They were living with their cats very much equally, and yet I had this thought," she says. "Clearly, there's a bit of misogyny and a societal sex gender bias going on."

Cats have overtaken dogs as the most popular pet in the U.S. (93 million feline pets versus 77 million canines). And while a recent sampling by the American Pet Products Association, a trade group, found that of 463 cat owners, 80% were women, certainly plenty of men harbor felines.

Yet cats and women have a strong historical and cultural connection--much of which has resulted in negative stereotyping, especially of single female cat owners. The stereotype has become so pervasive that there is a Canadian documentary, ("When cats mean 'meow' to you than people") following four of them. There's a blog, Crazy Cat Ladies Society, dedicated to subverting the stereotype, and there's the elderly The Simpsons character who emits incoherent gibberish and lives in a decrepit house with numerous cats.

Experts can't seem to quite pinpoint when exactly "crazy," "old," and "cat lady," were strung together to create one specific stereotype, but why it happened isn't too difficult to figure out.

On the whole, women live longer than men. That means there are going to be many more elderly women at any given time than elderly men. Elderly women who are widowed, and whose children have moved out, may find themselves with time on their hands--and a hungry stray cat to feed (and since unaltered cats will quickly breed, one stray soon becomes a whole yard full).

Cats, being small and self-sufficient, don't need much in the way of care, which would be perfect for an older woman. Not to mention that some of these women may have, indeed, been off their rockers. Says psychologist and animal welfare advocate Pia Salk: "Dementia is a function of getting older; an older woman caring for one or more cats may in fact appear 'crazy.' "

One study shows that cat "hoarders" are overwhelmingly female, but that again may be the function of the relative ease of keeping a cat versus a dog. Hoarders, who have a psychological condition that makes them overcollect animals to the point where they can no longer care for them, often start out as "rescuers," people who merely want to help strays. Women are probably more drawn to stray cats and kittens than stray dogs, simply because they are smaller and easier to round up.

But the link between women and cats doesn't stop there. Women, just like cats, are often branded as sneaky, slinky, mysterious, hard to read and impossible-to-please. Women are often shunted into either the Madonna or whore category, just as cats have been either revered as deities (ancient Egypt) or vilified as demons (Salem witch trials, 1692).

Etymologically, there are some interesting feminine (and often negative) connotations to words like kitten (a sexy girl), cougar (an older woman who likes young men), catty (being spiteful and malicious--and generally used to describe women) and, of course, pussy, a word that is interchangeable for a cat or a part of a woman's anatomy. Catwoman is a famous DC Comics villainess.

What's behind all of this?

Historically, there is a strong connection between women and cats. While cats, which were domesticated 10,000 years ago, are excellent natural hunters, they are also savvy enough to hang around where they will get fed. A mutually beneficial relationship developed.

"Cats were ratters or mousers inside of the home, and women traditionally worked inside of the home," says animal expert Andrea Arden, who appears on Animal Planet's Cats 101. Dogs, on the other hand, were given specific tasks like hunting, guarding or pulling wagons, which required them to be outside with men.

"Cats are smart," says pet care expert Charlotte Reed. "They know where the food is, and it's women who are usually feeding and caring for everyone." Dogs, on the other hand, became "man's best friend."

Then there's the personality of a cat. Because cats, unlike dogs, are not pack animals, they can come across as independent and aloof. Dogs, which are bred to be in a constantly juvenile state, tend to act like slobbering children enthralled to the leader of the pack.

Some experts believe that these different personality traits are what generally draw women to cats and men to dogs. "Canines offer a more consistent reflection of one's status as alpha," says Salk. "They deliver doting behavior without their male human having to ask for it and are seen as less of a threat [than cats]."

Cats, while social and playful, are more like the Simon Cowells of the animal world--getting their approval isn't so easy. So why are women more okay with these less obvious displays of affection? "It may be that women are more intrinsically gratified by nurturing others, and therefore do not need an external reflection to reinforce caretaking behavior," theorizes Salk.

Still, plenty of men, and even some of the most macho ones in history, like Ernest Hemingway and Sir Winston Churchill, have been fanatic cat lovers. And as men work more hours and have less time to devote to training and exercising a dog, cats have become a more attractive option for the average guy.

Petfinder, the largest online pet adoption site, does not keep statistics regarding adoption demographics, but cofounder Betsy Saul says, anecdotally, that more men than ever are adopting felines. "Cats are losing some of their negative mystique," she says.

Adds Salk: "A growing population of newly liberated male cat lovers would help reduce the number of adoptable homeless animals killed each year. There is no shortage of amazing cats waiting to be loved by a studly guy!"
Enjoy this story? Keep reading at ForbesWoman.

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The strange and strong bond between women and cats.

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"A cat is a treasure you hold with your heart ... Cats have paws, claws, and zero flaws," begins a Saturday Night Live " commercial " for "Whiskers R We," starring a sanguine, white-haired cat rescuer named Barbara DeDrew.

Wearing turtleneck sweaters and pleated pants, DeDrew - played by Kate McKinnon - and a rotating cast of girlfriends and former flings revel in their co-dependent tendencies and love of bad puns, while extolling the virtues and forgiving the flaws of abandoned cats. The women are fundamentally uncool, but there is poetry in their devotion: "A cat is a friend you didn't know you needed. A cat is an itch that scratches you."

DeDrew's adoration of cats represents one of the most enduring lesbian clichés out there. These women mention their cats by name in their work bios and write poetry from their cats' perspective. Their cats sign their holiday cards. They are lesbian cat lovers, an often disturbing, sometimes endearing, caricature of women who love these pets almost as much as each other - and infinitely more than they love anyone else.

Most women assiduously avoid the "cat lady" label, but lesbians have embraced the association. While the rest of the world cringed and laughed, this stereotype of fierce love for cats has helped queer and gay women build community and visibility for nearly 50 years.

Many queer women and lesbians will take every opportunity to talk publicly about their cats. Zoie Palmer from Lost Girl has a cat who tweets. Jane Lynch narrated a documentary for National Geographic about a lady with 700 cats. Talking to Jennifer Aniston on The Tonight Show, Portia de Rossi said the only thing that annoys her about wife Ellen DeGeneres is when "just as I put [dinner] down in front of her, she gets up and feeds the cats - every single night." The couple have three cats, and DeGeneres celebrates "Cat Week" every year on her show. "If it were up to me I would have 'Cat Month,'" she told Jay Leno on a different episode of The Tonight Show.

Like all stereotypes, the belief that the bond between lesbians and cats transcends genus and species is rooted in legend as much as truth. Lots of lesbians care about dogs (or rats, or birds, or donkeys, for that matter) more than cats. There are even lesbians who (gasp!) hate cats. The quintessential "crazy cat lady" of film and TV is not lesbian-identified, and plenty of straight people and gay men are devoted to their feline friends.

But it is no accident that Jane Lynch narrated a documentary for National Geographic about a lady with 700 cats. There's a reason I expect interviews with celebrity lesbians to mention a cat at some point. Lesbians on the internet are obsessed with Holiday, a bug-eyed grey kitten Sara Quin from Tegan and Sara adopted last summer. In 2011, Quin told Spin that her cat, Taya, "stole my heart. She was loyal and protective of me. The other cats living in my house ignored you indiscriminately and their affections were desperate. Not my Taya."

A cat and a vagina are both a "pussy," but this doesn't fully explain the magnetism and appeal. While the word "puss" has been a term for cat since the 16th century, the association between women and cats predates the use of the word as slang for vagina, which probably started sometime in the 18th century. Lesbian periodicals of the 1970s frequently blurred the lines between human and animal. Cartoons of cats watching lovers in bed, basking in patches of sunshine, or chatting at the dinner table with their humans show up in newsletters like "Out and About," "So's Your Old Lady," and "Lesbian Tide." The May 1976 issue of FOCUS: A Journal for Gay Women, announced that "Agnes Cox, well known wanton female of southern N.H. is preparing to give birth to her third group of illegitimate children." An update on Agnes the following month reports that she "chose to awaken her people in the middle of the night and have her kittens in bed with them."

When women were first organizing and identifying as capital-"L" lesbians en masse in the 1960s and 1970s they often looked to female-dominated or goddess-worshipping cultures as models for how to live and thrive outside patriarchal Western society. In Ancient Egypt, the cat goddess Bastet gave blessings and offered love and domestic security, while Sekhmet, her parallel deity, brought disease and sometimes attacked the things she was supposed to protect. Wicca and witchcraft - which have featured cats as companions in spiritual matters and in persecution for hundreds of years - appeal to women generally disgusted by the demands of marriage, gender roles, or mainstream femininity. And in the 1970s, few women were more disgusted with the sexist status quo than lesbian feminists.

Throughout history, cats have been goddesses, but also underhanded ("catty"). They're sexual ("sex kitten"), but free-spirited ("a cool cat"). "Cats make me think of domesticity and comfort and home and companionship, but we can also think of cats as feral and wild, self-sufficient and independent. They're the huntress," says Jenna Danchuk, a witch and Ph.D student at York University who studies feminism in witchcraft communities.

For 20th-century lesbians trying to carve out a place for themselves, the domestic huntress made for a very appealing contradiction. "The independence of cats is one of the main parallels between cats and lesbians - women who simply in being lesbians declare themselves untamed in at least some small way," writes Shoney Sien in the introduction to the 1991 anthology Dykes (and Their Cats).

Women may even seek to emulate cats' ability to exist contentedly outside the patriarchy. "There is something between cats and women that is not based on domination or condescending adoration," writes Sien's co-editor, oral historian Irene Reti. "Cat is telling us about independent grace, beauty born of self-respect and pride. Cat knows how to say when she doesn't want to be touched. Cat knows how to ignore men. It is no accident that lesbian feminists remember, even unconsciously, who our wise and sacred companions are. We who are not afraid to be called dykes, witches, crones or hags, are also friends of cats." Rejecting the idea that humans are inherently superior to cats means rejecting other hierarchies. (To be fair, this has historically been more of a dream than a reality. That some lesbian feminists deified their cats while ostracizing and excluding women who were transgender, did sex work, or enjoyed BDSM sex makes clear how much better cats are at equality.)

Still, the cat-loving queer woman is onto something. When lesbians talk about their relationship to cats, "they root themselves within the natural world and also identify with persecution and exclusion. The cat lady says a women can be fine outside the patriarchy," says Katie Barak, who wrote her Ph.D dissertation on the cat-lady stereotype. And only a woman who feels really and truly fine outside the patriarchy could eroticize Birkenstocks and a leather-clad Gina Gershon (who is apparently not a lesbian, but who did write an entire album about the time her cat Cleo ran away, produced by Linda Perry, who is definitely a lesbian).

An assumption of asexuality, the belief that a woman could only be this interested in cats if she was equally uninterested in sex, also drives the stereotype. In April, writer and poet Anna Pulley published The Lesbian Sex Haiku Book (With Cats!). Pulley has written haikus about all manner of queer women's rituals - processing, listening to Tracy Chapman, having strap-on sex, eating vegan desserts. There are sections on "U-hauling," being friends with exes, and "how lesbian sex works." Pulley's girlfriend, the artist Kelsey Beyer, decided to illustrate the book with drawings of cats embodying these stereotypes after Pulley showed her videos of Maru, the internet cat who dives into boxes. "A pussy diving into a box!" Pulley says. "It was too perfect of a connection."

Pulley invokes these stereotypes intentionally and with love and humor. ("More realistic ways to 'flag' as a womyn-loving wo'moon: Do not brush off the / cat (or dog) hair you are most surely covered in.") Though her landlord tragically does not allow pets, Pulley says she still embodies "a great many lesbian stereotypes." She owns a pickup truck and lots of flannel, vests, bow ties and beanies. She's worked at nonprofits, was a vegetarian for a decade, and fetishizes librarians, libraries and books. "So it was fun to make fun of myself in the process," she says.

Like the editors and contributors to Cats (and Their Dykes) and Kate McKinnon on Saturday Night Live, The Lesbian Sex Haiku Book (With Cats!) manages to reflect lesbian lives even as it caricatures them. "As outsiders, we get to be 'in' for once," Pulley says. "In on the joke, in on the community. And not to be too 'serious lesbian,' but I think that's important."

So when Barbara DeDrew cuddles with Harissa - a British short-haired cat who uses the "loo-ter box" - or strokes BoBo - who is "maybe definitely an alien" - while rebuffing her latest fling's gentle groping, is she a pathetic spinster with a psychological condition or an independent elderly woman who has built her life and relationships around her passion for cat rescue? People are laughing at Barbara DeDrew, but Barbara DeDrew and her bottomless container of mewling cats are unflappable and unashamed. Like the best lesbians, deviants, and failed women, she doesn't care if you like her, or want her, or even talk to her. She would appreciate it, however, if you'd take home this bag of cats.

A Brief History of Lesbian Cat Ladies

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'Cat Knows How to Ignore Men': A Brief History of Lesbian Cat Ladies

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Exploring one of the most enduring lesbian clichés.

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'Old maids and cats have long been proverbially associated together, and rightly or wrongly these creatures have been looked upon with a certain degree of suspicion and aversion by a large proportion of the human race.'
Dundee Courier, 5 October 1880.

