What In The Hell Animal Is This, Please

by Mallory Ortberg · September 3, 2015

As you know, I spend an immoderate amount of time trawling Wikimedia Commons for old-timey paintings what I can crack jokes on, so I’ve seen my fair share of imperfectly-rendered animals, but this one here has taken the majority of my cakes.

what animal

WHAT IS IT.

Screen Shot 2015-09-02 at 11.13.37 PM

I know what you’re thinking, it’s a Weird Cat, and that’s what I was leaning toward for a while, but it can’t be, it just can’t.

Arguments for it being a Weird Cat:

– yes okay those are definitely, kind of, cat paws (WHY ARE THERE ONLY THREE??)

– and I’ll grant you there’s a fair amount of Cattishness in the head-region of the beast

– END OF LIST

Arguments for it being definitely Not A Cat but some sort of I Don’t Know What It Is:

– NO TAIL, NOT EVEN A WISP OF A TAIL

– What is happening with its BODY??? it’s MASSIVE in proportion to its head/feet extremities. And I don’t mean it’s just a fat housecat (which I don’t imagine were super common back in the hundreds of fifteen, just on account of PEOPLE were still starving to death at the time, but honestly I don’t want to make a lot of sweeping claims about historical animal weight), there’s a serious MUSCLE LUMP on its back right behind the head? It has like, a BADGER BODY, or like one of those really muscular dogs you see pictures of sometimes

– It kind of looks like a weird, squat wolf? Is this what wolverines look like?

– I searched “weird animals Europe” but I didn’t really see anything that looked like it, if that’s helpful

So far my other guesses are: muscular rabbit, badger thing, wolverine, NOT A CAT, ????

[Image via]

Tags: , , , ,

Related Posts

Mallory Ortberg

Mallory Ortberg

More from Mallory Ortberg →

186 Comments

  1. Frumiosa +246

    Morbidly obese cat who has eaten all of that poor woman’s clothes. And the “paw” on the right is actually its tail.

    1. Munchlette_Belle +31

      Ugh I glanced at the comments and somehow missed that you pointed out the tail, so I went ahead and also pointed out the tail. My bad.

      I am also on Team Enormous Cat.

      2. mialro12 +14

        It’s a perspective. Due to its extreme fatness, the hind legs are not visible, since we’re looking at this cat from the front.

      3. Lady_Honoria +16

        It’s doing that loaf-cat thing where they hide all their legs under their fur. It’s just getting up from that (hence grumpy expression, cats HATE to get up) and hasn’t exposed its hinders yet)

    6. Just_Bob +17

      I think it must also have eaten the bow for the viola da gamba. Maybe that’s why it looks so grumpy.

  2. wakatopatopa +149

    Totally a cat. A cat with some horrible thyroid condition, its belly full of tumors. (This happened to a cat I had.)

    Painter obvs finished the lady and was like “welp I’m real tired of idealized realism, fuck it, here comes a giant nightmare cat, I will say it signifies SATAN”

  3. queenofbithynia +340

    Did they fatten up ermines before making ermine stoles out of them? because it is white like an ermine and I judge its ears to be ermine-like.

    ha but seriously it’s a cat that ate like twelve rabbits because it is the naked lady’s favorite cat

    addendum: it was considered immoral in the 1500s for cats to pose for portraits so they would bring in a low, immoral animal like a wolverine or an opera dancer, or a wolverine that was an opera dancer, for the body, and then they’d paint the cat’s portrait onto the head, much like you see Michelangelo’s women painted from models with big manly musculature because of the mores of the day. not a lot of people know this, cats had a pretty restricted social sphere back then and were also not allowed to perform cat parts on stage, those were all performed by other mammals whose morals were not felt to be put at risk by theater life.

    5. wakatopatopa +24

      I was very team cat until the word ermine was mentioned. DEFINITELY a fat ermine.

      I’m looking forward to another suggestion so I can hop on that bandwagon.

