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A few decades ago, before the Toxoplasma gondii, which causes toxoplasmosis, could also affect humans, people who owned cats were labeled "crazy." Just as today there are those who share their drawings of anthropomorphic cats through the Internet, the English of the Victorian era were also able to see some somewhat controversial representations of the illustrator Louis wain, whose drawings were included in magazines of the time, children's books and on postcards.
This man believed that he suffered from schizophrenia, and in fact, he did not have a very happy life, because just three years after he married a woman named Emily Richardson, a cancerous tumor separated them forever. The couple at that time had a black and white cat, Peter, of which Wain did not separate.
Wain was born in London in 1860, and attended the London School of Western Art. After working for a time as a teacher, he became a freelance illustrator. And he was a cat lover. So much so that these animals would go on to define his career. A career that would not be without controversy, since it drew these felines dressed in clothes, playing golf, reading a book... something that was not normal in those times.
Despite everything, his work was very popular, as illustrated by the hundreds of children's books, and his newspaper comic strips that he left in New York. One of his admirers was HG Wells, the celebrated science fiction author.
Even after his death in 1939, his drawings still attract our attention today. The psychiatrist Walter Maclay was one of the first to study them, believing that art was a window into the patient's mind. For decades it was accepted that Wain was an artist between »cute and crazy». Later, in 1966, the New York Times wrote an article about his paintings with the subtitle 'The Progress of a Disease, a famous series of paintings by Louis Wain, a London illustrator who succumbed to schizophrenia in middle age, reflects the mental deterioration of the artist ».
Without a doubt, the cats that Wain had throughout his life were exceptional companions.