Spinsters have long been associated with cats. This was especially true in the Victorian era when the stereotype of the old maid and her feline dependents was so pervasive that an 1880 edition of the Dundee Courier not only declared that "the old maid would not be typical of her class without the cat," but that "one cannot exist without the other." Like cats (who were generally viewed as being sly and self-serving), old maids faced their fair share of societal persecution. Doomed to live in a state of "single blessedness," they were often seen as being eccentric or as having been soured by their "blighted hopes." To that end, the Dundee Courier reports:

"There is nothing at all surprising in the old maid choosing a cat as a household pet or companion. Solitude is not congenial to human nature, and a poor forlorn female, shut up in a cheerless 'garret,' brooding all alone over her blighted hopes, would naturally centre her affections on some of the lower animals, and none would be more congenial as a pet and companion than a kindly purring pussy."

The Victorian spinster's predilection for the feline was an accepted fact. As far as the spinster herself, society was less certain. She neither married, nor had children. What purpose, then, did her existence serve? In 1879, Dr. Andrew Wilson of Edinburgh sought to answer this question during a scientific lecture he gave in the town of Dollar. Speaking to a packed hall, Wilson declared that, despite having no children, maiden ladies had a critical role to play in the preservation of the human race-or, at least, in the preservation of British clover.

According to Wilson, clover was essential to British life and humblebees (today known as bumblebees) were essential for the fertilisation and growth of clover. Explaining how the spinster fit into all of this, the Edinburgh Evening News quotes Wilson as stating:

"Now, field mice were enemies to humble-bees, and cats were enemies to the mice. Whoever conserved cats conserved clover, and on clover, as we have seen, depends British welfare. Old maids had a proverbial fondness for the feline race, and it was thus possible that a scientific justification of spinsterhood might be found in the utility of cats as repressing the enemies of the bees which aided the growth of clover."

Wilson's pronouncement was more humor than actual science. It provoked laughter throughout the hall. Spinsters and their cats would continue to be a great source of amusement-and of scorn-throughout the remainder of the 19 th century. Today, for better or worse, the two are still inextricably linked in the public mind.

Dundee Courier (Angus, Scotland), 5 October 1880.

Edinburgh Evening News (Midlothian, Scotland), 14 November 1879.

Lanfear, Elizabeth. Letters to Young Ladies on Their Entrance into the World. London: J. Robins & Co., 1824.

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A Scientific Justification for Spinsters: Old Maids and Cats in the Victorian Era | Mimi Matthews

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An article in the 1880 edition of the Dundee Courier declares that "the old maid would not be typical of her class without the cat."

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America's "Craziest" Cat Ladies! (Animal Documentary) | Real Stories

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Go to the Akrotiri peninsula, about an hour's drive from Pafos, and you can visit a monastery with an intriguing history. The monastery was founded in 327 CE by the Byzantine Governor of Cyprus, Calokairos, at the insistence of Saint Helen, mother of Constantine the Great. Returning from a trip to the Holy Land, Helen stopped at the peninsula, which had been nearly abandoned during a seventeen-year drought. The drought was accompanied by a plague of venomous snakes that made the area too dangerous to pass through. Helen sought a solution from the governor. In establishing the monastery, Calokairos collected a thousand cats from across Cyprus and charged the monks with their care. The cats eventually subdued the snake population and made the area inhabitable again. To this day, a large group of cats makes its home in the monastery. The core structure dates to the thirteenth century, though it suffered damage from an earthquake in the fifteenth century, looting in the sixteenth century, and disuse over hundreds of years. The Department of Antiquities restored the complex in 1960. Since 1983, the Monastery of Saint Nicolas of the Cats has served as a convent. A small group of nuns resides there, caring for the cats, painting icons, and living a life of devotion. Visit and you will surely be greeted by the monastery's feline denizens. You can also admire the monastery's beautiful architecture. A selection of icons, publications, fruit preserves, and honey is offered for sale; your purchase supports the convent and the care of the cats.

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A Visit to the Monastery of Saint Nicolas of the Cats

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Go to the Akrotiri peninsula, about an hour’s drive from Pafos, and you can visit a monastery with an intriguing history.

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This monastery was founded in AD 327 by the first Byzantine governor of Cyprus, Kalokeros, and patronised by St Helena, mother of Constantine the Great. A delightful small chapel here dating from the 13th century has noteworthy icons painted by the two original nuns in residence. The actual monastery building has received a modern (and somewhat bland) refurbishment. You can buy the sisters' preserves, jams, honey and sweets, plus bags of oranges when in season.

There's a curious story behind the monastery's name. At the time of construction, the Akrotiri Peninsula, and indeed the whole of Cyprus, was in the grip of a severe drought and was overrun with poisonous snakes, so building a monastery was fraught with practical difficulties. A large shipment of cats was therefore brought in from Egypt and Palestine to combat the reptilian threat. A bell would call the cats to meals and the furry warriors would then be dispatched to fight the snakes. These days, the many cats you'll find snoozing in the shade of the monastery colonnades far outnumber the handful of solitary sisters who now look after the place.

Positioned on the edge of the salt lake with its back to the Sovereign Base Area (SBA) fence, the monastery can be reached by a good dirt road from Akrotiri or via a not-so-obvious route west from Lady's Mile Beach.

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Holy Monastery of St Nicholas of the Cats | Cyprus, Europe | Attractions - Lonely Planet

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This monastery was founded in AD 327 by the first Byzantine governor of Cyprus, Kalokeros, and patronised by St Helena, mother of Constantine the Great. A...

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When a plague of snakes almost prevented the building of what is now known as the Holy Monastery of Saint Nicholas of the Cats, the titular felines were shipped in to save the day.

Construction originally began on the monastery in 327 on the island of Cyprus under the patronage of Saint Helena. As legend has it, a terrible drought afflicted the island during this time, allowing venomous snakes to proliferate, driving off not only the builders of the monastery, but even island locals.

Helena's solution to the infestation was to fight snakes with cats, and she had 1,000 of the furry killers shipped to the island from Persia and Egypt. Soon the savior had trained the felines to react to two bells: one signaling feeding time, and the other signaling snake hunting time. After battles that reportedly left the cats missing eyes and noses, the snakes were all but eradicated from the island and the monastery was completed.

Although the original building was destroyed and rebuilt a number of times over the ensuing centuries, the cats on the island remained, and even flourished into an unofficial sub-breed known as the "Cyprus cat." When the modern incarnation of the monastery was given over to a group of nuns in 1983, the church grounds themselves had become devoid of cats, and the snakes had returned. Unsurprisingly, the sisters took a page from history and brought in even more outside cats which quickly contained the problem.

In addition to the newly imported animals, the Holy Monastery of Saint Nicholas of the Cats began taking in any stray cat brought to them in honor of the felines' centuries of service.

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Holy Monastery of St. Nicholas of the Cats

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Discover Holy Monastery of St. Nicholas of the Cats in Akrotiri, Cyprus: For nearly 2,000 years this church has been waging war on local snakes by importing cats.

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Stuff: David Shrigley in conversation with Katrina Schwarz | British Council

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Curator Katrina Schwarz interviews David Shrigley about his taxidermy works, focusing on his 2009 work, ‘Ostrich’.

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We can learn a lot from looking at portraits of dead people, or 'posthumous portraits' to sound less ghoulish. If you read between the brushstrokes and know what to look for, a posthumous portrait can reveal cultural attitudes to death in a particular time and place.
Going, going... gone
Portraits of the deceased can seem shocking today, particularly those of children.

Why would you want to remember the gloomy event of a death? It is hard to imagine viewing these severe and painful images as an act of reverence, but many early examples were made when having a portrait created wasn't a common occurrence, and people were in more frequent contact with the dead and dying. If someone got sick and the prognosis wasn't good, it was time to gather together and perhaps call for the local portraitist to come to the afflicted person's bedside to immortalise their face in paint - while they were still around.

The subject above still has some colour in his face, in contrast to the white linens - though the black bow and pained expression is a reminder that William Juxon is not long for this world. Centuries later, looking at the dead and dying becomes more taboo: views of people after death, or 'lying in state', tend to be wide-angle scenes that put heavy emphasis on the grandeur of the surroundings.

This view of The Last Moments of HRH the Prince Consort was a little too close to the death bed: Queen Victoria was horrified by its existence and wanted to have the picture destroyed (but it survived and was bought by the collector Henry S. Wellcome).
Symbols and clues
Most posthumous portraits show the person as they looked when alive.

For those of higher social standing, there were usually other portraits a posthumous work could be based on (unless you were the abbé de Saint-Cyran, who refused to have his portrait taken during his life - the original artist worked from a death mask).

An image made after death can emphasise a person's worthy attributes, or the subject made into an icon, surrounded by symbolism.

It is sometimes hard to spot a posthumous work unless symbolism has been used - for example, stopped clocks or hourglasses (as in Memorial Portrait of Sir John Harpur, above), wilted roses, departing ships, obelisks, using the colours red, white and black together, or a weeping willow.

My research into the death date of Francis Page of Newbury came up with little, though I wonder if the drooping willow branches in this portrait signify the work is posthumous? ( Art Detectives: let us know if you have a clue.) With only basic information, viewing portraits such as these can prove speculative.

Though discovering a portrait is posthumous can bring about a fresh appreciation of the work. In 2014, Art Detectives identified an unknown soldier as Second Lieutenant Paul Chancourt Giradot, killed in 1916. After the discovery was publicised, more information came to light: the artist was likely the deceased's mother, Mary Jane Girardot. Mary also immortalised his portrait in a church's stained glass window.

With posthumous portraits made to revere departed family members - particularly children - the tone can read as romantic and wistful, with the subject taking on a heavenly hue.
Dearly departed: children and families
After the sudden death of nine-year-old Barbara Anne Barrett-Lennard, her parents went on the Grand Tour as a distraction from their grief. Whilst in Rome in around 1750, they met the painter Pompeo Batoni. Batoni painted the glowing, angelic likeness of Barbara Anne from a miniature the couple had brought along on their travels. The expression of longing the artist captured on the mother's face is almost painful to view.

Some posthumous portrait commissions can cross into otherworldly territory, combining both portraiture of the living with the symbolism of the angel or cherub. Joseph Highmore's The Family of E. Lancelot Lee acts almost as an inventory of all beloved by Lee: the large family, heirlooms, a squirrel on a golden chain, and pet mastiffs are all presented in the foreground, with a child who died in infancy floating with angels in the sky beyond.

With other well-documented art, we know enough to recognise when a scene, presented as reality, has been made with liberal artistic licence. The Saltonstall Family by David des Granges shows Sir Richard Saltonstall with two children, and his second wife seated with a baby. The pallid figure lying in the bed is likely his first wife.

The richly wallpapered room and sumptuous drapes give a celebratory air to the painting, though in a modern context, it's all quite strange. It's hard to relate to the optimistic candour of Sir Richard when commissioning this display of family unity: in reality, had the first woman in the bed not died, the living wife (and the new infant) would not be sitting in the chair. Instead, the two women cohabit the picture amicably.

In a later story, John Singleton Copley worked doggedly for years on a group portrait of the Knatchbull family. The painter included Knatchbull's deceased first wife as an angel, but when nearing the end of the painting, his second wife also died. Copley made room for the second wife as another angel (before a third wife became pregnant: Knatchbull then insisted space be made in the composition for the newborn).

The Knatchbull Family Portrait (oil sketch)

As we can understand from Copley's difficult commission, it's not easy painting the dead. For history's portraitists, particularly struggling artists, working directly with a corpse was not unusual - in fact, the ghoulish task would usually be left to poor young upstarts.

Advice to makers of Victorian posthumous daguerreotypes (a close cousin of the posthumous portrait painter) reveals that in order to position the body in a semblance of liveliness, the photographer may need to open the eyes of the deceased. But 'this you can effect handily by using the handle of a teaspoon', advised Charlie E. Orr.

Other artists used calipers to take facial measurements, or worked from living relatives who looked similar. Relying on poorer artists to undertake this undesirable work may explain the crude naivety, particularly in North America, of many posthumous paintings: see the flattened perspective of the Ambrose Andrews' The Children of Nathan Starr (the youngest of whom died in infancy, possibly before the painting was made).

The Children of Nathan Starr

Girl in Blue, by William Matthew Prior, could be the result of some such commission: Prior's solemn children on Art UK are all the more haunting when one learns the artist may have lost a wife and six children by 1848.
Contemporary posthumous portraits
Now, most people rely on photographs to remember the deceased. Yet occasionally painters are asked to commemorate a deceased person, and in doing so face their own challenges. The artist may have many source photographs to work from, but this also means the commissioner may expect a photorealist result, and have a very emotional reaction to the project.

Today's posthumous paintings tend to be celebratory commemorations - such as in the case of geneticist Anne McLaren's portrait at The Royal Society. Smiling casually in front of a chart of human embryonic development, the painting gives the impression of a life rich with achievement.

These commissions are a stark contrast to posthumous artworks made for personal reasons. Contemporary works are often by bereaved relatives of the subject, wanting to produce a lasting emblem of the character now departed: Robert Lutyens painted his father, Edwin, from a photograph because the artist felt every other portrait made his father look 'over-serious'.

Artists may also paint posthumous portraits as a form of therapy. The ritual of painting from life can be meditative and help an artist contemplate or work through difficult feelings.