  4. 30Litresof +54

    It’s defo a cat Mallory, calm down and look at some photos of real things so you can remember what stuff looks like. Or I guess you could like, go outside or something but that might be taking it too far.

  5. mzMorg +63

    I agree with morbidly obese cat. And the woman is looking on her Samsung phone/iPad mini for “low-calorie cat-food delivery service.”

  6. literarysara +75

    Well, since the lady is naked with a lute and a book, I’ma guess that we’re supposed to read her as a symbol of vanity and the weird cat as a symbol of her swollen, misshapen soul.
    So: not a wolverine but a warning. Naked ladies might be beautiful to look at but you should feel terrible for looking at them because something something sin.

    1. caatness +43

      “Not A Wolverine But A Warning”: mind if I name my blog that? Because that name is screaming for a blog. It will be a whistle-blower about bulk food items in bins that have nearly spoiled, recipes that have incorrect measurements, and six-fingered men selling used car seats that have been in undisclosed accidents while babies were not present.

      1. literarysara +11

        If you maintain a blog on those precise topics then you may name it after my first born child if you like!
        (I have no first-born child)

  7. jfgameosity +105

    Actually, I think there are 2 paws and the thing on the far right is its tail. The other 2 appendages have toes, while the third is curved and toeless. I think the other 2 paws are hidden by the perspective and general fatness of the cat (but really, are we here to fat shame a cat?)
    I think the cat is rubenesque.

    1. bighairnoheart +16

      I am always here to fatshame cats. (Says the woman who rechristened her mother’s perfectly adequately named cat, Boudicca, Fat Boo.)

      Though in my defense…
      she makes a rather portly, though terrifying, warrior queen.

  8. newglasses +67

    Catweasel. They are now extinct.

    Seconding the motion that the ‘paw’ on the right is its tail.

    Even though it is a catweasel, my cats, if looked at from above, will have that odd muscle lump and two lumps thing going. They are not even particularly fat, or muscular, it’s some odd thing their skin does when pushed up against their shoulder blades (the two lumps). I’d try to take a photo of it, but a camera in my hands is the sign for cats to request many pettings. Why look at them if I am not inclined to pet them?

    1. Perdita McLeod +20

      Camera in my hands = a new thing for my cats to rub their faces on = blurry out-of-focus shots of half a cat’s head.

    2. caatness +13

      This is my logic as well. Why look at me if not for pettings? Except, I take it a step beyond and go to, why are you even alive if not to shower me with attention? My significant other politely disagrees. We’re still negotiating, but I will be the victor.

      Cats are so wise. The catweasel, less so.

    3. luzanda +5

      Yes! Caweasel is what I started calling it in my head.
      But the nice person who went with fat scary ermine cat also made a fair point.

    4. Lady_Honoria +10

      Somehow my cat knows the difference between ‘holding phone to text’ and ‘holding phone to take photo of adorable and/or hilarious thing my cat is doing’, and will flee if he sees the latter.

      1. tanaise +3

        MY CAT TOO! I had an utterly adorable cat-sleeping-between-rottie-legs photo set up, which basically would have been enough to get me all the fame on the internet, and as I picked up my phone and turned towards them, the cat woke up and was all “Hooray, it’s me time!” and so the photo is of a fluffy cat tail leaving a slightly terrified looking rottie.

  10. Either_Ada +38

    Poor lady. Two of her three props echo her junk, as drawn and figuratively.

    (Unless that book is her yum folder, then it’s 3 for 3.)

      1. Either_Ada +15

        NO DON’T.

        It was a joke about another commenter’s pile of links to hotness from yesterday’s Idris Elba–I mean–Link Roundup.

    1. irishbreakfasttime +52

      ok I just finished reading Margaret Atwood’s The Year of the Flood and this is absolutely a terrifying spliced hybrid with a portmanteau/corporate branding name, like a WoolKat ™ or a Knittycat (also tm).

