Throughout the Victorian era cats were an inspiration to artists, more so than any other time in history. One such artist, usually known as the 'Cat Artist' was Louis Wain. The English born Artist taught Art in a London school. His interest in sketching cats became more apparent during his wife's illness. She took great joy in Louis' drawings of their cat Peter. She persuaded Louis to send in his drawings to newspapers and magazines.

"It was Peter who first suggested to my mind my fanciful cat creations. I sat watching his antics one evening, and I did a small study of kittens which was accepted by The Lady's Pictorial. Then I trained Peter like a child, and he became my principal model, and the pioneer of my success." (Louis Wain)

In the Christmas Edition of the "Illustrated London News" 1886 Wain produced the "Kittens Christmas Party." "I suggested the idea to Sir William Ingram, to whose kindly interest I owe the foundation of my success. He, in the first instance, had encouraged me greatly by taking some of my sketches which showed promise but were not sufficiently good to reproduce. I worked upon the 'Cats' picture eleven days, and it contained one hundred and fifty cats with varying expressions." (Louis Wain) In the Christmas Edition of 1887 Wain produced over twenty pictures on a double-page spread of various cats up to mischief.

"The son of a textile merchant, born of mixed French and English parentage on the 05 August 1860 the eldest and only boy in a family of six, he studied at the West London School of Art where he later became an assistant master. Following his fathers death in 1880 Louis became the breadwinner for the family. Following his marriage to Emily Richardson, the governess employed to look after the Wain girls he became estranged from the family. They had not approved the match, nevertheless Louis aged 23 married Emily who was ten years his senior on 30 January 1884.

They obtained a black and white kitten named Peter and shortly thereafter Louis started to visit the then popular Cat Shows. His artistic talents had begun to attract some attention and it was in the Illustrated London News Christmas edition that the now famous ‘A Kittens Christmas Party’ appeared. His wife Emily developed an incurable cancer and was soon bedridden dying on the 02 January 1887.

After only three years of marriage Wain was a widower at age 26 and President of the National Cat Club by the time he was 30. He was heavily involved in the production of the first Stud Book for the National Cat Club where he continued as President until at least 1907 when he went to America where he joined the "New York American"for a time.

By 1890, Wain was famous and much loved, if hardly wealthy. His aversion to business resulted in many unpaid reproductions of his work which increased the financial strain. Wain himself grew to believe that spirits were directing malign energies at him. Isolated in the family home in Kilburn, ruminating on his fantastic electrical theories, convinced that his sisters were seeking to undermine his well-being, he became violent and was confined.

In 1900, Wain's sister Marie, suffering from terrifying delusions, was committed to an institution. In 1914 he suffered concussion having been thrown from a horse drawn bus, necessitating several months rest. Louis eldest sister died in 1917 and it seems that it is from this point on that suspicions were aroused regarding his mental stability.

Having always been an eccentric character this appears to have gone unnoticed for a time, he began accusing his sisters of robbing him (perhaps not a delusion) Wain himself grew to believe that spirits were directing malign energies at him. Isolated in the family home in Kilburn, ruminating on his fantastic electrical theories, convinced that his sisters were seeking to undermine his well-being, he became violent and was confined. The last 15 years of his life were to be spent in asylums – Springfield, Bethlem, Napsbury – where his beloved cats grew ever stranger.

In the end he was certified insane on 16 June 1924 at 64 years of age. Louis was diagnosed schizophrenic but continued to produce excellent drawings. His sisters sold these along with his collection at home to ease their financial situation. By 1930 his drawings had taken on the ‘patterns’ which many writers explain by his mental illness. Others feel that his ‘mad eyed’ cats have always shown his mental health tendencies. Louis Wain was by this time a man of 70 years old, yet who still continued to work despite being incarcerated within a Victorian mental asylum. The ‘mad eyes' of Louis Wain's cats, are also a feature of other cat artists of his time, who apparently did not suffer the same illness, despite the fact that their art showed such 'tendencies'. In the ward in South London, Wain paints his 'mad eyes' cats: hundreds of cats, cats run through with a strange ecstatic electricity, quietly incandescent. Riotous and grinning or sublimely poised and inscrutable, their many-hued bright saucer eyes gazing from vistas of tangled foliage and pink-jewelled mountains. When shut indoors, they are set against intricate, curlicued wallpaper. On occasion, they fracture, shimmering into their ornate backgrounds. These are other-world cats; always strange, joyous, unknowable and troubling, the strangely familiar denizens of a place their creator knew as Catland. He sketches cats by the dozen – often as gifts for his warders. The old man's internment had lasted just over a year when, by chance, the bookseller and ward visitor Dan Rider noticed a number of sketches and remarked to him: "Good Lord, man, you draw like Louis Wain." "I am Louis Wain." "You're not, you know" "But I am," said the artist. And he was. At the turn of the 19th century, Louis Wain had been perhaps the most visible artist in England: his irrepressible cats and their kittens – golfing, strolling, submitting unwillingly to the rigors of the classroom – could be seen on a thousand bedroom walls, in a thousand schools. The Louis Wain Annual was a perennial bestseller; his designs adorned countless postcards and filled the pages of newspapers, books and periodicals. King George VI and H.G. Wells became great fans the Wain cat was ubiquitous, prompting HG Wells to remark at a later date that "English cats that do not look like Louis Wain cats are ashamed of themselves."

Louis Wain, artist, madman, visionary, died in 1939 and is buried, alongside his family in St. Mary's Roman Catholic Cemetery, Kensal Green.