Looking at many posthumous portraits for this article, I found Robert Oskar Lenkiewicz's Study of the Painter's Dead Mother the most difficult to view.

The dead pallor of the subject's skin is shocking - this hints that death is culturally alien to contemporary viewers. Perhaps in looking at something you become less frightened: a good reason to look closely at these complex portraits.
Jade King, Art UK Head of Editorial

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'I paint dead people': posthumous portraits

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The theme prevalent in this painting is that of memento mori. Made from preparatory sketches by the artist at the mortuary where his mother's body was taken, the sketches are affixed to the rear of the wood panel. The sketches, about four or five inches on a side, are made on yellow notepad paper.

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Plymouth

Title

Study of the Painter's Dead Mother

Medium

acrylic on wood panel

Measurements

H 29 x W 21 cm

Acquisition method

bequeathed by the artist, 2010

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c/o 39 New Street, Barbican, Plymouth, Devon PL1 2NA England

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Study of the Painter's Dead Mother by Robert Oskar Lenkiewicz (1941-2002), 1977, from The Lenkiewicz Foundation

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Gertrudis van Nijvel werd geboren in 626 in een familie die bijna uitsluitend uit heiligen bestond. Haar vader was de heilige Pepijn van Landen, haar moeder de heilige Ida of Iduberga. Ook haar zuster Begga en broer Grimoald worden als zaligen of heiligen vereerd. Gertrudis - ook Geertruida, Geertrui of Gertrud genoemd - was een vroeg middeleeuwse heilige en abdis. Haar heiligheid wordt als volgt verwoord: "Men zegt van haar dat ze ijverig was en voorzichtig en veel bewondering kreeg van de zusters. Ze bad veel en bracht dagen vastend door. Ook bestudeerde ze veel de Heilige Schrift en liet daartoe boeken uit Rome komen. Overigens leefde zij in de grootste armoede en gaf alles wat ze had aan de armen, weduwen en wezen. En ze bouwde heel wat kerken ter ere van de heiligen. Toen ze eens in één van die kerken zat te bidden voor het altaar, daalde een vlam uit de hemel tot boven haar hoofd en verlichtte het hele kerkgebouw. Totaal verzwakt door het vele vasten en waken droeg ze de bediening van het ambt van abdis op dertigjarige leeftijd over aan haar nicht Wilfetrudis. Ze bereidde zich van dan af voor op de dood, maar bleef streng vasten en droeg altijd een stug boetekleed waarin ze ook begraven wilde worden. Daags voor haar sterven kondigde haar raadsman aan dat ze de volgende dag door de engelen Gods voor diens troon gebracht zou worden. Stalend van geluk bracht ze de hele nacht biddend en zingend door. Ze stierf op 33-jarige leeftijd".

Na het overlijden van vader Pepijn stichtte moeder Ida op aanraden van bisschop Amandus van Maastricht een dubbelklooster op een landgoed in Nijvel: één voor vrouwen en één voor mannen. Gertrudis trad in in dat klooster en zou er later meteen na de dood van haar moeder abdis worden. Maar aan die kloosterintrede van Gertrudis is een verhaal verbonden. Een ridder (of was het een prins?) had een oogje op de jonge Geertuida en hij had haar zelfs ten huwelijk gevraagd. Gertrudis gaf echter de voorkeur aan het kloosterleven. Met een heildronk en de volgende woorden: "Ik heb als bruidegom gekozen de eeuwige schoonheid die de oorsprong is van de schoonheid van alle schepselen - Hij, die oneindig veel rijkdommen bezit en door de engelen wordt aanbeden", had ze afscheid genomen. Maar de man bleef verliefd en probeerde alles in het werk te stellen om haar alsnog te krijgen. Hij verkocht zelfs zijn ziel aan de duivel. Na zeven jaar was de termijn om en kwam de duivel zijn ziel opeisen. Maar omdat Gertruida bij het afscheid van haar 'minnaar' op zijn heil gedronken had, had de duivel geen macht meer over zijn ziel. Zo werd hij door haar verdiensten van de ondergang gered. Hierdoor ontstond het gebruik van de drank van de Sint Geertensminne: een heildronk op vertrekkende pelgrims en reizigers, voor een goede reis en behouden terugkeer. Die heildronk werd ook toegepast op de doden om hun reis naar het eeuwige leven aangenamer te laten verlopen. Vele mensen geloofden dat de ziel, na het verlaten van het lichaam, de eerste nacht bij Geertruida bleef, de tweede bij de engelen en de derde ten slotte naar de plaats vloog die voor haar bestemd was. Dat zou de reden zijn waarom Sint Gertrudis wordt afgebeeld met muizen: zij symboliseren de ziel van overledenen (zie de muizen op het schilderij in de kerk).

Zij is de beschermheilige van de ziekenhuizen; patrones van de armen en weduwen, van herbergiers, pelgrims, reizigers en weggebruikers, van tuin- en veldvruchten. Verder wordt ze aanroepen tegen muizen- en rattenplagen. Ze wordt afgebeeld als benedictines of abdis met kruis, kelk, katten, muizen of spinnen. Eén van de verschillende weerspreuken over de heilige luidt: "Op Sint Geertrui slecht weer, zes weken valt de regen neer".

Hoe is Geertruida van Nijvel patrones geworden van Pede?
Als jonge abdis bestuurde Geertruida ons gewest. Omstreeks het jaar 650, tijdens een tocht door onze streek, bleef haar koets, getrokken door 6 paarden, hier ergens in de modder steken. Geertruida was verplicht haar tocht naar Lennik te voet verder te zetten. Volgens de legende ontstond toen de naam 'pede' of de vertaling uit het Latijn van 'te voet'. De legende van Sint Geertruida liet Pede niet los en er ontstond zowaar een bedevaartsoord. Daarom liet Willem van Moorsel, een kasteelheer in Pede en leenheer van de abdij van Nijvel, hier een kapel bouwen ter ere van Sint Gertrudis. In het zegel van de kerkfabriek vindt men nog het wapenschild van deze Willem.

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Welkom op de website van de parochie Sint-Gertrudis-Pede

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anoniem - 1578

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anoniem Trou moet blijcken
'[De katmaecker]'
In: Trou moet blijcken. Bronnenuitgave van de boeken der Haarlemse rederijkerskamer 'de Pellicanisten'. Deel 1: Boek A

1992

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Digitale Bibliotheek voor de Nederlandse Letteren (The Digital Library of Dutch Literature is a collection of primary and secondary information on Dutch language and literature in its historical, societal and cultural context.)

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"Black Cat" was originally published in Rilke's 1923 collection Duino Elegies. Rilke began writing this collection in 1912, but it remained unfinished for a decade before being completed and published.

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Black Cat - A ghost, though invisible, still is like a placeyour sight can knock on, echoing; but herewithin this thick black pelt, your strongest gazewill be absorbed and utterly disappear:

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chatte translate: cat, cunt, pussy. Learn more in the Cambridge French-English Dictionary.

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"La chatte" is a female cat, or it is a vulgar connotation of the vagina.

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"La chatte" is a female cat, or it is a vulgar connotation of the vagina.

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The Strange Art of the Posthumous Portrait

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A new exhibition shows how painters and photographers once vied to bring the dead to life.

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Post-mortem photograph of the Norwegian theologian Bernhard Pauss with flowers, photographed by Gustav Borgen, Christiania, November 1907

Post-mortem photography is the practice of photographing the recently deceased. Various cultures use and have used this practice, though the best-studied area of post-mortem photography is that of Europe and America. There can be considerable dispute as to whether individual early photographs actually show a dead person or not, often sharpened by commercial considerations. The form continued the tradition of earlier painted mourning portraits. Today post-mortem photography is most common in the contexts of police and pathology work.

Post-mortem photograph of Emperor Frederick III of Germany, 1888.

Post-mortem photograph of Brazil's deposed emperor Pedro II, taken by Nadar, 1891.

The invention of the daguerreotype in 1839 made portraiture commonplace, as many of those who were unable to afford the commission of a painted portrait could afford to sit for a photography session.

This also provided the middle class with a way to remember dead loved ones. Before this, post-mortem portraiture was restricted to the upper class, who continued to commemorate the deceased with this new method. Post-mortem photography was common in the nineteenth century. As photography was a new medium, it is plausible that many daguerreotype post-mortem portraits, especially those of infants and young children, were probably the only photographs ever made of the sitters[clarification needed ]. The long exposure time made deceased subjects easy to photograph. The problem of long exposure times also led to the phenomenon of hidden mother photography, where the mother was hidden in-frame to calm a young child and keep them still.

Post-mortem photography flourished in photography's early decades, among those who preferred to capture an image of the deceased. This helped many photographic businesses in the nineteenth century. The later invention of the carte de visite, which allowed multiple prints to be made from a single negative, meant that copies of the image could be mailed to relatives. Approaching the 20th century, cameras became more accessible and more people began to be able to take photographs for themselves. Post-mortem photography as early as the 1970s was taken up by artists, and continues today. Presently, it is largely private, except for photos of stillborn children on the website Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep.

Syrian bishop seated in state at his funeral (ca. 1945).[11]

A common pose of the deceased is called the 'Last Sleep', where the deceased's eyes are closed and they lie as though in repose. Another popular arrangement was to have the deceased presented seated in a chair or arranged in a portrait to mimic life, because these photographs would serve as their last social presence. In the Victorian era it was common to photograph deceased young children or newborns in the arms of their mother.

Nineteenth-century photograph of a deceased child with flowers

Some images, especially tintypes and ambrotypes have a rosy tint added to the cheeks of the corpse. Later photographs show the subject in a coffin, sometimes with a large group of funeral attendees. This was especially popular in Europe and less common in the United States. Photographs, especially depicting persons who were considered to be very holy lying in their coffins, are still circulated among faithful Eastern Catholic, Eastern Orthodox and Oriental Orthodox Christians.

In America, post-mortem photography became an increasingly private practice by the mid-to-late nineteenth century, with discussion moving out of trade journals and public discussion. There was a resurgence in mourning tableaux, where the living were photographed surrounding the coffin of the deceased, sometimes having them visible. This practice continued until the 1960s.

Post-mortem photography in the Nordic countries was most popular in the early 1900s, but later died out around 1940, transferring mainly to amateur photography for personal use. When examining Iceland's culture surrounding death, it is concluded that the nation held death as an important and significant companion. Throughout much of the nineteenth century, the country's infant mortality rate was higher than that of European countries. Consequently, death was a public topic that was considerably seen through Icelanders' religious lenses. There are many that believe Iceland's attitudes about post-mortem photography can be deduced from its earlier expressions in poetry of the above-average death rates.

In the early 1900s, detailed information regarding an individual's death could be commonly found in a newspaper's obituary section. This was indicative of the community's role in death, before societal norms shifted the experience of death to be much more personal and private. In 1940, photographs of the deceased, their casket, or grave stone with documentation of the funeral and wake are rare. By 1960, there is almost no record of community-based professional post-mortem photography in Nordic society with some amateur photographs remaining for the purpose of the family of the deceased.

How post-mortem photography began in Iceland remains uncertain, but these photographs can be traced to the late nineteenth century. The practice of post-mortem photography in Iceland and the Nordic countries was also in European countries. As for Iceland, the role of visual art was minimal with a select few examples dating back to medieval manuscript illustrations or memorial tablets of the 1700s. These examples were mainly restricted to experts, rather than the greater community. As the practice of handling and caring for the dead transferred from the responsibility of the family to that of the hospital staff, the style of photographs changed as well. It is customary for a hospital staff member to take a photograph of a deceased child for the grieving family. Most photographs of the deceased were taken of them up close lying down on a bed or chest and mainly consisted of children, teenagers, and some elderly persons.[citation needed ]

A large regional collection of professional and private post-mortem photographs are contained in the Reykjavík Museum of Photography while others are displayed in the National Museum of Iceland. These displays are primarily composed of photographs of funerals and wakes rather than the deceased.

As far back as the fifteenth century, it was customary to portray the deceased through paintings and drawings. This originated in Western Europe and quickly spread through Europe. These portraits were mainly restricted to the upper classes. Upon the emergence of photography, post mortem photography became available to many people.

Post-mortem photography was particularly popular in Victorian Britain. From 1860 to 1910, these post-mortem portraits were much like American portraits in style, focusing on the deceased either displayed as asleep or with the family; often these images were placed in family albums. The study[clarification needed ] has often been mixed with American traditions, because they are similar. Post-mortem photography continued in the inter-war years[clarification needed ].

The extent of the popularity of postmortem-photography is difficult to ascertain. This is partially due to the fact that many instances are privatized within family albums as well as the role of changes in the social and cultural attitudes surrounding death. This could have resulted in the disposal or destruction of existing portraiture.

In India, people believe that if their deceased loved one is burned in Varanasi at the burning ghats or funeral pyres, their soul will be transported to heaven and escape the cycle of rebirth. Varanasi is the only city in India that has pyres burning 24 hours a day, seven days a week, with an average of 300 bodies burned per day. Death photographers come to Varanasi daily to take photos of the recently deceased, which serve as mementos for the family, or as proof of death.

Mord, Jack. (2014). Beyond the Dark Veil: Post Mortem & Mourning Photography from The Thanatos Archive. Last Gasp Press.

