I'll take you through what's on the Museum of Non-Primate Art site, examine the corresponding book, and offer you my thoughts on the subject. Please read on. I hope all cat-lovers and folks-against-pretentious-art-critics, and anyone with a healthy sense of humor will get a kick out of my article.

The “Museum"

The only source online about feline aesthetic expression:The Museum of Non-Primate Art (MONPA). It has a “wing" dedicated to “Why Cats Paint." There are also sections on “Why Cats Dance" and “Bird Art." The site offers an online cat art gallery, a brief history of cat painting, tips on how you can encourage your cat to paint, methods for determining your cat's creative potential, and 2 video clips of a documentary in production about painting cats, featuring a cat artist at work.

About MONPA:
Art historian and animal philanthropist Dr. Peter Husard founded the Museum of Non-Primate Art in the mid 1970’s in England, and he and a team of experts studied various subjects such as the digging pattern of moles and the flying formations of birds as performance art. Currently, about half of their resources are dedicated to studying arts created by the domestic cat.

Although there are ‘numerous’ branches of the MONPA throughout the world, their facilities are purely dedicated to research and are not open to the public.

The Book

To start, there is a book on feline aesthetics, the only one of its kind, still in print in paperback, by Burton Silver and Heather Busch.

Why Cats Paint: A Theory of Feline Aesthetics

The book claims the first documentation of feline art was when archaeologists excavated rolled papyrus scrolls with clear paw marks in Egypt. Besides the history of feline art, the book profiles some notable cat artists and critiques their work, lavishly illustrated with photographs by Heather Busch.

About the Authors (from amazon.com):
Burton Silver is a well-known New Zealand inventor and writer with a fascination for subjects outside the mainstream. He has more than ten books to his credit, with subjects ranging from fringe sports, non-primate art, and the aesthetics of avian dejecta. Silver has a keen interest in animal intelligence. He makes his home in New Zealand.

Heather Busch has been a visual artist for nearly 30 years and is drawn to perceptions and paradigms that expand and entertain her mind. She has a fine arts degree in sculpture and has become internationally recognized for her paintings and photography. She lives in New Zealand.

Why Paint Cats: The Ethics of Feline Aesthetics

They also have a book and a 2006 calendar on Why Paint Cats: using cats as a canvas.

Burton Silver has also written a book with MONPA founder Peter Hansard, called “What Bird Did That?" It’s a motorist’s guide to identifying bird dejecta..that’s bird poop...on one’s windshield. You can buy it at Barnes & Noble.com . Silver, Busch, and Hansard, together and apart, have penned some other interesting-sounding books, which I won’t get into here. You can search for their books on Barnes & Noble or Amazon.

Hang on a minute! Don’t get too excited about handing your kitty a paintbrush. Not all cats paint, in the same way that not all humans are artistically inclined. MONPA.com states that only about 0.001% of cats will actually put paint on their paws and apply it to a surface. That's just not encouraging at all.

How Can I Tell if My Cat is the Next Jackson Pollock & Just Needs Encouragement?

Monpa.com can help you out! They say that one sign that cats may have creative expression is if they enjoy watching television. OK, that makes sense. Painting or drawing involves converting 3-dimensional objects into 2-dimensional form. It's been documented that even some humans (shamanic people living away from modern society) are incapable of understanding two dimensional representations. For example, they did not understand that a picture of an elephant represented the animal itself. They only understood an elephant if they saw a real one, and perhaps only translated it through its relative size, smell, etc. In all seriousness, this phenomenon seems to exist in felines as well, since there are DVDs for cats. Some cats react to photographs, television and their reflections in the mirror, whereas many (like my cats) do not.

Alternately, you can try and find the out of print Test Your Cat's Creative Intelligence: Eighteen Easy-To-Use Test Cards to Verify Your Cat's Artistic Ability

Other indications your cat may be artistic can be found in the frequently asked questions section of the MONPA website.

According to the museum, the best way to encourage your cat to paint is to leave a tub of non-toxic scented acrylic paint with a board near the litter box. Cats use marking of their urine and feces to mark their territory, so apparently this instinctual urge may connect to any creative feelings…

A very interesting study (also shown in the photographs in the book) show that cats may be susceptible to Invertism. When cats draw something from life, they draw it upside down, as if they were a camera obscura. without a mirror. Vermeer would have been impressed, indeed.

Before you leave monpa.com, go ahead and apply for a scholarship or research grant. Those of you who are dying to study "psychomotor disturbances including cerebral dysphoria and cephalagia in immature Spanish cats following flamenco shoulder dancing" can finally get some funding!

Now that you've read all of that it's plain to see that...

It’s All A Hoax!

If what you've just read and the concept itself doesn’t give itself away, here are a few more reasons why one can tell this is a rather elaborate, albeit clever, tongue-in-cheek extravaganza.