      3. Lady_Honoria +11

        Every time I see a pigeon now my brain goes ‘pigoooon’ which is 1) not what that is and 2) not the intended takeaway from those books. THANKS FOR NOTHING, BRAIN

  12. betsymore +54

    It’s the little-known Umbrian three-legged sheep-cat. Renowned for their soft wool and general laziness.

    1. dakimel +29

      It’s the laziness, really, that leads to their renown. The Tuscan sheep-cats had far silkier wool, but those beasties could run like the wind and were as adept at climbing as your modern day domestic short-hair faced with a bookcase with breakable things on the top shelf.

      So sheep-cat-herds made much of the Umbrian wool, because all they needed to do at shearing time was open a window on a sunny day and await the crowds of Umbrian sheep-cats who would lie there being shorn. As long as no clouds blocked their sun-baths, it was really the easiest shearing for leagues around.

  13. KappamakiFawkes +24

    It’s either a weirdly painted sullen cat with its hind legs hidden by its supremely un-catlike girth and a tail weirdly drawn into the side so that it doesn’t look like a two-legged puffball except that it still kind of does OR it’s a jaguarundi or coati, the standard go-to’s for “weird mammal that nobody recognizes.”

  15. Merripat +52

    Maybe it’s this sheep from Australia that got lost and grew 40 kilo of wool due to not being sheared.

  16. walrathem +21

    I think it’s an angora cat. A cat bred for its fur to be used to knit things. I’ve never heard of such a beast actually existing, but why not? People knit with cat hair now and who knows what kind of cat breeds have been lost to time?

    1. Just_Bob +31

      I was going to say, it looks alarmingly like one of my cats, who is very likely a Turkish angora. As for the size and proportions of the cat in the painting, I can only say this: we named our cat after a goddess of the moon, and she has responded by developing a physique that is best described as “waxing gibbous.”

      1. Natalie +18

        Names are actually a leading cause of cat obesity. We named one of ours Lux, and he decided that it was short for Deluxe. Either that, or occasionally being called Luxembourg led him to believe he should be the size of a small country.

        1. tanaise +1

          Not just obesity! Cat names also lead to evilness, annoyingness, and irony. Darwin was always exploring, and Oke (short for Karaoke) talks to himself a lot, and the cat we named Basal, for the least amount of energy necessary to live, developed hyperthyroid problems. and really, never ever name your cat for tricksters. the cat I named after a (fictitious, even) trickster god was just about the evilest kitten ever. (And all kittens are evil, so it’s a high bar.) (he outgrew it, thankfully, and became an awesome cat.)

          Irony, thy name is cat. (Or possibly vice versa)

  17. Dr. Awkward +10

    According to my cat-expert husband, it DOES have a tail! Isn’t the rightmost appendage (from our perspective) actually not a leg but a curling tail? Of course, the Mystery of the Other Two Legs remains unsolved, unless they are somehow hidden behind its weird massive body…

    1. irishbreakfasttime +35

      Is it catloafing but from a weird perspective angle? Catloafing does add like five pounds of cat despite the disappearance of feets.

  18. bighairnoheart +51

    It looks suspiciously like my sister’s cat. Little cat head? Check. Bull neck? Check. Tiny pin paws? Check. Massive body? Check. Probable desire to kill all humans? Check.

    1. psinistra +3

      OMG I also have this cat. Is it ginger and does it have needle teeth which it only shows in a sinister and deliciously satisfying yawn?

  19. irishbreakfasttime +31

    tbh at that time in history I would’ve wanted my cat to be fat & muscular, on account of its catching and eating all the plague rats in the town.

  20. Munchlette_Belle +5

    I think that the thing to the side that looks like a third paw at first glance is actually a tail.

    So either it has no back paws, or its back paws are obscured by its massive body.

    2. celery +42

      Did you vote for really fat stoat specifically so you could use that image? (This would be a perfectly valid reason, as that is the best image on the internet)

    3. Alluvial_Fan +12

      I have wondered what a stoat is since I read Watership Down when I was 10. Which was a long, long time ago.