Ruby, Jay. (1995). Secure the Shadow: Death and Photography in America. Boston: MIT Press.

Burns, Stanley B. (1990). Sleeping Beauty: Memorial Photography in America. Twelvetrees/Twin Palms Press.

Burns, Stanley B. and Elizabeth A. (2002). Sleeping Beauty II: Grief, Bereavement in Memorial Photography American and European Traditions. Burns Archive Press.

Orlando, Mirko. (2010). Ripartire dagli addii: uno studio sulla fotografia post-mortem. Milano: MjM editore.

Kürti, László. (2012). 'For the last time': the Hiltman-Kinsey post-mortem photographs, 1918-1920". Visual Studies, Volume 27, 2012 - Issue 1.doi.org/10.1080/1472586X.2012.642960

Orlando, Mirko. (2013). fotografia post mortem. Roma: Castelvecchi.

Vidor, Gian Marco.(2013). La photographie post-mortem dans l'Italie du XIXe et XXe siècle. Une introduction. In Anne Carol & Isabelle Renaudet 'La mort à l'oeuvre. Usages et représentations du cadavre dans l'art', Aix-en-Provence: Presses universitaires de Provence, 2013.

Audrey Linkman (2006) Taken from life: Post-mortem portraiture in Britain

History of Photography 1860-1910, 30:4, 309-347, DOI: 10.1080/03087298.2006.10443484

McBride Pete (2017). The Pyres of Varanasi: Breaking the Cycle of Death and Rebirth

de Mayda Matteo (2017) A Death Photographer Who Shoots on the Banks of the Ganges River

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Post-mortem photography is the practice of photographing the recently deceased. Various cultures use and have used this practice, though the best-studied area of post-mortem photography is that of Europe and America. There can be considerable dispute as to whether individual early photographs actually show a dead person or not, often sharpened by commercial considerations.

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From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Mourning portrait of K. Horvath-Stansith, née Kiss, artist unknown, 1680s

A Child of the Honigh Family on its Deathbed, by an unknown painter, 1675-1700

A mourning portrait or deathbed portrait is a portrait of a person who has recently died, usually shown on their deathbed, or lying in repose, displayed for mourners. These were not rare in European homes of well-to-do people as a way of remembering and honoring the dead. People were generally laid out in their best clothes with some sort of special headdress, and some sort of token in their hands. Today these portraits give insights into old funeral customs, but also various types of information regarding folk costumes. In the 19th century post-mortem photography continued the tradition.

Recent research on deathbed portraits, which can be found also in prints and photographs up to today, shows that they became popular after the Protestant Reformation but were never treasured as family heirlooms in the same way as other artworks and thus relatively few early examples such as this one have survived. As a continuous art form, laying out traditions did not go away and photography has continued to preserve the deathbed portrait, though such photos were meant for mourners and did not find their way into photo albums.

In the Netherlands, complicated wreaths of greens were placed around the heads of unmarried people, who were mostly children. In Dutch such a wreath is called a "hoedje" (little hat) and this is part of the general body decoration called "pelen". The word "pelen" is related to the English word "pall", as in "pallbearer", which in funeral contexts refers to the cloth (sometimes a flag) over the body or casket.

Deathbed portrait of Toropets, by anonymous 19th-century Russian painter

Portrait of a dead child wearing a mourning wreath around its head, by Jan Jansz. de Stomme, 1654

An example of this type of portrait is the Mourning portrait of K. Horvath-Stansith, née Kiss, a 1680s painting by an anonymous Baroque artist in the Slovak National Gallery.

This painting shows a postmortem portrait of a woman from the Horvath-Stansith family, K. Horvath-Stansith. She appears to be lying on a bed, but her body has been specially prepared and she is lying not on a bed, but a prepared catafalque laid with a Kilim carpet and special red damask cushion. Her fingers have already discoloured and thread is wrapped around her thumbs. Theoretically, the location is her local church and this is how she looked during the funeral service. She is wearing the costume of the former Hungarian region of Levoča and the closefitting cap she has on is probably not the headgear she wore when she was alive.

Unknown Woman of Levoča, 1641, by unknown painter, with similar bodice to K. Horvath-Stansith

Red damask fragment from the same time period

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From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia A mourning portrait or deathbed portrait is a portrait of a person who has recently died, usually shown on their deathbed, or lying in repose, displayed for mourners. These were not rare in European homes of well-to-do people as a way of remembering and honoring the dead.

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Geïnspireerd op bovenstaande foto die het rouwportret wordt genoemd maakte ik samen met Myrthe Schuijt een informatieve animatie over het verhaal dat er schuil gaat achter de obsessieve rouw van Queen Victoria (1819-1901). Zo bleef ze wanneer haar man Prince Albert (1819-1861) stierf tot haar eigen dood kopjes thee brengen naar de kamer waar haar man overleed.

We bouwde de keuken van een appartement om tot set: de kamer in Windsor Castle waar de foto destijds genomen werd en hebben gebruik gemaakt van old school animatietechnieken zoals pixelation in combinatie met digitale nabewerkingen.

↑ Projecten

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The Greek historian Herodotus provides an accurate description of the devotion of the ancient Egyptians to cats in Book II of his Histories, but this passage is often cited out of context. Chapters II.66-67 are frequently anthologized without the preceding passage discussing how the Egyptians valued all animals and regarded them as sacred.

Although he makes clear in II.65 that he does not want to deal with the subject of the gods as related to animals, he then relates how carefully humans tend to their animals' needs as a reflection of Egyptian religion. To the ancient Egyptians, animals - like everything else around them - were a gift from the gods, and it was their responsibility to value and care for all such gifts.

In citing only chapters II.66-67, authors and editors inadvertently give the false impression that only cats were held in such high regard when, actually, all animals were. The cat was among the most popular pets in ancient Egypt, but not the only one the Egyptians valued, and Herodotus makes this clear when his earlier chapter on animals is cited along with the passages on cats.

Herodotus actually deals with a wide array of animals throughout his work, including those in Egypt. Scholar Colin MacCormack notes:

Among ancient historical works, Herodotus' Histories stand out in the unusually large amount of space dedicated to discussions of animals. Whereas only 42 animal references occur in Thucydides, Herodotus furnishes readers with a massive 804 references to at least 111 different animal terms. (1)

After his passage on cats, in fact, Herodotus goes on to discuss the crocodile, hippo, otter, birds, and snakes at much greater length. Even so, as the cat seems to have been one of the most popular - and is most recognizable as a domesticated pet in the modern age - his discussion of the cat has become the most well-known.

Cats had a long and illustrious association with divinity in ancient Egypt.

This is hardly surprising considering the cats' association with ancient Egypt. Even the English word cat is derived from Egypt as it comes from their name for the animal, quattah, which gives Greek its word gata and this then influenced the word for cat in other languages up to the present day: Spanish gato, French chat, and German Katze among them. This is also true for the term'pussy' as in 'pussycat' which comes from the Egyptian name for the goddess of cats, Bastet, Pasht.

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Even so, as noted, his famous passage on Egyptians rescuing cats from burning buildings loses some of its meaning when cited out of context. The cats in the passage are not being saved only because they were favored pets and not only because of the Egyptian reverence for life, but because of their association with Bastet.

Cats in Egypt & Herodotus' Description

Cats had a long and illustrious association with divinity in ancient Egypt between c. 3150-30 BCE. The feline goddess Mafdet appears in the First Dynasty of Egypt (c. 3150 to c. 2890 BCE) as a protector and embodiment of the concept of justice. She was considered especially potent in protecting against attacks by scorpions and snakes and was among the deities who safeguarded the sun god Ra on his nightly journey through the underworld from the threat of the great serpent Apophis and was, therefore, one of the principal deities who ensured the sun rose each morning.

Mafdet was especially popular during the reign of Den (c. 2990-2940 BCE), considered the greatest king of the First Dynasty, and was the protector of his personal chambers. She remained an important goddess through the period of the New Kingdom of Egypt (c. 1570 to c. 1069 BCE) though her responsibilities were taken on by the goddesses Serket (also given as Selket, who protected against venomous bites) and Bastet, one of the most popular goddesses in Egyptian mythology.

Bastet was the goddess of the home, domesticity, fertility, childbirth, women's secrets, and cats. Whereas Mafdet was depicted as a cat with the skin of a cheetah, Bastet is commonly pictured as either a cat or a woman with the head of a cat. Bastet ensured the safety of one's home and the health of women and children by warding off evil spirits and disease and so was widely venerated by both sexes. Her cult center at Bubastis was one of the richest in the country, and as Herodotus notes below, people from all over traveled to the city to have their dead cats interred there, close to the goddess.

Bastet took over the duties of Mafdet during the Second Dynasty of Egypt (c. 2890 to c. 2670 BCE) and remained popular until the end of the Ptolemaic Dynasty in 30 BCE. As with all the deities of ancient Egypt, Bastet maintained the value of (harmony, balance), and Herodotus touches on this in II.66 in his discussion of male cats killing kittens in order to mate. Although this passage is sometimes interpreted as critical of the male cats' behavior, it is actually discussing natural population regulation. As he suggests, without the intervention of the males, the cat population would soar out of control. To the Egyptians, the males' behavior would have been approved by Bastet in the interests of balance.

The best-known passage on cats and burning homes also relates to Bastet as she was the goddess and protector of cats. Herodotus' description of the Egyptians focusing on rescuing the cats is not just relating how someone might behave in trying to save a beloved pet but has to do with honoring the goddess. Although Bastet was understood as a home's protector, there could be many reasons why it caught fire - one had sinned against some other god, had not observed proper funerary rites, or had lapsed in another way - and so justice was served in the burning of the house.

If one wanted Bastet to continue her protection of one's new home, it was in one's best interest to rescue her cats since she could be as vengeful as she was benevolent. Scholar Geraldine Pinch notes:

Bastet has a double aspect of nurturing mother and terrifying avenger. It is the demonic aspect that mainly features in the Coffin Texts and the Book of the Dead and in medical spells. The "slaughterers of Bastet" were said to inflict plague and other disasters on humanity. One spell advises pretending to be the 'son of Bastet' in order to avoid caching the plague. (115)

Bastet, like Mafdet, was linked with the concept of justice and, in this capacity was known as the Lady of Dread and the Lady of Slaughter for her swift response to any wrongdoing. Recognizing how vengeful Bastet could be when she felt wronged, the Egyptians naturally sought to save her cats without bothering to address the burning home.

These passages on cats are given context by chapter II.65 on how Egyptians cared for all animals. The rescue of cats from fires correlates directly to the value Egyptians placed on all life and, within that perspective, how cats were valued specifically. Even though wild animals were killed on the hunt, fish were caught for food, and some animals were offered in sacrifice, all were regarded as sacred gifts, not only the cat.

The Text

The following passages are taken from Herodotus: The Histories by Robin Waterfield:

II.65 All the animals in Egypt are regarded as sacred. Some are domesticated, and others are not, but if I were to explain why some animals are allowed to roam free, as sacred creatures, my account would be bound to discuss issues pertaining to the gods, and I am doing my best to avoid relating such things. It is only when I have had no choice that I have touched on them already. However, one of their customs concerning animals is as follows. Each separate species of animal has been appointed a keeper who is in charge of looking after it; the keeper may be an Egyptian man or woman, and children inherit the post from their parents. In cities, people fulfil their vows by praying to the god whose sacred creature a given type of animal is, and shaving their child's head (it might be the whole head, or a half, or a third) and weighing the hair in a pair of scales against some silver. This weight in silver is then given to the keeper of the animals. She cuts up as much fish as the silver buys and gives it as food to the animals. This is how the animals are fed. The deliberate killing of one of these animals is punishable by death, and anyone who kills one of them accidentally has to pay a fine whose amount is determined by the priests. However, the death of an ibis or hawk at someone's hands, whether or not he intended to kill it, is inevitably a capital offense.

II.66 Although there are plenty of domestic animals in Egypt, there would be many more if it were not for what happens to the cats. When female cats give birth, they stop having intercourse with the males. However much the toms want to mate with them, they are unable to do so. The toms have therefore come up with a clever solution. They sneak in and steal the kittens away from their mothers, and then kill them (but not for food). The females, deprived of their young, long to have some more, because the feline species is very fond of its young, and so they go to the males.

If a house catches fire, what happens to the cats is quite extraordinary. The Egyptians do not bother to try to put the fire out, but position themselves at intervals around the house and look out for the cats. The cats slip between them, however, and even jump over them, and dash into the fire. This plunges the Egyptians into deep grief. In households where a cat dies a natural death, all the people living there shave off their eyebrows - nothing more. In households where a dog dies, they shave their whole bodies, head and all.

II.67 After their death, the cats are taken to sacred chambers in the city of Bubastis where they are mummified and buried. Dogs are buried by each householder in his own community in sanctified tombs, and mongooses receive the same form of burial as well. Shews and hawks are taken to the city of Buto, and ibises to Hermepolis. Bears (which are rare) and wolves (which are not much larger than foxes) are buried wherever they are found lying.

