Cats in Art: Rest in Peace, Tizzy

Departing from my normal script here to bide farewell to our Tizzy, who died at age 12 over the winter.  I guess she just ran out of lives, not because she lived hard and fast, but according to her personality, she just kinda moseyed off into the hereafter (and cancer propelled her along).

Couple of years ago I posted the post below.  The original link is here.

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Sunday, November 2, 2014

Cats in Art: My Very Own Renaissance Kitty

UPDATED--See bottom of post!

I was sitting on the recliner the other day.  Tizzy, who had been on my chest getting stroked and petted, either got too warm or had had enough cat love, and went to lay at the bottom of the recliner.  She likes the spot where the footrest comes up: it makes a slightly V-shaped "bed" to lay in.

As the sun shone on Tizzy, she looked exactly to me as though she were a Renaissance kitty.  I had my camera within reach and snapped this image:

[image credit Gary]

Why do I refer to her as a Renaissance kitty?  See any parallels with this image?

[image credit Amazon]

This is the cover of the Zuffi book that has served as inspiration for my Cats in Art series of posts that I've been running on Sundays here for a couple of years now.  The book's dust cover is a detail from the Frederico Barocchi painting The Annunciation (1584, oil on wood transferred onto canvas, approx 97" x 67", held in the Vatican Art Gallery collection  Santa Maria Degli Angeli, Assisi, Italy).

Those dimensions above are for the entire painting, which is BIG--about 8 feet high and nearly 6 feet wide.  The kitty is snuggled in the lower left corner and by my reckoning covers a space about the size of an ordinary sheet of paper.  

Just for kicks here's the entire image of The Annunciation, with the marvelous kitty way down there in the lower left corner:

[image credit here]

So...if I ever make it to the Vatican, the Pope will just have to wait until I've scoped out this magnificent painting.

UPDATE: I was wrong about the museum: the painting is actually held at Santa Maria Degli Angeli, Assisi, Italy.  How do I know this?  The bride and I were actually just in Italy--and at the Vatican--a couple of weeks ago, and the painting was nowhere to be found.  My apologies for the error; I had written this post some months back, scheduled it for 2 Nov, and did not review it before it posted.  Oops!

3 of 9 Down

(Tizzy...photo by Gary)

We are keeping our son's cat. This "temporary" arrangement has persisted about a year now.

The cat is called Tizzy (I refuse to ever say that a pet is named whatever, because I maintain that we can never know what they call themselves). My son found her along an interstate highway on-ramp in a cold rain, as a tiny kitten, and she would have surely died had he not rescued her.

Life # 1 used up.

Son's family enjoyed a happy home until one day Tizzy managed to get out and got hit along the busy street out front. She was able to make it home, and fortunately the only damage was a broken front leg, which necessitated a cast. Within a couple weeks the cast was off, with no apparent lasting effects.

But there went Life # 2.

In the meanwhile, our son and daughter-in-law conceived another child, and daughter-in-law could no longer take her allergy meds while pregnant. So we were asked--and agreed--to take Tizzy temporarily until after the baby was born and normal allergy treatments could resume. Well, you certainly can see where this is going....son, the cat person, gets outvoted and young Tizzy cannot come home.

So it looks like we've got a cat. I should say another cat--we already have 3 of our own.  Plus Tizzy, plus our daughter's cat: 5 in total.  That's borderline nuts, I'm afraid.

Which brings us to last week. Tizzy, now an indoor-outdoor cat, failed to come home one night (our cats always sleep in at night). And she remained gone the next night, and the next.... We canvassed the neighborhood, scouted backyards and roadsides, all to no avail. Young Tizzy was toast, or so we thought, until on the 4th day she showed up, rather bedraggled, but uninjured. We figure she may have gotten trapped in someone's outbuilding or shed, until the door was opened again several days later. Who knows?

But cross off Life # 3.

She is a sweet cat, a calico as you can see from the photo. Here's hoping that lives 4 thru 9 will remain unused for a long time.