Bored Panda reached out to Svetlana, who kindly shared more about the story behind how she first conceived the idea for FatCatArt and what inspired her to blend classic masterpieces with the whimsical presence of her orange cat.

“My first inspiration was my cat, Zarathustra. I met this extremely talented cat when I adopted him after my mother passed away. It was actually Zarathustra who saved me from the subsequent depression. My mom loved the cat so much, and I think that is why he developed such a sensitive personality. He decided himself to become a model and performance artist. He adored posing for photos. He made such coquettish poses and clever faces as if to say: 'Paint me like these French girls…' So I did.”

“I am a professional artist and made a lot of different projects before Fat Cat Art. After my mother’s death, I got hard depression, and I was unable to make something creative for about 2 years. And it was Zarathustra who saved me from this depression.

A friend of mine once told me: 'Why you don’t do any art with your new cat Zarathustra, he is so funny!' And he was: he was fat, my mother spoiled him immensely, it is her words on the site, that he is 'the best cat in the world'.

I thought: why not, it will amuse me, and began to think, what shall I do? I thought that maybe I could make a photo session with food in the style of Dutch still life paintings. To imagine how it would look, I decided to photoshop the cat into some painting (I used Photoshop for sketches for my shows) And I don't know why I photoshopped it into another painting, Danae by Rembrandt. Then I made 4 more classic paintings, and I sent them to some friends of mine, artists, and gallerists, just to see their reaction. Never before had I seen serious ladies crying to tears and lying down from laughter.”

“This encouraged me a lot, and I launched the site FatCatArt.com where Zarathustra reflected on his travels in the history of art and its contemporary development and showed the paintings created by great masters of the past and present with him as a meowdel and a Mews.

My other inspiration for this project was the internet. I dreamt of making an experiment: to create an internet meme that should be beautiful and clever, this virus should bring some information, some stimulus to know more. It should be a virus of freedom of aspiring to new knowledge and not a virus of simple repeating what has been done before. People discovering my cat paintings should google originals. Of course, not all of them do that, but just a few of them are worth a play. The cat-modified paintings fit ideally to my idea of a clever and beautiful meme. Making this project brought a lot of knowledge for me also, I studied a lot of the styles of old masters, and their techniques, to make paintings look as if they are real paintings made by old masters.

In my childhood with my mother, we went to the Hermitage Museum every weekend.

And then Zarathustra the Cat came into my life, like he was sent by my mother to take care of me in her absence and to bring me again to the museum.

My experiment of creating an internet meme of art history was successful. The paintings from my site flew on the internet, and Zarathustra conquered the World Wide Web without any effort from my side. 'Famous paintings improved by cats' went viral and became popular memes and the Fat Cat Art project turned into an internet sensation.”

Svetlana also told us more about her charming orange cat Zarathustra.

“Zarathustra was a natural born artist and he knew he was making art, and he was always very friendly to photographers, he knew who a photographer was and began to flatter to these people, amazing, how he knew!

He had a special place for work as a model, in my apartment there is a podium covered by a big carpet, it looks like a stage. When Zarathustra wanted to pose he showed me that I should go to this place, then lay down on this carpet, and began to make very funny poses with very serious faces. He had rich mimics and could make different very expressive faces.

He is also maybe the unique cat who became a contemporary artist by himself. As an artist, he worked in the field of appropriation art, performance, and institutional critics. And he was my personal friend, we understood each other so well. And he was my muse (or Mews). I felt a connection to my late mother via him. I think my mother would love so much what we have done together with him!

Unfortunately, Zarathustra passed away on 16 December 2021 from pancreatitis at 16 years old… But he is still alive via my art. I have so many photos of him on my computer, and I am creating new paintings with him. Being part of the immortal digital world, Zarathustra stays alive in my art. This is what I feel about it.

“Now I have 2 cats, David Bowie, who already took part in artworks with Zarathustra, like 'What If Ophelia Had Cats?', and "Cats in Almond Blossoms" and Tyger Blake who just started his way in art "The Wounded Angel with their Cat⁠" , "Twelve Sunflowers and Two Cats".

I adopted him from a rescue in memory of Zarathustra. After Zarathustra passed away all my friends began to send me info about cats who needed to be adopted, they knew Zarathustra would be glad that I adopted a rescue cat. And when I saw the photos of the little ginger guy with a very emotional face and surprised eyes, Zarathustra whispered to me 'It's time'. This is how Tyger Blake came into my life. He came to me and Zarathustra’s heartbroken bro David Bowie, my other cat, just before Valentine's Day, making it a true love day for us.