Conclusion

Herodotus' description of animals in ancient Egypt, and cats specifically, exemplifies his overall approach to history as he focuses on the details that characterize a culture. He does not always comment on the full significance of an event, policy, or practice but suggests it is indicative of the values of the civilization under consideration and, as MacCormack observes, is frequently quite 'modern' in his approach:

Herodotus alone points to behavior as influencing population. According to him, without the habit of male cats killing kittens (2.66) or of baby vipers killing their mothers (3.108), both populations would explode in number. He attributes this natural self-regulation to a divine insight overseeing the world...More generally, unlike the macroscopic speculations on cosmology or matter of the natural philosophers, Herodotus instead prefers observation on mundane subjects such as geology, flora and fauna. Aside from its modernity, these zoological investigations also reveal an underlying methodology: the interconnectivity of humans and their environment. (2)

Herodotus' passages on cats are among the best-known from his Histories and are frequently cited in referencing the value Egyptians placed on cats. The passages have a much deeper meaning, however, as MacCormack notes, which is understood clearly when given the context of II.65. The Egyptians cared for all animals in recognition of the importance of balance - "the interconnectivity of humans and their environment" - and understood that, what was good for the animals, was ultimately also best for themselves.

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The Greek historian Herodotus provides an accurate description of the devotion of the ancient Egyptians to cats in Book II of his Histories, but this passage is often cited out of context. Chapters...

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Devils, Demons, Familiars, Friends: Toward a Semiotics of Literary Cats on JSTOR

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Maria Nikolajeva, Devils, Demons, Familiars, Friends: Toward a Semiotics of Literary Cats, Marvels & Tales, Vol. 23, No. 2 (2009), pp. 248-267

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Babels of blocks to the high heavens tow'ring,
Flames of futility swirling below;
Poisonous fungi in brick and stone flow'ring,
Lanterns that shudder and death-lights that glow.

Black monstrous bridges across oily rivers,
Cobwebs of cable by nameless things spun;
Catacomb deeps whose dank chaos delivers
Streams of live foetor, that rots in the sun.

Colour and splendour, disease and decaying,
Shrieking and ringing and scrambling insane,
Rabbles exotic to stranger-gods praying,
Jumbles of odour that stifle the brain.

Legions of cats from the alleys nocturnal,
Howling and lean in the glare of the moon,
Screaming the future with mouthings infernal,
Yelling the burden of Pluto's red rune.

Tall tow'rs and pyramids ivy'd and crumbling,
Bats that swoop low in the weed-cumber'd streets;
Bleak broken bridges o'er rivers whose rumbling
Joins with no voice as the thick tide retreats.

Belfries that blackly against the moon totter,
Caverns whose mouths are by mosses effac'd,
And living to answer the wind and the water,
Only the lean cats that howl in the waste!

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Barbara Byrne, Cats in Literature, Elementary English, Vol. 51, No. 7 (October 1974), pp. 955-958

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Cat in Breakfast At Tiffany's, Truman Capote

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Cat in Breakfast At Tiffany's, Truman Capote

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Because Holly refuses to admit that she's emotionally connected to it, the nameless cat that she finds and takes into her home epitomizes her unwillingness to attach herself to her current life. Throughout the novella, Holly emphasizes that neither she nor the cat "belong" to each other, wanting everyone to know that she and the animal are both fiercely independent. In keeping with this mindset, she forces the cat to run away on the streets of Spanish Harlem just before she flees the country, ultimately trying to prove to herself that it will be easy to part with the most important aspects of her life in the United States. However, Holly immediately regrets this decision, realizing after driving several blocks that she and the cat truly did have a meaningful connection and that just because she never named the animal doesn't mean she wasn't emotionally attached to it. In turn, the cat represents the fact that people inevitably become connected to elements of their lives without even realizing it, since it's nearly impossible not to form emotional relationships while going through everyday life-no matter what kind of existence a person leads.

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Get everything you need to know about The Cat in Breakfast at Tiffany's. Analysis, related quotes, timeline.

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* A Project Gutenberg Canada Ebook *

This ebook is made available at no cost and with very few restrictions. These restrictions apply only if (1) you make a change in the ebook (other than alteration for different display devices), or (2) you are making commercial use of the ebook. If either of these conditions applies, please check gutenberg.ca/links/licence.html before proceeding.

This work is in the Canadian public domain, but may be under copyright in some countries. If you live outside Canada, check your country's copyright laws. If the book is under copyright in your country, do not download or redistribute this file.

Title: Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats
Author: Eliot, T. S. [Thomas Stearns] (1888-1965)
Date of first publication: September 1939
Edition used as base for this ebook: London: Faber and Faber, December 1948 [ninth impression]
Date first posted: 12 January 2016
Date last updated: 12 January 2016
Project Gutenberg Canada ebook #1295

This ebook was produced by Al Haines and Mark Akrigg

Publisher's Note:

As part of the conversion of the book to its new digital format, we have made certain minor adjustments in its layout.

Because of copyright considerations, the illustrations by Nicolas Bentley (1907-1978) have been omitted from this etext.

Printed in Great Britain by
Mardon, Son and Hall, Ltd., Bristol

PREFACE

This Book is respectfully dedicated to those friends who have assisted its composition by their encouragement, criticism and suggestions: and in particular to Mr. T. E. Faber, Miss Alison Tandy, Miss Susan Wolcott, Miss Susanna Morley, and the Man in White Spats.

O. P.

CONTENTS

THE NAMING OF CATS

THE OLD GUMBIE CAT

But when the day's hustle and bustle is done,
Then the Gumbie Cat's work is but hardly begun.
As she finds that the mice will not ever keep quiet,
She is sure it is due to irregular diet
And believing that nothing is done without trying,
She sets right to work with her baking and frying.
She makes them a mouse-cake of bread and dried peas,
And a beautiful fry of lean bacon and cheese.

So for Old Gumbie Cats let us now give three cheers-
On whom well-ordered households depend, it appears.

GROWLTIGER'S LAST STAND

THE RUM TUM TUGGER

The Rum Tum Tugger is a Curious Cat:
If you offer him pheasant he would rather have grouse,
If you put him in a house he would much prefer a flat,
If you put him in a flat then he'd rather have a house.
If you set him on a mouse then he only wants a rat,
If you set him on a rat then he'd rather chase a mouse.
Yes the Rum Tum Tugger is a Curious Cat-
And there isn't any call for me to shout it:
For he will do
As he do do
And there's no doing anything about it!

The Rum Tum Tugger is a terrible bore:
When you let him in, then he wants to be out;
He's always on the wrong side of every door,
And as soon as he's at home, then he'd like to get about.
He likes to lie in the bureau drawer,
But he makes such a fuss if he can't get out.
Yes the Rum Tum Tugger is a Curious Cat-
And it isn't any use for you to doubt it:
For he will do
As he do do
And there's no doing anything about it!

THE SONG OF THE JELLICLES

Jellicle Cats come out to-night,
Jellicle Cats come one come all:
The Jellicle Moon is shining bright-
Jellicles come to the Jellicle Ball.

MUNGOJERRIE AND RUMPELTEAZER

Mungojerrie and Rumpelteazer were a very notorious
couple of cats.
As knockabout clowns, quick-change comedians, tight-rope
walkers and acrobats
They had an extensive reputation. They made their home in
Victoria Grove-
That was merely their centre of operation, for they were
incurably given to rove.
They were very well known in Cornwall Gardens, in Launceston
Place and in Kensington Square-
They had really a little more reputation than a couple of cats
can very well bear.

If the area window was found ajar
And the basement looked like a field of war,
If a tile or two came loose on the roof,
Which presently ceased to be waterproof,
If the drawers were pulled out from the bedroom chests,
And you couldn't find one of your winter vests,
Or after supper one of the girls
Suddenly missed her Woolworth pearls:
Then the family would say: 'It's that horrible cat!
It was Mungojerrie-or Rumpelteazer!'-And most of the
time they left it at that.

Mungojerrie and Rumpelteazer had a very unusual gift of the gab.
They were highly efficient cat-burglars as well, and remarkably
smart at a smash-and-grab.
They made their home in Victoria Grove. They had no
regular occupation.
They were plausible fellows, and liked to engage a friendly
policeman in conversation.

When the family assembled for Sunday dinner,
With their minds made up that they wouldn't get thinner
On Argentine joint, potatoes and greens,
And the cook would appear from behind the scenes
And say in a voice that was broken with sorrow:
'I'm afraid you must wait and have dinner tomorrow!
For the joint has gone from the oven-like that!'
Then the family would say: 'It's that horrible cat!
It was Mungojerrie-or Rumpelteazer!'-And most of the
time they left it at that.

And when you heard a dining-room smash
Or up from the pantry there came a loud crash
Or down from the library came a loud ping
From a vase which was commonly said to be Ming-
Then the family would say: 'Now which was which cat?
It was Mungojerrie! AND Rumpelteazer!'-And there's
nothing at all to be done about that!

OLD DEUTERONOMY

OF THE AWEFULL BATTLE
OF THE PEKES AND THE POLLICLES

The Pekes and the Pollicles, everyone knows,
Are proud and implacable passionate foes;
It is always the same, wherever one goes.
And the Pugs and the Poms, although most people say
That they do not like fighting, yet once in a way,
They will now and again join in to the fray
And they
Bark bark bark bark
Bark bark BARK BARK
Until you can hear them all over the Park.

They did not advance, or exactly retreat,
But they glared at each other, and scraped their hind feet,
And started to
Bark bark bark bark
Bark bark BARK BARK
Until you could hear them all over the Park.

Now the Peke, although people may say what they please,
Is no British Dog, but a Heathen Chinese.
And so all the Pekes, when they heard the uproar,
Some came to the window, some came to the door;
There were surely a dozen, more likely a score.
And together they started to grumble and wheeze
In their huffery-snuffery Heathen Chinese.
But a terrible din is what Pollicles like,
For your Pollicle Dog is a dour Yorkshire tyke,
And his braw Scottish cousins are snappers and biters,
And every dog-jack of them notable fighters;
And so they stepped out, with their pipers in order,
Playing When the Blue Bonnets Came Over the Border.
Then the Pugs and the Poms held no longer aloof,
But some from the balcony, some from the roof,
Joined in
To the din
With a
Bark bark bark bark
Bark bark BARK BARK
Until you could hear them all over the Park.

And when the Police Dog returned to his beat,
There wasn't a single one left in the street.

MR. MISTOFFELEES

He is quiet and small, he is black
From his ears to the tip of his tail;
He can creep through the tiniest crack,
He can walk on the narrowest rail.
He can pick any card from a pack,
He is equally cunning with dice;
He is always deceiving you into believing
That he's only hunting for mice.
He can play any trick with a cork
Or a spoon and a bit of fish-paste;
If you look for a knife or a fork
And you think it is merely misplaced-
You have seen it one moment, and then it is gawn!
But you'll find it next week lying out on the lawn.
And we all say: OH!
Well I never!
Was there ever
A Cat so clever
As Magical Mr. Mistoffelees!

His manner is vague and aloof,
You would think there was nobody shyer-
But his voice has been heard on the roof
When he was curled up by the fire.
And he's sometimes been heard by the fire
When he was about on the roof-
(At least we all heard that somebody purred)
Which is incontestable proof
Of his singular magical powers:
And I have known the family to call
Him in from the garden for hours,
While he was asleep in the hall.
And not long ago this phenomenal Cat
Produced seven kittens right out of a hat!
And we all said: OH!
Well I never!
Did you ever
Know a Cat so clever
As Magical Mr. Mistoffelees!

MACAVITY: THE MYSTERY CAT

Macavity's a Mystery Cat: he's called the Hidden Paw-
For he's the master criminal who can defy the Law.
He's the bafflement of Scotland Yard, the Flying Squad's despair:
For when they reach the scene of crime- Macavity's not there!

Macavity, Macavity, there's no one like Macavity,
He's broken every human law, he breaks the law of gravity.
His powers of levitation would make a fakir stare,
And when you reach the scene of crime- Macavity's not there!
You may seek him in the basement, you may look up in the air-
But I tell you once and once again, Macavity's not there!

Macavity's a ginger cat, he's very tall and thin;
You would know him if you saw him, for his eyes are sunken in.
His brow is deeply lined with thought, his head is highly domed;
His coat is dusty from neglect, his whiskers are uncombed.
He sways his head from side to side, with movements like a snake;
And when you think he's half asleep, he's always wide awake.

Macavity, Macavity, there's no one like Macavity,
For he's a fiend in feline shape, a monster of depravity.
You may meet him in a by-street, you may see him in the square-
But when a crime's discovered, then Macavity's not there!

He's outwardly respectable. (They say he cheats at cards.)
And his footprints are not found in any file of Scotland Yard's.
And when the larder's looted, or the jewel-case is rifled,
Or when the milk is missing, or another Peke's been stifled,
Or the greenhouse glass is broken, and the trellis past repair-
Ay, there's the wonder of the thing! Macavity's not there!

And when the Foreign Office find a Treaty's gone astray,
Or the Admiralty lose some plans and drawings by the way,
There may be a scrap of paper in the hall or on the stair-
But it's useless to investigate- Macavity's not there!
And when the loss has been disclosed, the Secret Service say:
'It must have been Macavity!'-but he's a mile away.
You'll be sure to find him resting, or a-licking of his thumbs,
Or engaged in doing complicated long division sums.