      Thank you.

      1. Perdita McLeod +56

        Stoats, weasels, ferrets, ermines, martens, grisons, badgers, otters, minks, sables, tayras, fishers, polecats: they are all minor variations and sizes of the same weird-shaped animal that is made entirely of shenanigans. Mustelidae! It’s my favorite family of animals. (OH and ALSO wolverines, the fiercest of mustelids.)

        2. Lady_Honoria +8

          ‘The fiercest of mustelids’ is also a great blog name. It could be a comics criticism blog!

    4. drladybusiness +43

      If I’ve learned one thing from watching Sir David Attenborough specials*, it is that stoats will FUCK YOU UP

      *I’ve learned so many things, he is a gift from god

      1. rolotomassi5 +20

        My happy place is any episode where he goes to explore the deep ocean. The creatures down there and his astonishment in describing them is so invigorating.

      2. Lady_Honoria +26

        Have you watched the one with the pebble toad that lives on the side of a mountain, whose adaptive escape mechanism is to freak out, jump off the mountain, and go all stiff so it bounces down the side of the mountain?

        I’ve never identified with an animal so strongly in my LIFE.

    5. thejcar +45

      Could this have been the first sighting of that all-important mythical figure, Ta-Nehisi STOATS?? (I still think about that immortal post probs a couple times a month)

  24. Sean_Sullivan +53

    Theory: it’s supposed to look messed up. Hans Baldung, the artist, was known for painting weird stuff:

    He was responsible for introducing supernatural and erotic themes into German art. He often depicted witches, also a local interest: Strasbourg’s humanists studied witchcraft and its bishop was charged with ferreting out witches. His most characteristic paintings are fairly small in scale; a series of puzzling, often erotic allegories and mythological works.
    Possibly the cat is supposed to be a demon or familiar; so Baldung, who displays a reasonable grasp of the theories of perspective elsewhere, consciously inverted those principles to make the cat look deeply wrong.

  25. MilesofMountain +28

    Bleached wolverine, definitely bleached wolverine. Actually, I just felt like posting these photos of a wolverine being cute:


  28. alula_auburn +34

    I don’t know, but it reminds me of my niece seeing a Yale bulldog logo on an old shirt of my brother’s and asking “Does it want to eat me?”

  30. cosetthetable +22

    Mallory, don’t you HAVE a cat? Shouldn’t you be able to recognize one?

    …. Is, perhaps, your current cat defective?????

  31. emmastanfordx +11

    Please start providing citations for these images. I know it spoils the joke a little, but it’s irresponsible not to.

    1. malloryelis +18

      Oh, thanks for the reminder! I actually always do cite the images at the bottom of every art post, but I was distracted by the horror of this beast. It’s there now.

      1. bighairnoheart +17

        Both cat and sheets are my sister’s but I will accept that love regardless. (From what I understand, said sheets were later pissed on by said bullcat in a fit of pique when his dinner was late.)

  34. KateS +12

    A horrible, spoiled, grotesquely bloated cat that has eaten several previous owners. She had better watch out, she looks pretty succulent.

  35. britomartian +28

    Real talk: that’s a lot like what my cat looked like before we realised that he does not have the right temperament to be free-fed. Except that my cat is piebald and splotchy like a children’s-book cow, and also doesn’t generally consort with nude lutenists.

    1. octopoda +4

      We also have a piebald splotchy kitty with no self-control when it comes to food! (he also tries to bat away our other cats and take their food too). He looks not too dissimilar to this.

  38. chasgoose +29

    I just wanted to put it out there that my cat doesn’t have a tail (we adopted him off the street and whatever happened to him before us resulted in his tail being so damaged that his nerves were exposed, it would have taken so long to heal, during which time our cat would be in constant excruciating pain that our vet told us the most humane course of action would be to cut it off. He’s been way happier ever since) CAT IDENTITY DOES NOT REQUIRE TAILS.

