![]() ![]() Stylish 18th-century French courtesans began keeping kitties as cuddly pets, while major potteries started making cat figurines. The French adaptation of the Italian fairy tale, Puss in Boots, which portrays an upright, talking cat as a clever helpmate to his owner, was published in 1697 and quickly became popular across the continent. Slowly, attitudes toward cats softened around Europe. ![]() This early 1900s postcard, “I Feel Rather Upset,” published by Ernest Nister, features Louis Wain’s beloved anthropomorphic cartoon cats. In England, squalling cats were set afire in a large wicker effigy at 17th-century celebration honoring an anniversary of Queen Elizabeth I’s rule. Felines were so reviled that live cats were frequently burned at Christian festivals. In Medieval times, Europeans blamed cats, thought to be witches’ familiars, for disease, infertility, drought, and crop failure, even though many farmers and merchants quietly let cats kill rodents. Before Wain, cats were still largely treated with suspicion and contempt in the United Kingdom and the United States. Without Wain, there’d be no Felix, no Cat in the Hat, no Garfield, no Keyboard Cat, no International Cat Video Festival. It is, however, appropriate that Louis Wain be a meme in our Age of the Internet Cat. Similarly, there’s no proof the famous cat lover was afflicted with Toxoplasma gondii, a parasite some cats carry that, despite popular assumptions, has not been proven to alter human behavior. It’s true that the drawings were made in the 1920s and 1930s, after the artist had been committed to a mental hospital at age 63.īut the meme’s assertion that the vivid kaleidoscopic patterns and fractals he drew reflected the progression of his mental illness, now thought to be schizophrenia, doesn’t hold up under scrutiny. If you search his name online, you’ll find the “ famous series” of eight colorful drawings, at least six of which feature a cat, looking progressively more “psychedelic,” long before taking psychedelic drugs was a fad. Louis Wain-an illustrator who boosted the popularity of cats at the turn of the 20th century-is a meme. Louis Wain painted this cat in gouache sometime after he was committed to a mental asylum. Its fur patterns are formed by lines resembling Gothic decoration. ![]()
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