'Tyger Tyger, burning bright,

In the forests of the night;

What immortal hand or eye,

Could frame thy fearful (oops, fluffy) symmetry?'

The answer to William Blake's question 'what shoulder, & what art, could twist the sinews of thy heart?' is Zarathustra! I am sure it was Zarathustra who sent us his fluffy emanation.

He appeared to be a very clever and kind cat. He became the best bro for David Bowie and healed his soul deeply wounded by the loss of Zarathustra. He gave me the sense of living when the war started and I felt the world was falling apart. He showed himself as an art therapist dealing with trauma caused by war. Tyger Blake took over the mission of improving famous paintings. From the paintings in your article, Tyger Blake is featured in 'Cat Lovers Reunited' and 'The Jewish Bride And The Cat.'”

We were wondering about the creative process that Svetlana goes through to recreate the paintings. She shared how she selects which masterpieces to reinterpret, and what are the steps involved in digitally inserting cats.

“Fat Cat Art is an innovative art project that integrates painting, photography, and digital art.

I use Zarathustra the cat’s photos and famous painting scans. I made photo sessions with Zarathustra the cat assisted by a team of friends – art professionals. I also took photos of the cat every day when he wanted to pose, and he adored posing, playing roles and talking.

Now, Tyger Blake the cat follows the steps of his great predecessor.

FatCatArt images are created in Photoshop.

I have more than 20,000 photos of my cats on my computer. I photoshop the cat carefully into a famous painting’s digital image. It’s a challenge, he has to fit perfectly into a masterpiece, in position, in expression, and sometimes it takes months to get the right photo. I print my works and paint them, emulating the style of the great masters, to make the cat’s image look very natural in well-known masterpieces.”

“In these historical surroundings, Zarathustra still stays a contemporary internet kitty, a meme, a 'LOLcat'. In his version of the Mona Lisa, you see a girl with a cat posing for a photographer at the balcony. The cat is bored and wants to escape. Everybody has seen this scene somewhere! The mysterious Joconde from the 16th C becomes a modern city girl, who is fond of cats, the internet, and selfies. And now we have an absolutely different portrait. Thus, my cat introduces modern people to the history of art in a cute and funny way and shows that everybody can be creative, even a cat!

My digital originals are high-resolution multi-layered .psd image files. Sizes of original image files go up to 2 GB, 20 000 px size. As FatCatArt originals are electronic files, they are changeable: the artist can change details, color appearance, update the original painting image, or change the cat’s photo. Thus the pieces stay alive, they can be definitely finished only with the death of the artists.

For an exhibition, my digital pieces are printed on natural canvas for painting, and then I finish them manually with a brush, applying texture gels and oil colors, including very rare historical pigments made of precious stones such as lapis lazuli, for example, it is a very important color in Vermeer's Milkmaid. Thus images look like real historical paintings, even in texture and color appearance, and it seems that a master of the past painted a cat in it.

Choosing the artwork to remake goes in 2 directions: or the photo of the cat reminds me of a famous painting, or I have a painting in my mind, and try to take a photo that would fit in it.

My friends or fans like to suggest paintings to recreate, and I really love their suggestions and fulfill them rather often. For example, all of Edward Hopper’s paintings were suggested by a Facebook friend from the USA, John Trumbull’s Declaration of Independence was suggested by Hank the Cat for Senate’s campaign manager, and Joseph Beuys was suggested by a gallery curator from South Africa.”

It’s no wonder that people on Instagram praise Svetlana’s work. However, we wanted to know what has been the most surprising or memorable response the artist received from viewers of FatCatArt.

Svetlana shared: “When people say I improved an original painting. I should say I got such responses rather often. Also, I adore when museums where original paintings are exhibited share and praise my artworks, like the Albertina Museum for my interpretation of Albrecht Dürer’s 'Hare,' or Van Gogh’s Museum saying 'Who would have thought the Starry Night by @fatcatart would get more likes than the Starry Night itself? It's one of the most liked posts on our page!'”

Svetlana also shared a list of her all-time favorite artists: “Many of them! Vincent Van Gogh, Salvador Dali, Leonardo da Vinci, Claude Monet, Hieronymus Bosch, Edward Hopper... I love every artist that I remade!”

And lastly, she added: “Adopt a cat.”