    Also, the answer is SHEEP.

    2. octopoda +15

      Our new kitten had to have a leg amputated for similar reasons, and now uses his tail as a pseudo-leg.

        1. octopoda +2

          Not to imply he like, walks around on it, but he props himself up with it when he sits and stuff.

  39. Hellianne +26

    Most pet cats in the U.S. today are neutered before puberty. They probably didn’t do that in the Renaissance. I’ve seen a few tomcats that got neutered later and then were kept as pets. They were very muscular! Start with a breed that tends to be bulkier (like a Maine Coon), leave his testicles in place, give him a pampered life…. Well, I think that painting could be a fair representation of a cat. Or at least as fair as the representation of that woman– I have questions about the relative lengths of her femurs.

  40. celery +10

    Oh man, at first when I looked at that painting, I was really confused why this animal took the cake, because it looked like a pretty normal cat to me, especially by some of the animals in paintings in these art roundups! But I just had one of those weird perspective-altering moments like the duckrabbit picture where you suddenly see the duck after only being able to see the rabbit. And it’s *weird.* So now I understand.

  41. Bryan Bingham +15

    I believe it is a cat. I have seen many cats that looked quite similar from the appropriate angle of view. The instrument is a treble viola da gamba, not a lute. It is unusual too, the tone holes are far too low and somewhat small. No bow is visible. Gambas were kind of new but popular so it is possible this is from life and the example wouldn’t play particularly well. It is also possible that the book she is reading is actually a part-book with music printed on it — I can’t really make it out but it looks like it could be a set of running figures very common in the music of day.

  42. caatness +49

    Tangentially related, I have an enormous grey cat who is very muscular and still sleekly cat-like, but, you know, HUGE. And eerily dog-like. Or dude-like. Chris Evans as a cat, really. When someone comes by to install cable or repair a thing or do some stuff, when the cat comes into the room, they usually flinch and/or do a doubletake before laughing nervously. In order to quell his nervousness, one guy kept saying over and over, “That sure is a big grey cat, there.” At regular intervals said cat would knock over his tool pouch and wander away with a pair of pliers in butch solidarity.

    1. sokkysinging +14

      I had a very similar large grey cat! He liked to zoom behind tradespeople like the alien in Alien, and they would jump and say, “Was that your dog?!”
      Aww I miss my giant cat 🙁

      1. caatness +10

        Good on your cat for copping that Alien move. Well-played, GreyCat. I am sorry you miss your dudegreycat. They are excessively like-able. *hug*

        1. sokkysinging +7

          Thank you 🙂 May you long enjoy the company of your LargeGreyDudeCat! Surely a breed of its own 🙂

    3. robotneedslove +23

      Oh your cat. The elevator repairman who comes to our building from time to time has a dog who wears a workman’s vest and carries pliers in her mouth. Butch solidarity!

      My cat is also enormous (25 lbs of mostly muscle) and he also scares lots of people, including men, and I relish it. He is legit scary though, because he alternates between being a needy pile of cuddles and one mean motherfucker.

    4. TimTamGirl +11

      The last time we had someone doing work on the house, I came home to find him the object of our animals’ rapt attention. The dog thought this fella was the second coming, and they are *buds* now. But the cat… I don’t know what, but the contractor said, in a slightly strangled tone, that Buster ‘wasn’t afraid like most cats. At all. Not at *all*’, and it was clearly that Something Had Happened that was Never To Be Spoken Of. Big boofy boycats FTW.

  45. Kay +11

    It’s not a lute, y’all, it s a viola da gamba. There’s symmetry here, see? The instrument with catgut strings and the very large cat from which said strings could be made. Actually, most strings were lamb, but it’s still not a sheep.

