The time has come to settle the score – are cats cuter than babies? Join us for an evidence-informed artistic analysis of the aesthetics of cats and how and why we love to depict them in illustration, animation and graphic art. (And why cats are, indeed, cuter than babies.)
In this fun, feline and fact-filled episode, listen in on how and why cats became the muses for one illustrator of grumpy cats - Natalia Garcez - and a source of inspiration for hundreds of thousands of families across the world. Joining Natalia is digital artist and YouTube star Ergojosh who breaks down the “cat face theory” circulating on TikTok and why Disney and Pixar’s production teams may favor cat facial anatomy for cute inspiration. And join host Captain Kitty (a.k.a. Amanda B.) as she leverages her Cat Oracle Deck for artistic, intellectual and even spiritual guidance with the help of Catnip Magazine’s Anja Charbonneau.
Special thanks to Broccoli Magazine for providing the team a Cat Oracle Deck.
Support the podcast at https://ko-fi.com/6degreesofcats for as little as $1 / month for stickers, early access to new episodes and behind the scenes audio. View the show notes and more on The Captain’s Log, the companion podcast newsletter here: linktr.ee/6degreesofcats.
And check out this supplementary episode:
About the experts:
- Anja Chabonneau is the Editor in Chief and Creative Director of Broccoli Magazine, a publisher of unusual delights including Catnip Magazine, Broccoli Magazine and the Cat Oracle Deck. To purchase a Cat Oracle Deck, visit https://broccolimag.com and follow @catnip_mag and @broccoli_mag on Instagram.
- Natalia Garcez is a Brazilian-born graphic designer and illustrator of grumpy cats based on Copenhagen whose Instagram account, @casagiraceramics (formerly “chonkygrompy”) inspired hundreds of thousands of children to paint chunky, grumpy cats with their parents. Learn more about Natalia by following her Instagram account or visiting https://www.nataliagarcez.com.
- Joshua “Ergojosh” Stephens is a digital artist specializing in character design who educates his 700k+ YouTube subscribers with videos that have been seen over 54 million times. Follow Ergojosh on YouTube or @ergo.josh on Instagram, and visit his website on at ergojosh.com to learn more about his online courses on digital illustration.
Producer, writer, editor, sound designer, host, basically everything*
- Captain Kitty (Amanda B.)
* with co-executive producers Binky, Snuggles and Peanut
Additional voices include:
- Binky, Snuggles and Peanut _^..^_
- Edward Anthony (@itsmyunzii)
Music:
- Leathered: "Look Alive" © 2025
- Additional sound effects from Pixabay.com
Logo design:
- Edward Anthony © 2025 (Instagram: itsmyunzii)
Research used:
- chonkygrompy [@chonkygrompy]. (n.d.). A very speci
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Okay, peanut, hold still, bothers trying to paint too.
(00:07):
I think we need to remove the hat.
Welcome back to 6 Degrees of Cats, the world's number one and only cat-themed culture,
history and science podcast in which I, Captain Kitty, aka Amanda B, and my feline co-executive
producers Binky, Snuggles and Peanut navigate the weird wild world from the past to the
(00:32):
present with the help of an exceptional array of guest experts.
All aboard!
Hi!
I can't see you, but I know, as a 6 Degrees of Cats listener, you're extremely charismatic
and super attractive to all the things you want to attract.
(00:53):
I just have that sense.
So, what's been keeping you whole and grounded lately?
I'm pretty sure we can all say it together.
Cats!
Cats!
Wine
Lit smut! Cats!
Let's keep it PG here.
Cats!
Which is a surprise to no one who's read the title of this podcast.
(01:17):
It's such a gift to have been chosen by these magical desert monkeys several millennia
ago.
Not only defenders of the grains, but true joys to behold.
(01:37):
I mean the silky soft fur, the nubby little feet, the toe beams, those large shimmery
eyes, the chorus of meows, rouse, axe.
Perts and subliminal perts.
A smell of warmth, sunshine, home.
Cats are truly a full sensory experience.
I've said it before and I'll say it again.
(02:01):
Their works of art.
By design!
And in this episode of 6 Degrees of Cats, which is also a work of art, we will try to get
to the bottom of what makes cats the perfect meows.
And why they are truly cuter than babies.
(02:29):
As I said earlier, cats are works of art.
And appreciating art, my friends, has a lot of value in our daily lives.
Not just in our mental health, but our holistic well-being.
There's a whole field called neuro-esthetics that has documented through various clinical
studies the positive impacts of art on the body, brain and spirit.
(02:56):
This is something our ancestors and most cultures have already known.
Some of them have also been included into the myriad of health benefits to having the
love of a cat in your life.
So cats and art are pretty much the answer to everything.
Seriously.
You see cats inspiring arts across all formats.
But what is it about them that makes them so fun to portray exactly?
(03:19):
I'd say their personality comes into play.
I just paint very judgmental and grumpy cats.
