Although Wikipedia makes no mention whatsoever of Marc Chagall’s love of cats, they play a major part in many of his paintings. They are shown as companions and symbolic of women and domesticity according to one specialist. It seems that Chagall’s love of cats is undeniable. And there is a connection between cats and women. I wrote an essay about it because there’s lots of paintings with cats and women together. In a positive way there are similarities between these two species or that’s what it looks like or it’s what some people think. In the ‘woke’ era I have to point out that this is not intended to be sexist.
Marc Chagall extended his love of cats to a painting in which he transformed a cat into a woman. It’s called “The Cat Transformed into a Woman”. I guess it would be. The experts believe that he painted it between 1928-31. Looking at the painting as a layperson i.e. not a specialist, the head shape is a bit odd, isn’t it? And the face doesn’t look much like a cat either. It seemed like the top of the head has been badly injured because of the nasty accident. But then again, it’s not meant to be realistic, is it? It’s a kind of fantasy, I guess. It is quite a compelling painting.
He created the painting to illustrate La Fontaine’s ‘Fables’. Fables are short stories conveying a moral and they typically include an animal as a character. This painting, with the original and French title “La Chatte métamorphosée en Femme”, I’m told, illustrates the story of a man who so adored his cat that he was able to turn her into a woman and marry her. He believed that she would be the perfect wife as a cat-woman.
However, it went wrong because he realised that he couldn’t change her in every respect. As a woman with a cat’s mind, she chased mice! It got me thinking as to whether it is a good idea to transform your wife into a cat! It’s not by the way. It would never work out at all or as planned. Although some women (and men) prefer to live with a cat or cats than with a person. And there are advantages. Cats are more reliable than people to start with.
A couple of online writers, Kali Lenhoof and Richard J Sloup, penned a piece entitled “Five Reasons Having a Girlfriend Is like Having a Cat”. They propose that there are five aspects of feline and female human behaviour which is similar, the first of which is that you will find hair everywhere! One of the big drawbacks for people who might be considering adopting a cat is that they know that there will be quite a lot of hair lying around the home. It’s true there is, but you get used to it to the point where you hardly see it.
When you hoover your home, you find little balls of fine hair which have been blown into the corners like tumbleweed being blown down a deserted street of a deserted town. Other similarities between cats and women are that they expect food to be precisely to their liking, there are great similarities when sleeping with them in that they both provide “interesting challenges”. You also have to be careful how you show affection and they both react in the same way when you return home from work.
The showing affection similarity is an interesting one because I am sure most cat owners understand it. Cats are particular about how you show affection because they like being petted but in the right places and for the right amount of time. I guess you could use the same words to describe a woman’s preferences but perhaps I’m being flippant.
As for returning home from work, I think that’s wrong because my cat has always loved it when I return home from work although I am now retired. The authors of the article say that women respond to their human guardian returning home from work by asking for praise and to be fed and cuddled. And of course, they mean that cats also respond in this way. I’m not sure it’s completely right but the feeding bit probably is. When I come home my cat wants his prawns and he asks for them in a very positive and insistent way. It’s more about habit than an actual desire to eat them because sometimes it doesn’t.
The title could be about transforming your cat into a girlfriend or your wife into a cat.
SOME PAGES ON FELINE GREETING BEHAVIOR:
