On Cats

“the ideal of calm exists in a sitting cat.”

Georges-Louis Leclerc, the Comte de Buffon, once joked that all cats lead double lives. They’re independent, spirited, and amusingly indifferent. But what really goes through a cat’s head? As Moncrif once joked, “in a cat one posesses an amusing (but untrustworthy)¹ friend.”

Consider the cat below, in a painting, by the French artist Jean-Baptiste Oudry, titled “The Cat and the Monkey”. We see a cat and a monkey working together to pull roasted chestnuts out of the fire.

The painting is based on Lafontaine’s fable “The Cat and the Monkey”.

The story goes like this: A monkey convinces a cat to help him retrieve chestnuts from the fire. In so doing the cat burns her paws on the coals, whilst the monkey enjoys the tasy treats.

It’s from this story that the French derive the idiom Tirer les marrons du feu, meaning when you become someone’s dupe (literally, “to pull the chestnuts from the fire.”). In Although it has fallen out of common usage, the English expression “being the cat’s paw” derives from this same story.

Cats were often used as allegorical symbols in 18th century Art. They were frequently depicted as symbols of (female) vanity, independence, luxury, and curiosity. But what makes Jean-Baptiste Oudry’s cats stand out is how full of life they are. Consider, for example, this marvelous sketch, titled “Cat meowing” (early 1700s).

Moncrif, in his book Les Chats, argued that “cats do not like to represent; all that has an air of subjection is repugnant to that independence to which they are born.” What he meant is that cats, in their seeming indifference, represent calm and selfsufficiency, what one might call the feline ideal.

As Jules Renard once wrote, “the ideal of calm exists in a sitting cat.”

I’m not so sure that cats are necessarily calm, nor ideal. But Oudry’s paintings show a love and affection for cats, that seek to represent them as artistic subjects worthy of consideration in their own right. And for that they are precious. And they will no doubt resonate with anyone who shares their household with a cat. As the saying goes, dogs have owners, but cats have staff.

Julian

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