First off, there is not much out there online for the feline art enthusiast to digest. If cats, dogs, horses, elephants, etc. are being artistic as much as monpa.com says, I daresay there would be many a gallery popping up online where proud pet owners display their pets’ works.

• It is a well known fact that cats were very highly esteemed in Ancient Egypt. At one point, killing a cat was punishable by death, and there were many feline gods, amongst them Bastet, a cat-headed goddess. However, all the details regarding the history of feline art in Why Cats Paint: A Theory of Feline Aesthetics are bogus.

• There was no papyrus scroll found with paw prints on them, and the “Aperia Cats" were never excavated by “Professor Peter Sivinty." The book says the papyrus scroll is “on loan" from “Bodhead Library" in Oxford. No such library exits. They say the embalmed cats are in the “Phakat Museum" in Cairo – no such museum! It’s likely to be a clever twist on the feline Egyptian war god “Pakhet."
• Tip: For some real background on cats in Ancient Egypt, read this succinct article in the Tour Egypt Monthly Online Magazine, or for more serious reading see The Cat In Ancient Egypt by Jaromir Malek.
• Monpa.com doesn’t offer any physical addresses of its ‘numerous’ branches.
• The site features two video clips of a documentary in production about painting cats, but the cat’s face is never shown clearly, and something seems unnatural with the way the paw moves. It's still really cute, so check it out.
• MONPA says they do not exhibit their works. A museum, by definition, is “an institution devoted to the procurement, care, study, and display of objects of lasting interest or value; also : a place where objects are exhibited" according to Merriam-Webster online’s definition. However, they are giving out research grants to those who want to design an interactive exhibit for children to dance with stuffed cat animals to practice for the real deal.
• Just check out their Acknowledgements page. Friends of Spider Art? Jensen Action Fund for Artistically Challenged Canines? Small Rodent Art Achievement Award Foundation? LOL!
• Also, see their pages on upcoming exhibitions such as "Termites: Their Art & Architecture"... and sponsored expeditions. such as "Cat Charmers...Biomusicologist, David Parsons will undertake another seven month expedition to Tibet in order to work with the monastic cat charmers of Chokpuri and Lhasa." You've got to give these guys some credit for originality.

There are many others, but those were the most interesting for me.

What if...?

I think most of us cat-lovers would find it very whimsical if our cats could draw and paint and 'sculpt.' When the little buggers tear up our designer curtains and shred our brand new leather couches from Bloomingdales, it was actually self-expression. It was mischief in the name of art! Well, who can get angry at that? You could just sell the "art work" to MOMA and use the cash to buy new stuff.

It is clear that cats are incredibly intelligent animals, so maybe it’s not too far-fetched to be led to believe they have creative abilities? So, for the sake of argument, what if this was the real thing? After all…

• I searched snopes.com, the leading site uncovering urban myths, but nothing. I emailed them the topic, so I’ll keep you posted on whether they decide to pursue it.
• I also searched the Museum of Hoaxes. Another dead end.
• Finger - ahem, paw - paint, and a canvas aren't usual cat supplies that most cats have access to. Who knows what untapped talent there is out there. You could have an undiscovered Purrcasso, Remeowr, or a Catavaggio in your home.
• There has been more bizarre things labeled as art. Take a look at some of the performance art today, and what's being exhibited today in modern art. I am a great art lover and do not mean to poke fun at modern art in general. But there are a few pieces that come up which renders analyzing bird poo as art - see the Bird Art Wing on monpa.com - quite normal in comparison.

Finally, one should not underestimate the intelligence of animals. If intelligence is measured by brain size, Bottle-nosed dolphins have more brain mass than humans, and their cerebral cortex is larger than that of humans. So maybe dolphins are the smartest beings on earth. It's a bit egotistical to assume that humans are the most intelligent species on earth. Think about it: at one point in history, the smartest men in the world thought the world was flat. We’ve used our so-called intelligence to stomp across the planet, creating tools of mass destruction and exhausting the planet’s resources, ruining the very balance of nature that our lives depend on, endangering our offspring and their offspring and so forth. Does that make us so clever after all?

In Conclusion

Even if you knew it was a hoax from the get-go, and you're shaking your head at why there's even an article about this, aren't you the smarty pants! Just kidding.

Yes, I thought the MONPA site was real at first glance. Yes, I can be very gullible! However, my prosaic conclusion is that the Museum of Non-Primate Art is a very funny hoax, along with the books. I’d be delighted to be proven wrong, as that would make this world even more interesting and cats even more awesome, if that’s possible. For me, cats are funny and engaging enough just being themselves, without making abstract paintings. But I invite you to visit monpa.com and draw your own conclusions and have a few laughs along the way. I do try to keep an open mind. Perhaps cats can paint. They just choose not to, as they have better things to do and despise getting their paws dirty. Cats have their secrets…isn’t there a tiny possibility this is one of them?

Copyright © Juli Kobayashi, Seven Musketeers Corporation. This article may not be reprinted without written permission.