    1. queenofbithynia +6

      I have read that catgut strings were not just rarely but never made from actual cats. Is this true?? please answer yes on behalf of History.

      signed, still traumatized from cataloging books bound in pony one time

      1. Just_Bob +6

        My understanding is that “catgut” should be “kit gut” . . . “kit” being an archaic colloquial term for a fiddle or other bowed stringed instrument. Generally speaking, gut strings are and have been made from sheep intestine.

  46. gregm91436 +32

    That is a fox.

    There were three other people in the original painting.

    The fox ate them.

    By this, I do not mean “the real-life fox, while posing, ate three real-life models.” NO. THE PAINTING-FOX ATE THE PAINTING PEOPLE. AND NOW IT’S COMING FOR US. WHAT HAVE YOU DONE, MALLORY. WHAT HAVE YOU DONE. ALL HAIL FAT PAINTING-FOX AND PLEASE DO NOT EAT ME.

  47. alicia +57

    *pushes glasses up onto forehead, coughs with gravitas*

    Perhaps it is a predecessor to the modern cat, in the way that an aurochs is to a modern cow. Aurochs survived until 1627, so urkatzen (or so I have named this species) could easily still have been roaming Europe at the time this was painted.

  48. witabif +2

    i’m p sure it’s just a badly drawn cat, but also it does have a tail, the ‘leg’ on the right is coming from the back of the body. the other legs are hiding behind all that… cat, i bet.

  50. Miss Catherine

    Good on your cat for copping that Alien move. Well-played, GreyCat. I am sorry you miss your dudegreycat. They are excessively like-able. *hug*

    1. alicia +6

      Someone PLEASE photoshop that second picture to take out the cat tree and add in something else. Pleassssssse.

    2. Ellen w. +1

      Bless you for sharing this picture. I snort-laughed and my cat is annoyed about that bit it was worth it.

  55. panchakahq +6

    Surely it’s a classical allusion — to Aesop’s cautionary tale of a ‘bison in cat’s clothing’?

  56. janekathy1 +4

    Mallory, don’t listen to the naysayers. That is EXACTLY the thought progression I had upon viewing this animal.

    And, in light of

    -WHY ARE THERE ONLY THREE??
    -What is happening with its BODY???
    -Is this what wolverines look like?

    trule the only reasonable, if tentative, conclusion is
    muscular rabbit, badger thing, wolverine, NOT A CAT, ????

  58. sidthecat +1

    I’ve chanced to look at a lot of medieval art lately, and I’d say that it’s a big white cat with only its front feet showing. That elongated organ to the right, I’m pretty sure is a tail. Cats are harder to draw than you might think – even Leonardo’s are a bit unpleasing.

  59. mssmartypants +1

    Mallory, listen to Beth and janelee. You are right. That Is Not A Cat. We love you. – Team Stoat.

  61. maryoftheassumptions +6

    It’s a cat that was initially sketched from above (hence the amount of back and the absence of back feet, etc) but then put into the painting as if it was being seen straight-on, which makes for epic perspective fail.

  62. Jill T +3

    I am in favor of fat-shaming cats (but only cats), because they don’t care. If you say it in a nice voice, they think you’re complimenting them.

  64. Margaret +3

    It is a medieval chimera – part cat and part sheep. If you learn it’s ways, you will find a metaphor for a Godly life.

  65. Daniel Hughes

    It has a tail. The curved furry appendage all the way on the right is the tail (note how different the end looks as compared to the two front paws). It is a cat. It’s just not rendered well.

  67. Kat

    Eh, he was near Canberra in winter – it snowed there a couple of weeks ago. Poor dude, though, his life was in danger.

  73. trace

    definitely a cat. the extremity on the right is its tail, and only the forepaws are visible due to its MASSIVE CHEST and HEAD. i had a near feral cat who had a muscular face and shoulders like those, from fighting neighborhood dogs, possibly eating them.

  75. labernstein +1

    I’m going for morbidly obese cat who is fed up with owner’s viola da gamba playing which takes owner away from true vocation of paying attention to cat, who seeks compensation in food. (Hey, it happens.) The cat has already eaten the bow.