“For I will consider my Cat Jeoffry.
For he is the servant of the Living God duly and daily serving him.
For at the first glance of the glory of God in the East he worships in his way.”

From Jubliate Agno by Anglican poet Christopher Smart. A friend of Samuel Johnson, he wrote the poem whilst confined in a lunatic asylum due to heavy debts and alleged “religious mania”

What is it about cats, iconoclastic art and the madhouse? Painter and Bethlem patient Louis Wain was also cat crazy, producing unusual but commercially successful art almost entirely about cats.

Wain may or may not have been schizophrenic or just highly autistic, but he appears to have had a breakdown following his wife's slow death by cancer. In that time he and her drew much comfort from their cat Peter, which seems to have sparked his obsessive love of cats.

Dogs are a more obvious source of comfort and company for many, but they are essentially extroverts that you take for walks, go hunting with or just bring to the pub. Cats appeal to something else, special to invalids, prisoners and those in mourning and distress.