GUS: THE THEATRE CAT

BUSTOPHER JONES: THE CAT ABOUT TOWN

Bustopher Jones is not skin and bones-
In fact, he's remarkably fat.
He doesn't haunt pubs-he has eight or nine clubs,
For he's the St. James's Street Cat!
He's the Cat we all greet as he walks down the street
In his coat of fastidious black:
No commonplace mousers have such well-cut trousers
Or such an impeccable back.
In the whole of St. James's the smartest of names is
The name of this Brummell of Cats;
And we're all of us proud to be nodded or bowed to
By Bustopher Jones in white spats!

His visits are occasional to the Senior Educational
And it is against the rules
For any one Cat to belong both to that
And the Joint Superior Schools.
For a similar reason, when game is in season
He is found, not at Fox's, but Blimp's;
He is frequently seen at the gay Stage and Screen
Which is famous for winkles and shrimps.
In the season of venison he gives his ben'son
To the Pothunter's succulent bones;
And just before noon's not a moment too soon
To drop in for a drink at the Drones.
When he's seen in a hurry there's probably curry
At the Siamese-or at the Glutton;
If he looks full of gloom then he's lunched at the Tomb
On cabbage, rice pudding and mutton.

So, much in this way, passes Bustopher's day-
At one club or another he's found.
It can be no surprise that under our eyes
He has grown unmistakably round.
He's a twenty-five pounder, or I am a bounder,
And he's putting on weight every day:
But he's so well preserved because he's observed
All his life a routine, so he'll say.
Or, to put it in rhyme: 'I shall last out my time'
Is the word of this stoutest of Cats.
It must and it shall be Spring in Pall Mall
While Bustopher Jones wears white spats!

SKIMBLESHANKS: THE RAILWAY CAT

THE AD-DRESSING OF CATS

So first, your memory I'll jog,
And say: A CAT IS NOT A DOG.

Again I must remind you that
A Dog's a Dog-A CAT'S A CAT.

With Cats, some say, one rule is true:
Don't speak till you are spoken to.
Myself, I do not hold with that-
I say, you should ad-dress a Cat.
But always keep in mind that he
Resents familiarity.
I bow, and taking off my hat,
Ad-dress him in this form: O CAT!
But if he is the Cat next door,
Whom I have often met before
(He comes to see me in my flat)
I greet him with an OOPS A CAT!
I think I've heard them call him James-
But we've not got so far as names.

So this is this, and that is that:
And there's how you AD-DRESS A CAT.

[End of Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats, by T. S. Eliot]

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Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats by T. S. Eliot, from Project Gutenberg Canada

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A Project Gutenberg Canada Ebook * This ebook is made available at no cost and with very few restrictions. These restrictions apply only if (1) you make a change in the ebook (other than alteration for different display devices), or (2) you are making commercial use of the ebook.

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(1915)- Charles Perrault- Auteursrecht onbekend

[De gelaarsde kat]

W AT ik jelui nu vertellen ga, is al heel, heel lang geleden gebeurd. Wel duizend jaar. En misschien nog wel langer.

Toen was er een oude molenaar en die molenaar had drie zoons.

Op zekeren dag liet de oude man hen alle drie bij zich in de kamer komen. En toen zei hij tegen hen: 'Jongens, ik heb jelui hier geroepen, omdat ik je iets heel belangrijks te vertellen heb. Zul jelui daar goed naar luisteren?'

'Ja, Vader,' zeiden de jongens.

'Nu dan: hier is een brief, dien ik met vijf lakken gesloten heb. Dezen brief mag jelui pas openmaken, als ik gestorven ben. En dat zal niet zoo lang meer duren, denk ik. Want ik ben oud en zwak; mijn handen beven en mijn voeten kunnen me haast niet meer dragen.

I N den brief staat, wat ik ieder van jelui heb toegedacht, wanneer ik er niet meer ben. Als jelui den brief zult hebben gelezen, weet jelui dus, wie den molen krijgt, en wie den ezel, en wie de kat. Beloof jelui me nu, den

brief niet eerder open te maken, dan ik gevraagd heb?'

'Ja, Vader,' zeiden de jongens en bedroefd gingen ze weer aan hun werk.

Niet lang daarna stierf de oude man en toen maakten de jongens den brief open.

En wat stond er in?

Er stond in geschreven, dat de oudste zoon den molen zou krijgen, de tweede zoon den ezel en de jongste zoon de kat.

Of de oudste zoon tevreden was met den molen?

Ja, heel tevreden. En hij zei: 'Met dien molen zal ik goed mijn brood kunnen verdienen.'

En de tweede zoon?

Die was óók erg tevreden.

D AT hoorden de lakeien en de koetsier van den Koning. Maar ook de Koning en de Prinses. De Koning liet dadelijk het rijtuig stilhouden en hij stak verschrikt zijn hoofd uit het portierraampje.

'Help! help!' hoorde hij roepen. 'Help! De Markies van Carabas verdrinkt!'

'Heb ik van m'n leven!' zei de Koning. ''t Is de kat met de mooie laarzen aan, die me zoo'n lekker konijntje en zulke lekkere patrijsjes heeft gebracht.'

Meteen sprong hij uit zijn koets en sprak tegen de lakeien: 'Gauw, gauw! Haal den Markies van Carabas uit 't water! Haast je, eer hij verdrinkt!'

De vier lakeien gingen vlug achter elkaar staan en hielden elkander met de handen stevig vast. Minet, die óók een handje helpen wilde, pakte den achtersten lakei stevig bij de slippen van zijn jas.

De voorste van de vier mannen reikte Hans nu de hand en toen samen aan 't trekken.

Maar toen Hans op het drogen was en zijn kleeren wilde aandoen, zag hij ze niet.

J A, daar had hij véél zin in en toen de Koning en de Prinses weer in de mooie koets waren gezeten, toen stapte hij óók in.

De Gelaarsde Kat keek haar meester door het raampje eens even aan. Ze knipoogde tegen hem, net alsof ze zeggen wilde: ''t Gaat goed zoo, maar 't moet nog veel beter worden!'

En daar ging de koets voort, met den Koning en de Prinses en Hans er in.

Maar Minet liep hard vooruit en zei tegen een

paar mannen, die op het land aan 't werk waren: 'Straks komt de Koning voorbij. Als hij jelui vraagt, van wien dit land is, dan moet jelui allemaal zeggen: van den Markies van Carabas!'

'Goed,' zeiden de mannen, 'we zullen 't doen.'

Toen liep Minet naar een korenveld, waar drie maaiers en een kleine jongen druk aan 't werk waren. En Minet zei: 'Straks komt de Koning voorbij. Als hij jelui vraagt, van wien dit korenveld is, moet jelui zeggen: van den Markies van Carabas!'

G OED,' zeiden de maaiers, 'we zullen 't doen.' Toen de Koning voorbij het land kwam, vroeg hij aan de mannen, die daar aan het werk waren, aan wien dat land behoorde. En hetzelfde vroeg hij even daarna aan de maaiers in het korenveld. En telkens kreeg hij ten antwoord: 'Van den Markies van Carabas!'

'Wel, wel,' dacht de Koning, 'die Markies van Carabas moet toch verschrikkelijk rijk wezen!'

Maar Minet was al weer verder gegaan.

Waarheen?

Naar een heel groot kasteel.

En wie woonde er in dat kasteel?

Een oude toovenaar.

Maar het was een bóóze toovenaar en 'n rechte schrok.

Minet trok aan de bel naast de poort van 't kasteel en vroeg aan den bediende, die opendeed, of hij den toovenaar even zou mogen spreken.

Ja, dat mocht - en Minet ging naar binnen.

De toovenaar was juist aan tafel gegaan en poes maakte een eerbiedige buiging voor hem.

D AAR kwam de koets aan, waar de Koning en de Prinses en Hans in zaten.

Poes wachtte nu, totdat de koets vóór het kasteel was en zei toen tegen den Koning: 'Koning, dit is het kasteel van den Markies van Carabas. Zou ik u en de Prinses mogen verzoeken, uit te stappen, en met mijn meester het middagmaal te gebruiken?'

'Heel graag!' zei de Koning en stapte uit.

Dit deden ook de Prinses en Hans.

'Wel, wel!' zei de Koning, eer hij de hooge stoep van het kasteel opging, 'wat een mooi gebouw is dat! Prachtig! prachtig! 't Lijkt wel een paleis!'

Nu, de Koning had gelijk: 't was een mooi gebouw.

En nu gingen de Koning en de Prinses en Hans, achter de Gelaarsde Kat aan, naar de eetzaal.

'Wel, wel!' zei de Koning, toen hij de gedekte tafel zag, waar zooveel lekkers op stond: 'dat ziet er hier goed uit! Meneer de Markies van Carabas, laten we samen eens klinken. Ik moet u zeggen, dat ik u dankbaar ben voor de vriendelijke ontvangst.'

H ANS nam zijn glas in de hand en stond op; maar nu raakte hij toch wel een beetje in verlegenheid en hij zei: 'Maar Koning, ik ben eigenlijk geen Markies en dit kasteel hoort óók niet aan mij...'

'Wat!?' vroeg de Koning verwonderd. 'Hebt u me dan een beetje gefopt?'

Toen nam de Gelaarsde Kat het woord en zei: 'Neen, lieve Koning; mijn meester niet, maar ik! Maar - ik heb het niet uit boosheid gedaan!'

W AAROM dàn?' vroeg toen de Koning.

Toen verhaalde de poes, dat zijn

meester een arme molenaarszoon was, die niets anders in de wereld bezat dan een kat; dat zijn oudste broer een molen had en zijn andere broereen ezel en dat zij uit medelijden met haar meester den Koning en de Prinses had gefopt.

De Koning keek eerst een poosje vóór zich en hij had rimpels in 't voorhoofd van 't nadenken. Maar eindelijk stond hij op en streek zich die rimpels weg.

Toen nam hij de Prinses bij de hand en zei tegen Hans: 'Luister, beste vriend. Ik begrijp nu, dat je een brave jonge man bent. En ik zie ook, dat mijn dochter veel van je

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[De gelaarsde kat], De gelaarsde kat, Charles Perrault - DBNL

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Op deze pagina lees je de tekst 'De gelaarsde kat' van Charles Perrault

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Our cat was raptured up to heaven. He'd never liked heights, so he tried to sink his claws into whatever invisible snake, giant hand, or eagle was causing him to rise in this manner, but he had no luck.

When he got to heaven, it was a large field. There were a lot of little pink things running around that he thought at first were mice. Then he saw God sitting in a tree. Angels were flying around with fluttering white wings; they were making sounds like doves. Every once in a while, God would reach out with its large furry paw and snatch one of them out of the air and crunch it up. The ground under the tree was littered with bitten-off angel wings.

Our cat went politely over to the tree.

Meow, said our cat.

Meow, said God. Actually it was more like a roar.

I always thought you were a cat, said our cat, but I wasn't sure.

In heaven all things are revealed, said God. This is the form in which I choose to appear to you.

I'm glad you aren't a dog, said our cat. Do you think I could have my testicles back?

Of course, said God. They're over behind that bush.

Our cat had always known his testicles must be somewhere. One day he'd woken up from a fairly bad dream and found them gone. He'd looked everywhere for them-under sofas, under beds, inside closets-and all the time, they were here, in heaven! He went over to the bush, and sure enough, there they were. They reattached themselves immediately.

Our cat was very pleased. Thank you, he said to God.

God was washing its elegant long whiskers. De rien, said God.

Would it be possible for me to help you catch some of those angels? said our cat.

You never liked heights, said God, stretching itself out along the branch, in the sunlight. I forgot to say there was sunlight.

True, said our cat. I never did. (He preferred to forget an episode with a fireman and a ladder.) Well, how about some of those mice?

They aren't mice, said God. But catch as many as you like. Don't kill them right away. Make them suffer.

You mean, play with them? said our cat. I used to get in trouble for that.

It's a question of semantics, said God. You won't get in trouble for that here.

Our cat chose to ignore this remark, as he did not know what "semantics" was. He did not intend to make a fool of himself. If they aren't mice, what are they? he said. Already, he'd pounced on one. He held it down under his paw. It was kicking and uttering tiny shrieks.

They're the souls of human beings who have been bad on earth, said God, half-closing its yellowy-green eyes. Now, if you don't mind, it's time for my nap.

What are they doing in heaven then? said our cat.

Our heaven is their hell, said God. I like a balanced universe.

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Our cat was raptured up to heaven. He'd never liked heights, so he tried to sink his claws into whatever invisible snake, giant hand, or eagle was causing him to rise in this manner, but he had no...

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Cat's Eye: Full Book Summary | SparkNotes

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A short summary of Margaret Atwood's Cat's Eye. This free synopsis covers all the crucial plot points of Cat's Eye.

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https://www.thegreatcat.org/the-cat-in-art-and-photos-2/cats-in-art-20th-century/leonor-fini-1907-1996-argentine/

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Leonor Fini (1907-1996, Argentine) was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina and raised in Trieste, Italy. At age 17 she moved to Paris where she became acquainted with many artists such as Max Ernst, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Picasso, and Salvador Dalí all of whom valued the cat's presence in art. Essentially a self-taught artist, after studying the Old Masters and learning anatomy from studying cadavers, Fini was invited to exhibit in New York at MOMA in 1936. Not just interested in painting, Fini produced many graphic designs and illustrations. She also designed costumes for theatre, opera, ballet, and film and even created a bottle for Schiaparelli's perfume Shocking.

