#7. Meouch (aka "Feline groovy")
The giclee print for sale on the site named “Meouch” was published in an article called “Feline groovy- or how to learn to love the animal in you”.
No prizes for spotting the difference between the giclee print version of “Meouch” and the illustration version of the painting (both available to view when you enlarge the image below). The presence of the two cats, one caged and one leaping, will become apparent in the article synopsis below, but in retrospect I felt that the leaping cat distracted the viewers’ attention from the centaur, and threw the whole image slightly out of balance. I think the painting works just as well as an illustration to the article with just the caged cat
The writer owns two black cats, siblings, and the time of year had come around once again for their injections. To help ease the hardship of the ordeal he places the cage within which he will carry them to the vet in the middle of the living room floor so they can fimiliarise themselves with it but he knows that they will still return home sulking for days, avoid him and regard him as the devil incarnate. The article then jumps to a brief paragraph about Chiron, the centaur king, where we learn that he was a wise healer and philosopher who taught the ancient heroes Greek mythology but was unable to heal himself of a wound inflicted on his animal half by an arrow. Instead of making him bitter and cantankerous his stoicism developed his wisdom and passion. Being immortal and so having no end to the constant pain from is injury to look forward in the guise of death Chiron swaps places with a mortal named Prometheus, in doing so reconciles the civilised half of him with the wounded animal side, which, the writer suggests, reflects the 21st century human condition. As much as we try, or biological or animals traits will not remain subdued. Like his cats they can not be reasoned with, to them a needle is a needle, pain is pain. He feels that too often society’s primitive needs are being neglected to detrimental effect. Lack of hugging, touching, physical contact, the need to rest, breed, etc. are all contributing factors to depression. He talks about depression generally, then specifically his bout the previous year, and concludes by observing that unlike his cats we as humans have the capacity to take meaning from suffering, like Chiron, to better ourselves through it.
In this day and age of the nanny state and our growing fear of litigation I thought that should a centaur decide to walk among us he would be forced to wear a riding helmet. My youngest brother works in the Health and Safety sector of local government, so the hat detail was also a wee dig at him. As it happened I remembered seeing a photograph of some fat fella on horse-back in the previous weekend’s newspaper so used it as reference.
