To go back to the origins of this amalgam between cat and femininity, we have to go back some 4000 years, in the heart of ancient Egypt and its multiple deities. Among the best known is the discreet Bastet, represented with a woman’s body and a cat’s head. Now it turns out that this goddess is none other than the goddess of fertility, motherhood – she is sometimes represented with multiple breasts – and the hearth. She is therefore the protector of women! But Bastet is not the only goddess mixing cat and woman: in Norse mythology, the beautiful Freyja, goddess of love, beauty and fertility, is represented in a chariot pulled by two cats, named Cupid and Tenderness.
Crossed destinies
Far from the cult devoted to cats among the Egyptians, the Romans did not appreciate the company of these felines imported from across the Mediterranean, first of all because at the time, in Rome, the birds were very fashion as pets. The cat being since its origins particularly fond of birds, this is not to its advantage. Moreover, the proliferation of cats is attributed to unbridled sexuality on the part of felines; they are then very badly seen. So much so that the Romans use the word “pussy”, in Latin felisor “little pussy”, happyto designate prostitutes, whom they consider to be women of little virtue.
The bad reputation of cats, together with that of women, is found in the Middle Ages, with the sad fate reserved for witches, accused of being responsible for all evils, such as spreading the black plague, to which cats are very often attached. , especially black cats. These two curious scapegoats raise the question of whether cat hatred and misogyny might not have sometimes been confused…
Women and cats, muses of painters
The many paintings mixing women and felines, more or less sensual, make it possible to grasp the aspect of seduction and fascination that the animal exerts on the creators. Among these works, one of the oldest dates back to 1525, with Portrait of young woman holding a cat, by the Italian painter Bacchiacca. Much later, we can cite Matisse, a cat lover, and his Young Girl with a Black CatRenoir and his woman with cat. Picasso, he does not hesitate to represent a naked woman playing with a black cat in her Nude reclining with a cat.
a whole poem
If felines are a recurring subject in literature, the feline-feminine ambiguity has amused some great authors. Let us cite for example the poem “Le chat” by Charles Baudelaire, which, concealed under the description of a beautiful feline, is none other than an erotic poem. With a voluptuous admiration for the animal, almost bewitched, the poet seems confused, halfway between a humanization of the cat or an animalization of the woman, dominating her as he would tame an animal. Reading between the lines of this poem, we understand that Baudelaire describes the stages of a sensual night.
movie star catwoman
When you think of a heroine as seductive as feline, Catwoman comes to mind quickly. This character indeed has many attractions for the cinema: ambivalent, arousing sometimes desire, sometimes fear, as docile as it is arrogant, charming as it is unpredictable, with long nails which evoke claws… Catwoman perfectly mixes what fascinates both in the cat and in the woman – obviously playing with her lascivious growls and her suppleness highlighted by her latex outfit.
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