Influenced by Jung and Freud, Fini's works reflect an interest in dreams, the unconscious, and the psychic metamorphosis of woman and cat/sphinx. However, because of her fierce independence, she refused to label herself as a Surrealist even though she exhibited alongside those involved in the Surrealist movement.

Both sphinxes and cats dominate many of her paintings. Her works celebrate beautiful independent women often posing with cats, or metamorphosing into them. By so doing, Fini taps into the ancient bond between cat and woman and the notion of woman as cat, the idea of transfiguration rooted in the cat goddess Bast's relationship with the Greek goddess Hecate. Fini's paintings focus on the complex relationship between the sexes with the female's domination of a passive and often androgynous lithe male.

Not only did Fini paint cats, but she also kept as many as 23,mostly Persians, as her pets. She is quoted as saying, "I've always preferred to live in a sort of community - A big house with my atelier and cats and friends..." Like any cat lover, she let her cats sleep with her and share her meals. Her guests never dared complain when she generously allowed them to walk over the dining room table in search of tasty tidbits. A friend recalled, "...the cats would come all around her; on the easel, on the bed, on the palate" whenever she painted. Some of her works were even identified by the stray cat hairs attached to the paint or the odd cat scratched canvas. Whenever she traveled to the Loire Valley for the summer, her cats accompanied her in their own car. A good friend of Brigitte Bardot, Fini was active in the French SPA and contributed some of her works to draw attention to the plight of strays. Fini owned over 50 cats during her lifetime and became distraught whenever one would get sick and never got used to losing one. She is known to have said, "In every way cats are the most perfect creatures on the face of the earth, except that their lives are too short."

Fini died in Paris in 1996; her career had spanned six decades.

Want to know more about the cat in art, history and literature? Then this is the book for you. Now available on Amazon in both paperback and Kindle formats.

Copyright secured by Digiprove © 2014 Laura Vocelle

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Leonor Fini (1907-1996, Argentine) - The Great Cat

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Leonor Fini (1907-1996, Argentine) was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina and raised in Trieste, Italy. At age 17 she moved to Paris where she became acquainted with many artists such as Max Ernst, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Picasso, and Salvador Dalí all of whom valued the cat's presence in art.

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Leonor Fini | The Strength of the Female Gaze

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"Leonor Fini: Theatre of Desire" with Lissa Rivera

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Leonor Fini was an artist of her own self-fashioned Surrealism, known for her bold self-portraits, unconventional even on Surrealist terms. Born in Argentina, her parents separated when she was just a baby and she moved to Trieste, Italy with her mother. The split was not amicable, and she spent the time with her mother dressing her up as a boy after an unsuccessful kidnapping attempt by her father.

She had no formal art training, partially due to her rebellious spirit that got her expelled from multiple schools, but studied independently as a child, reading from her uncle's library, and exploring art throughout Europe. Being brought up in Italy, she trained in the Renaissance and Mannerist conventions that emphasized proportion, balance, and ideal beauty, but was later fascinated by the Pre-Raphaelites, Gustave Klimt, and 15th century German and Flemish painters. She observed anatomy from visiting the Trieste morgue and observing the cadavers. She experienced rheumatic conjunctivitis as a teen, and was forced to wear bandages over both her eyes for several months. She credited this period of living in the dark for giving her the opportunity to form and visualize elaborate images in her imagination.

Leonor Fini in Arcachon, 1940.

She arrived in Paris in 1931, only 24, and quickly became associated with the Surrealists, though never considering herself as one since the leader Andre Breton held the misogynistic view that the role of the woman was as the muse and not the artist rubbed her the wrong way. Like the Surrealists, her work was inspired by the unconscious mind, however she broke from femme fatale depictions of women as symbols of the erotic and creative. Her paintings explored the power dynamic between men and women by inverting the canon. Instead painting passive women, she painted them in positions of power and the men as passive and androgynous.

Leonor Fini, Shepherdess over the Sphinxes, 1941.

One of the symbols she inverted was the sphinx. The sphinx was a fixed feature in her paintings, as in the works of other Surrealist artists. For Breton, the sphinx was part of his master-muse fantasy where the master was the male artist and the muse was a perpetually elusive woman, represented by the sphinx. Other Surrealists, like and , took the Freudian interpretation of the sphinx. In Greek mythology, the sphinx guarded city of Thebes, asking a riddle to allow travelers entry until she is met by Oedipus, who best her by correctly answering the riddle, and in turn, she throws herself off a rock. In this interpretation, the sphinx, which is both male and female, is a representation of forbidden sexuality.

Fini instead embraces the Egyptian sphinx, which guards the pyramids, a king rather than a problematic riddle. She is androgynous and benevolent, empowered by nature but also poised against civilization and violence. It is this sphinx that she imagines a powerful woman ruling over sphinxes with female heads. Shepherdess Ruling Over the Sphinxes in 1941. It is a piece about reidentification and an exercise of powers that have been lost by the contemporary woman. This painting was bought by Peggy Guggenheim in 1942 and exhibited in her Art of this Century Gallery and then again in An Exhibition by 31 Women in 1943.

This was partially due to Ernst, who was married to Guggenheim at the time, and his adoration of her work. He describes her style as "full of vertigo" and this piece in particular as "Miraculous plays of darkness and light are given ultimate expression in the pulsating pearly colors of this chimerical flesh, that resembles the bifid love-making of sphinxes." Guggenheim was jealous of Fini and Ernst's prior relationship, but could not deny her artistic genius.

Leonor Fini, Sphinx Amalburga, 1941.

In another piece, Sphinx Amalburga, Fini imagines herself as a sphinx. The sphinx here is a powerful woman, a self-portrait with Fini's head over a sphinx body. In her arms lies a nude male. This flipped the patriarchal Surrealist trope of powerful men and passive women. In her representations of the sphinx, she simultaneously plays into Surrealist imagery and questions them.She also represented male bodies in an unconventional way, emphasizing feminine qualities and celebrating androgyny towards the start of her career, eventually evolving into darker tones and a dreamlike style along with the rest of her work while still maintaining the eroticism. Her eroticism made her a polarizing figure, adored by the art and fashion crowd but outraging others. In 1936, the Daily Mail spoke of her two works that were in the International Surrealist Exposition of that year that were, at least for her, mildly erotic, saying they were "a couple of slaps on the face of decency that should not be allowed to pass unnoticed."

Fini was so dynamic. Her art expanded beyond the confines of flat paintings, working in mediums from costumes to book illustrations to furniture. She created designs for the Paris Opera, the Metropolitan Opera, the movie 8½ by Frederico Finelli, and Bridgette Bardot's gown for the Rothschilds' Ball. She illustrated Marquis de Sade's Juliette and the Sadean novel Histoire d'O. The female form was also present in her designs, including the bottle of Elsa Schaperelli's perfume "Shocking" which was shaped like a torso and a corset-shaped chair. Her love of cats flowed from the allegorical through the sphinxes in her paintings to the everyday through her 17 Persian cats that slept in her bed and ate at her dining room table. As much a socialite as she was an artist, she was known as the Queen of Paris, attending balls and making headlines for her ostentatious outfits. Known for her theatricality, her life was like a performance art piece, recorded by writer Jean Genet in his poetry and novels.

Leonor Fini, the Alcove/Self-Portrait with Nico Papatakis, 1941

Though she was recognized for her eccentrics and theatricality during her life, her work, as of late, has been sliding into obscurity, maybe due to her refusal to accept the Surrealist label and its male-dominated narrative. Her bohemian lifestyle of eccentricity and open sexuality has diverted attention away from her art. However, she, and the work of other female Surrealists like Marja Mallo, have recently come into the female consciousness. Her legacy has finally received her due from recent exhibitions at the Museum of Sex's exhibition, Leonor Fini: Theatre of Desire and an ode in Dior's 2018 couture collection which featured designs inspired by her party attire of feathers and boots.

Leonor Fini in feather outfit (left), dresses from Dior 2018 collection (right)

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Leonor Fini was an artist of her own self-fashioned Surrealism, known for her bold self-portraits, unconventional even on Surrealist terms.

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Les Demoiselles de la nuit | Les Archives du Spectacle

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Les Archives du Spectacle - Un moteur de recherche pour les arts de la scène (théâtre, danse, opéra…)

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Le Roi des chats (The King of Cats) - Musée cantonal des Beaux-Arts

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Balthus's self-portraits depict him with a series of assumed identities in which he never drops his mask. This 1935 portrait shows him standing in an elegant outfit, one hand holding his jacket lapel, the other on his hip. A large tabby cat is rubbing up against his leg.

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€840.00 / Sold Out

Les Mutantes - 1971 - 55,5 x 75,4 cm

Pour plus d'informations, contactez-nous :

[email protected]
01 55 35 09 00

For more informations, please contact us :

[email protected]
01 55 35 09 00

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Les Mutantes - 1971 - 55,5 x 75,4 cm Pour plus d'informations, contactez-nous : contact@leonor-fini.com 01 55 35 09 00 For more informations,...

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Beware the Cat (1561) is an English satire written by the printer's assistant and poet William Baldwin (sometimes called Gulielmus Baldwin), in early 1553. It has been claimed by some academics to be the first novel ever published in English of any kind.

The work was written in 1553, during the final months of the reign of King Edward VI, but was not published because the accession of Mary Tudor to the throne prevented it. Joseph Ritson's Bibliographia Poetica (1802) is the only authority for an edition dated 1561, which is probably an error. An edition from 1570 is now only known via a Victorian era transcript; a second 1570 edition survives only as a four-page fragment. There is also another edition, dated 1584. The work was dedicated to the courtier John Young.

The 1570 quarto edition is entitled: A MARVELOVS hystory intitulede, Beware the Cat. Conteynyng diuerse wounderfull and incredible matters. Very pleasant and mery to read. On publication in its 1570 edition it was subject to an anonymous poetic riposte of 56 lines, "A short Answere to the boke called: Beware the Cat", which rebukes the author for making fun of the narrator Master Gregory Streamer (who is not otherwise known to have really existed). Baldwin's book was published in Typographical Antiquities (1786) as a fine example of black-letter printing. It was also known in mid-Victorian times, since it was published by the Chetham Society in their volume Remains, Historical & Literary (1860). It received almost no attention from literary scholars, although William P. Holden produced an obscure edition in the original archaic English, issued from Connecticut College in 1963. A full scholarly edition only appeared in 1988 (edited by Ringler and Flachmann), after which the work has gained in popularity.

Baldwin included printed glosses in the margin beside his main text. These are sometimes simply illustrative, but at other times they satirize the narrator, Gregory Streamer, in ironic or humorous fashion.

The work employs a frame narrative set at the royal court during Christmas celebrations in 1552/53. That year Baldwin was employed as an actor and entertainer under George Ferrers, Master of the King's Pastimes. Baldwin creates a character, who is also named Baldwin. He joins Ferrers, someone called "master Willot," and "Master Streamer" (i.e., Gregory Streamer) in a fictionalized debate concerning the question of whether animals possess the capacity to reason. Streamer offers to persuade his interlocutors in the affirmative, and proceeds to deliver a monologue which constitutes the rest of the book. It is divided into three sections, or "orations."

Streamer's account describes his activities while lodging at the London printing house of John Day, a prominent Tudor printer. In the first part, he recounts a fictional conversation he witnessed at that lodging between a man from Staffordshire, someone called Thomas, an anonymous third speaker, and "Master Sherry," probably a fictionalized version of the Oxford academic Richard Sherry. The first tells the group that four decades earlier he had overheard from another person that that man had heard cats report the death of a cat called Grimalkin. Thomas says that thirty-three years ago he had been in Ireland, and he repeats a peasant's tale about the same Grimalkin, who had appeared seven years before that to an Irish man and his son, who had taken refuge in a church after going raiding. After devouring a sheep and cow, the cat eats the son, and the peasant kills him and escapes. The discussion turns to a debate on whether Grimalkin was in fact a disguised witch. The third speaker objects to the reasonableness of Thomas's story, and Master Sherry, the fourth interlocutor, asserts that he believes in the existence of witches, and says that the bishop of Alexandria had found a way to understand birds.

The second part of Streamer's account describes how he heard the mewing of cats outside his window and his search for a way to gain the ability to understand the language of cats. He consults a "book of secrets" which had been attributed to the thirteenth-century philosopher Albertus Magnus, and finds there a recipe to understand birds. Streamer modifies this recipe and acquires various animal organs and body parts, including those of a hedgehog, fox, rabbit, kite, and cat. He combines these into various kinds of food and drink, and after consuming them, attains his goal.

The third portion of the work constitutes its own frame story. Streamer overhears the group of cats speaking outside his window. They have gathered to consume decaying remains of dismembered body parts of executed traitors, which have been affixed above the city gate adjacent to Streamer's lodging. In fact, the cats constitute a feline tribunal, which Streamer overhears as it is in the process of trying a case against the cat Mouseslayer, who is alleged to have violated certain feline promiscuity laws. Streamer overhears Mouseslayer's monologue to the cat-court, in which she defends her conduct and gives an account of her life's story. It is this point in his book where Baldwin includes his harshest anti-Catholic satire. Internal references reveal that Mouseslayer's account takes place between the first half of 1549 and May 1551. During this time, Protestant reformers brought change to England's religious laws, but some resisted these efforts, at least according to this satire. Mouseslayer tells how she had witnessed forbidden Catholic rituals; her story incorporates antifeminist lore and ribald humor associated with the medieval genre of fabliaux (John N. King, Voices of the English Reformation (2004), p. 152.)

