I know these Painted Cat images have been making the rounds for a while now, but my Mom is dead so I never got the email. One of my StumbleUpon buddies, PetLvr has more of the images on his blog-though he seems to think some are Photoshopped. These days you can do all kinds of stuff with hair, so I tend to believe they are really painted cats.
As the joke goes, it’s a nice painted pussy, but is it art? Over the years I have owned a number of cats and found that nature itself does a pretty good job of cat body art. This kind of cat grooming is clearly one of those more money than sense kind of things. They story goes that it cost $5,000 for one of these cat paint jobs. A painted cat has to be repainted every 3 months as the cat’s hair grows out. I couldn’t find the actual artist who does this stuff, but it sounds like a good business to go into.
Seems to me that cat licking might be a problem here, either in taking the paint off or making the cat ill. But then, it must be some kind of dye, not really cat paint. These cat photos can have an interesting effect on people-from ah that’s cute, to how stupid is that, to it’s all fake.
A few years ago there was a book called Why Cats Paint, in which the silliness of cats smearing paint on canvas was explored. That book was a success so they followed it up with Why Paint Cats which features all the odd and interesting photos of painted cats. Cats that are painted have an interesting beauty. Some of the more subtle hand painted cat designs almost look natural and exotic instead of sideshow freakish.
I can see this kind of cat care taking over the cat rescue operations of the country-bring home a cat that looks like a star of Broadway Cats. Of course, you might need to give you cat a bit of catnip to get them in the proper mood for these furry tattoos. Cats painted on to look like black velvet painting is kind of silly. But I guess if you have the money and want to a painted pet cat, why not?
Painted cats don’t seem to be hurt by all this, well, except when they are laughed at by their non painted cat friends.