They are always fired by my older cat.
She's always giving me that look all the time.
And meet the amazing Natalia Garcez.
(03:42):
I'm originally from Brazil, so now I'm living in Denmark for the past almost five years.
I'm in Europe for eight, nine years now.
I am actually a brand designer, the chunky grumpy.
It's an illustration of passion projects.
When I started the chunky grumpy page, basically I was like, okay, I'm not a painter.
(04:06):
So let me call myself an illustrator.
In the beginning, I would even call myself just a human handling the paint.
And now that I share with the Chunky Grompy and people are so responsive and so loving
about it, then it gives me more confidence to call myself an illustrator of judgmental cats.
Sometimes I have to explain that it's like an intentional misspelling of "chunk" and "grumpy".
(04:33):
I just started because I needed to put some happiness in my day to day.
I think I was just making mostly funny videos of my cats.
And then once in a while I would post a painting.
And then I made this one video where I painted a family of five cats.
And suddenly one of my first videos went quite viral.
(04:56):
People really really engaged with it for some reason.
No kidding.
Go see for yourself (05:00):
chunky, grumpy cats.
Natalia's art certainly has a multi-generational appeal.
I get a lot of messages from parents or caregivers saying that they really like doing this technique
with their kids.
(05:24):
And I receive so many pictures in my DMs of people that just spent the day painting
with their kids.
There is this very cute story of this boy that is two years old and his mom sent me pictures
of him just like holding his own paintings inspired by mine.
And he was just walking around in his neighborhood and telling people how he did it and explaining
(05:47):
the process.
I found this so amazing and that was where everything was so, so nice.
Cats.
The Family Muse.
One of my fondest childhood memories is sitting with my grandfather, the one who was married
(06:09):
to my beloved maternal cat-loving grandmother, drawing cats together at their apartment.
Grandpa is a pretty good ill-strator and we'd spend hours drawing on paper that my paternal
grandfather, a paper mill worker, gifted the family by the reen.
Did Natalia too grow up among a family of cat worshippers?
(06:32):
We had a couple of cats growing up and we also had dogs growing up.
But my dad was this very stereotypical Latin dad that says that he doesn't wear the
pads inside and all the cats and the dogs have to be outside of the house.
I think that's understandable given his vocation.
My dad, he is, I will have a very hard time saying that word, but a foster, like he renovates
(06:58):
couches.
And yet we always had the very deep love for animals and we always adopted, we never bought
any animal.
My dad always treated the animals like family.
Even though the animals would always be out, the whole house was fully enacted so that
(07:20):
the cats and the dogs could not get out.
There would be this amount of care.
I'm still wondering though, Natalia's inspiration to portray cats may not have come directly
from her folks, but they certainly weren't a random choice.
And it's definitely not random that cats have gone viral in pop culture, time and again,
(07:44):
in art and in real life.
For someone like me, saying cats are artworthy is like saying water is wet.
But there's clearly something to their essence, the way they look, the way they act, that
grants kiddies this extra appeal.
(08:04):
And it turns out Natalia and I aren't the only ones to have looked into this.
And I think the scientists talking about the domestication of cats, she was saying like,
there are some things that attract humans more than others.
We always find it extremely adorable.
(08:26):
She mentioned about the bigger eyes or more juvenile traits.
And I think that something that we see in many other animals as well, cats just manage to
keep this feature.
So then we still keep loving them and adoring them.
And though they are old and pranky with us.
(08:48):
But either the why we humans love that thing with the big round eyes.
So in my perspective, it's kind of a chicken egg situation that we get inspired by cats
or by cute things.
When Natalia describes us related to kinden schema, the cluster of features and traits that
(09:09):
German ethylogist Dr. Conrad Lorenz in 1943 described as the most desirable features
and traits in babies that motivated parents to keep them alive.
In essence, survival of the cutest.
Y'all have heard me say many times that cats are cuter than babies.
(09:34):
Cats and babies have a story relationship that will explore in a future season.
I'm sure.
But I will say that their cuteness is the key thing that offsets all the things that would
otherwise have left them behind on the Oregon Trail.
And it's those very traits that make them such ideal muses.
We'll get more into the nuts and bolts of cuteness after the break.
(09:59):
Before the break, with some minor exceptions, we were in full 100% agreement that cats
(10:21):
are cuter than babies.
But you know, stuff call.
According to a research team led by Dr.s Makenzioniel and Lani Shiotta, key cuteness features
include.
Soft, rounded features.
A small, tightly clustered nose and mouth.
(10:42):
A high forehead and large cheeks.
Large eyes.
Short, stubby limbs.
And physical clumsiness.
Rich that both cats and babies possess.
It just seems like it's something ingrained in us.
We like cute things.
(11:04):
And it took me a while to realize I was a big part of what I found the most enjoyable to
draw and paint as well.
It's super obvious that that's what they're going for with these characters in Disney.