After Streamer completes his "oration", the narrative returns to Baldwin and the others at the royal court. The author-narrator delivers his "moral", a warning to "beware the cat," since cats can witness what happens behind closed doors.

Baldwin's use of dialogue is advanced for his time, the characters are clearly drawn, and the description of Tudor London is vivid. As a satire, the book is effective in criticizing religious practices which were out of favor during Edward's reign. The work also criticizes ostentatious and pompous forms of knowledge which are not based in fact. The 1584 edition of the text included a poem entitled 'T.K To the Reader' which underscores the anti-Catholic sentiment. The work is important for its sophisticated use of layered narration, its multiple narrators, and its satirical deployment of logic grounded in hearsay.

An abridged and rewritten version in modern English by David Haden, was published in his Tales of Lovecraftian Cats (2010) along with Haden's adaptations of public domain horror stories by other authors.

A one-hour performance of Beware the Cat was performed by the Royal Shakespeare Company at The Other Place, Stratford-upon-Avon, in 2019. It was brought to life by researchers at the University of Sheffield, Sheffield Hallam and Sussex, and included artwork by Penny McCarthy. Royal Shakespeare Company Stage Adaptation (RSC article), Royal Shakespeare Company Stage Adaptation (Guardian Newspaper)

Boehrer, Bruce (1 March 2009). "Gammer Gurton's Cat of Sorrows". English Literary Renaissance. 39 (2): 267-289. doi:10.1111/j.1475-6757.2009.01047.x. ISSN 1475-6757.

Bonahue, Edward T., Jr. (1 July 1994). ""I Know the Place and the Persons": The Play of Textual Frames in Baldwin's "Beware the Cat"". Studies in Philology. 91 (3): 283-300. ISSN 0039-3738. JSTOR 4174490.

Bowers, Terrence N. (1991). "The Production and Communication of Knowledge in William Baldwin's Beware the Cat: Toward a Typographic Culture". Criticism. 33 (1): 1-29. JSTOR 23113621.

Cox, Catherine I. (16 March 2015). "Plague like Cats". Explorations in Renaissance Culture. 41 (1): 1-29. doi:10.1163/23526963-04101001. ISSN 2352-6963.

Maslen, Robert (1 January 1999). "'The Cat Got Your Tongue': Pseudo-Translation, Conversion, and Control in William Baldwin's "Beware the Cat"". Translation and Literature. 8 (1): 3-27. ISSN 0968-1361. JSTOR 40339807.

Paradox, The (2 September 2018). Dream of a Thousand Cats. NOVEL: An Exploration of the Form and Power of Dreams and the Birth of a Revolution. Vol. 1. p. 13. ISBN 9780463228258.

Ringler, William A., Jr. (1 January 1979). ""Beware the Cat" and the Beginnings of English Fiction". Novel: A Forum on Fiction. 12 (2): 113-126. doi:10.2307/1345439. ISSN 0029-5132. JSTOR 1345439.

Baldwin, William. Beware the Cat. Ed. William A. Ringler, Jr., and Michael Flachmann. San Marino, CA: The Huntington Library, 1988.

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Beware the Cat (1561) is an English satire written by the printer's assistant and poet William Baldwin (sometimes called Gulielmus Baldwin), in early 1553. It has been claimed by some academics to be the first novel ever published in English of any kind.

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Published as a picture book by Atheneum, New York, 2004, and also printed in an earlier version in Australia's School Magazine, Aug. 1995

Young Peter Black was a good man, but everyone said he had one big fault. He loved to tell wild stories.

Peter was the sexton at the Church of St. Thomas the Believer, there in the little town of Tabby-on-Thames. He stayed in the cottage behind the church, right next to Father Allen's house. Many were the jobs he'd held before that, but with his wild stories, he'd managed to lose every one.

Father Allen had warned him. "Peter, this is the last job you're likely to get in this town. If you want to keep it, your wild stories must stop!"

One night Peter couldn't sleep. He tossed and he turned and at last got up to make himself some tea. But when he glanced out his window, he saw the windows of the church ablaze with light.

"What in the world . . . ?" muttered Peter. "There shouldn't be anyone there, this time of night. And how'd they get in, anyway?"

Peter pulled on a coat, crossed the yard, and quietly unlocked the back door. As he crept through the vestry, he heard a sound from the church. Meow, meow . . . .

"Sounds like a cat," murmured Peter. "But I never knew a cat to light a candle."

He peered around the curtain hung at the church entrance, and what he saw made him gasp. There was not one cat, but hundreds of cats, of every size and coloring. They filled the pews, and all of them sat upright just like people.

On the steps to the altar, a big black cat-the biggest cat Peter had ever seen-was kneeling with his head bowed. Standing above him with paws upraised was a black cat in bishop's robes, intoning, "Meow, meow . . . ."

An altar kitten approached with a velvet pillow on which lay a small golden crown. The bishop lifted the crown and solemnly placed it on the kneeling cat's head.

The church exploded with cries of Meow, meow! Peter didn't wait to see more. He raced through the vestry and back to his cottage, where he jumped into bed and stayed trembling under the covers till morning.

Bright and early, Peter was over to see Father Allen. The priest was reading in the conservatory, his black cat Tom curled up on his lap.

"Good morning, Peter," said the priest. "What brings you here so early?"

"Father Allen, I came to tell you about something terribly weird in the church last night. I saw these lights and I went over to check, and I heard a meow-"

"Meow," said the priest's cat, Tom.

"Yes, just like that," said Peter. "And when I looked, there were hundreds of cats in the church. And there was this one big black cat, and he was kneeling in front, and their bishop was crowning him-"

Father Allen was looking at him sternly. "Peter, do you remember what I told you about wild stories?"

"Of course I do, Father."

"Then let's have no more of this, all right?"

"But, Father-"

"Listen, Peter, I have an errand for you. Will you walk over to Brambleton today and deliver a message to Father Rowan?"

Peter would and Peter did. But he didn't get to it till late afternoon, and by the time he started home, it was already dusk. He decided to take a shortcut cross-country.

He was halfway through a meadow and up to a stand of trees when he heard a commotion. From beyond the meadow came the barking of a dog and a chorus of Meow, meow.

"Is it those cats again?" said Peter in alarm, ducking behind a tree.

An Irish setter raced into the meadow, barking for all it was worth. Right behind were a dozen cats with bows and arrows, riding-yes, riding- on the backs of bridled foxes. The big black cat at their head was wearing a golden crown.

At first Peter thought the setter was leading the cats on the trail of their quarry. Then he realized, No, they're hunting the dog!

As the cat with the crown rode by a large rock, his fox tripped and stumbled and the cat went flying. He struck his head on the rock and lay still.

The other cats gave up the chase and crowded anxiously around him. Then with loud, mournful cries of Meow, meow, they laid him over the back of his fox and returned the way they had come.

Peter stood shaking till they were out of sight, then nipped off home as fast as his wobbly legs would bear him. He found Father Allen at supper, with his cat, Tom, nibbling from a dish by the table.

"Father, it's about those cats. I was crossing a meadow, and I heard a dog barking and all these cats crying meow-"

"Meow," said Tom.

"Yes, just like that," said Peter. "And then the cats came riding into the meadow on foxes, all of them chasing this dog, but then the cat with the crown fell off and hit his head and . . . and . . . and . . . . Father, why's Tom staring at me like that?"

Father Allen put down his fork. "Peter, I've warned you often enough about your wild stories. Now, if you come to me talking like this again, I'm going to have to let you go. Do you understand?"

"But, Father, it's no story. I swear it!"

" That's enough, Peter! Now, I'm sorry to ask you so late, but I have another chore for you. Mrs. Pennyweather has passed on suddenly, and tomorrow's the funeral. I need you to dig her grave-tonight."

So it was that Peter was digging in the graveyard by the light of the full moon. It was hard work, and he had to keep resting, and it wasn't till right around midnight that he finished.

Just as he was about to climb out, he heard a distant Meow, then again, Meow, and again, Meow.

"It's the cats!" declared Peter. He scrunched down in the grave, then carefully peered over the edge.

Coming across the graveyard was the black bishop cat, and behind him were six more black cats, carrying on their shoulders a small coffin. The box was covered with a pall of black velvet, and sitting on top was the golden crown that Peter had seen twice before.

The cats walked slowly and solemnly, and at every third step cried, Meow. Their path went right by the grave where Peter hid, and when they were but a few feet away, the bishop held up a paw for a halt. Then he turned and stared straight at Peter and spoke.

"Tell Tom Tildrum . . . that Tim Toldrum's . . . dead. "

Then he lowered his paw, and the cats walked on, and at every third step cried, Meow.

Well, Peter scrambled out of that grave and bolted for Father Allen's. He pounded on the door, shouting, "Father! Father! Let me in!"

At last the door opened and Father Allen stood there sleepily in his nightshirt. "Peter, what's going on?

"Let me in, Father, please, and I'll tell you."

Father Allen led him into the library, where Tom yawned and stretched on his cat bed. The priest lit a lamp.

"Now, what's this all about, Peter?"

"Father, you've got to believe me. I was out digging Mrs. Pennyweather's grave when I heard a meow-"

"Meow," said Tom.

"Yes, just like that," said Peter. "And I looked and saw seven black cats, and one was the bishop, and the others were carrying a coffin with a crown, and they came right up next to me, and the bishop stopped them and stared at me just like Tom there and . . . and . . . and . . . . Father, why's Tom staring at me like that?"

"Peter-" began the priest.

"But, Father, I tell you, he spoke to me! And he gave me a message. I'm to tell Tom Tildrum that Tim Toldrum's dead. But how can I tell Tom Tildrum that Tim Toldrum's dead when I don't know who Tom Tildrum is?"

"Peter, this is the last straw. I've warned you again and again-"

"Father! Look at Tom! Look at Tom!"

Tom was swaying, and Tom was swelling, and Tom was standing on his two hind legs, and then Tom spoke.
"What? Tim Toldrum dead? Then I'm the King o' the Cats!"
Tom leaped toward the fireplace, and with a single Meow, he bounded up the chimney and was gone.

Never to be seen again.

* * *

Of course, after that, there was no more talk of Peter losing his job. But as for Father Allen . . . .

Well, Father Allen was a good man, but everyone said he had one big fault. He loved to tell wild stories-about Tom, the King o' the Cats.
Meow.
About the Story

This is a much expanded retelling of the story as told by the great English folklorist Joseph Jacobs in his More English Fairy Tales (1894). Other versions are found in Ireland and in continental Europe, where the cats may be replaced by other creatures-even tree spirits or werewolves. The oldest known version features the Greek demigod Pan, as related by Plutarch in the first century A.D. and found in his Moralia.

All special features are at www.aaronshep.com/extras.

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An English folktale, told by Aaron Shepard.

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Louis Wain | Family of cats in a garden | MutualArt

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View Family of cats in a garden Attributed to Wain Louis; watercolour; 9 x 10.75; Signed; Edition. Access more artwork lots and estimated & realized auction prices on MutualArt.

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Louis William Wain was born on 5 August 1860. His father was a traveller for a textile firm: his mother, of French emigré descent, designed church embroideries and carpets. He studied at the West London School of Art, and began his career as an art journalist, drawing many different subjects. However, it was for his pictures of cats that he eventually became famous. From the 1880s until the outbreak of the first world war, the 'Louis Wain cat' was hugely popular. Appearing in vast quantities in prints, books, magazines, post-cards and annuals, Wain's cats are to be found engaging in every form of human activity - from playing cricket, digging up roads, and riding bicycles, to parading the latest fashions at Ascot and making pompous after-dinner speeches at the club.

Despite his fame Wain never made much money, being highly impractical in business matters, and during the war he began to suffer real poverty. Always known as being somewhat eccentric, he now began to develop signs of serious mental disorder. Previously a mild and gentle man, he became increasingly suspicious, abusive, and occasionally even violent towards his sisters with whom he lived.

Eventually, in June 1924, he was certified insane and committed to Springfield Hospital (the former Surrey County Asylum) at Tooting. 'Discovered' here the following year, he was transferred to Bethlem Hospital after a campaign by admirers of his work, including the Prime Minister Ramsey Macdonald. Macdonald later arranged for the Wain sisters to receive a small Civil List pension in recognition of their brother's services to popular art.

In 1930 Louis Wain was transferred to Napsbury Hospital, near St Albans. He continued drawing until near the end of his life, and exhibitions of his work were held in London in 1931 and 1937, as well as a memorial exhibition shortly after his death. He died at Napsbury on 4 July 1939.

Artwork

Bethlem Museum of the Mind has 55 pieces of artwork for Louis Wain.

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Louis William Wain was born on 5 August 1860. His father was a traveller for a textile firm: his mother, of French emigré descent, designed church embroideries and carpets. He studied at the West London School of Art, and began his career as an art journalist, drawing many different subjects.

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Leonor Fini and her Cats: The Subjects of her Work and the Objects of her Affection. She adored cats. Everyone around her adored cats. Artist