Cats in Art: "Twelfth Night" (Teniers)

From my continuing weekly Sunday series of cats in art. I'm using some ideas from the coffee table book, The Cat in Art, by Stefano Zuffi.

 Image credit here.   Click on image to enlarge.

Twelfth Night, David Teniers the Younger, 1634-40, oil on canvas, 27" x 23", held by Museo Del Prado, Madrid, Spain.

Zuffi's words:

Teniers liked merry crowds of people and often set his scenes in inns that were far from refined...Amid the general descent into chaos, the cat [see lower right center] does not lose its customary calm.  Positioned under the very chair of the evening's mock king, it knows perfectly well that this is an opportunity to grab a juicy morsel, even at the cost of the odd inadvertent kick.

One could draw several parallels with ultrarunning...our scenes, too, are often far from refined, and while aid stations often offer tasty morsels, one may suffer an inadvertent kick from a disgruntled volunteer or competitor.