I noticed in the museum that earlier artists for some reason had trouble with drawing cats. There were constant blunders with the anatomy. With dogs, things were more or less okay, swans and other game they painted very accurately (well, because you can spread it out on the table for a whole day), but a cat, obviously, won’t stay still on a table for long, and it seems they drew them “from imagination.” And their imagination, it seems, was based on medieval depictions of cats, where there was complete chaos — cats were portrayed almost with human faces, with eyebrows and expressions.
At the same time, there were some really good examples from the 19th century — for instance, google the cats by Henriëtte Ronner-Knip.
Boselli Felice, Nature Morte avec chat, chien, et deux garçonnets
George Catlin, Le Chat d’Ostende (1868)
Abraham Mignon, The Overturned Bouquet (1660–79)
Hi, I'm Rauf Aliev. 