That was Ergo Josh, who, like Natalia, has found a vast audience for his art online.
(11:27):
I am a digital artist, specializing now in character design, but I've also done a lot
of educational work through my YouTube channel, and I share most of my artwork on my Instagram
accounts at ergo.josh, there specifically.
How is about the name?
(11:48):
Why "Ergo" Josh?
It sounds like a little bit of a sob story for me to like go into the full detail, but I was
driving back home from work one day, and it was just a real big drag, and I was like, this
is my life now, right after college.
I'm really not happy with it.
(12:08):
I just go to work, go back home, sleep, drive.
So I thought, well, if there's going to be something notable about me, it might as well
be my artwork.
So I looked up, I believe it's Latin for the phrase therefore, which is Ergo.
(12:29):
And so I thought of making my handle art to therefore Josh were one and the same, but
I shortened it to art ergo Josh and then just ergo Josh.
My partner Eddie, the designer of this podcast, Keyart and the father to my three biological
children, Binky, Snuggles and Peanut, first flagged Ergo Josh's work to me, through a video
(12:53):
I'm linking in the show notes.
Yeah, that was one of the most successful videos on my channel.
Basically, in my mind, I was breaking down a wide Disney with so successful designing
their characters because they made them look cute like cats.
(13:13):
I was aware that there was a similarity to babies, but specifically cats, it seemed there
was a more direct comparison just because of how streamlined their faces are.
They don't have snouts like dogs.
In that video, I was just like, hey, don't you notice that the characters look like cats?
(13:35):
Beyond the cuteness factor, ergo Josh points out another interesting thing about drawing
kitties.
What makes a face difficult to draw is the depth of the nose.
It's like this big thing that protrudes off of your face.
I have always found flatter faces easier to draw and that's why in anime they don't draw
(13:56):
it.
They just draw like an accent symbol or a line.
So that makes it a lot easier to understand and then you can capture it better.
We focus on the eyes as humans and a lot of other animals on the planet.
I've noticed they focus on our eyes as well.
(14:17):
A cat's eyes are bigger proportionately compared to a dog.
I think the size of the features, the narrowing in the angle of the rotation of the eyes helps
because it's easier to put those expressions in there.
If you think about a cat's nose, it's just to upside down triangle and then you just continue
(14:40):
a line down from halfway in the triangle and then once it goes down past the bottom of
the triangle a little bit, you just draw two lines going in opposite direction.
Then you have their little mouth and it's like a little button stitch thing and that's
it.
It just feels very cute, very like they're smiling at the right angle and they look even
(15:04):
cuter because you can see the like bulge where the whiskers come out.
If you look at Disney or Pixar illustrations of anything with eyes, the eyes are huge
and other proportions are also exaggerated.
What's going on here?
(15:25):
I realized if I made eyes bigger, the character would look more feminine.
After the video I realized what was actually happening is they looked more cute and childlike,
which tends to be a trait that's exaggerated in feminine characters.
It doesn't necessarily have to be gendered because what it does is if you increase a male
(15:50):
character's eye size, they look younger, not necessarily more feminine.
But again, there's this pre-existing stereotype of like, "Oh, that's obviously what women
are trying to do right all the time."
Is this like youthful nature?
Men aren't typically trying to look more youthful and untouched.
(16:13):
These youthful, super normal features or stimuli are often exploited to encourage behaviors
that drive us to seek out these exaggerated traits over normal traits.
A sad effect of this preference is what we see in flat-faced cats and dogs from breeders,
or the impact of diet culture and contemporary industrialized cultural norms on body size.
(16:41):
Back to all natural kitties.
Is it simply their baby-like features that make cats so amusing?
I think the best drawings of cats are the ones where they're slightly, what is that word,
anthropomorphic?
Not to like the degree of, "I'm a walkin' talkin' cat with a trench coat and hat."
(17:06):
It's these expressions that they make sometimes.
The work where the details of the fur are not in focus and it's really just capturing
the essence of the expression of the cat or what they're doing or even better, their fluid-like
movement and the way they like to relax and the way they move.
(17:29):
I think that really is the most important thing.
I haven't drawn many very many cats.
The one drawing of mine on Instagram that does feature a cat one viral because of exactly
what I'm saying, right?
It's like the expression.
(17:50):
It took me a while.
It wasn't the most anatomically correct, but I nailed the expression that cat had in the
video, the hugable, soft nature of it.
There was this meme where the upset woman was pointing.
The other one was like kind of holding her in support and the next slide was a cat like,
(18:10):
"What did I do at the table?
I can't just try and eat my food."
The cuteness factor is you can only see its little head poking out.
I think just capturing their body essence and their expressiveness is really cute.
And it's personality that draws Natalia's audience to Chunky Grumpy.
(18:36):
So it's Chunky because of Freddy.
He's slightly overweight, extremely crudly cat.
He has this amazing mustache that is slightly wonky.
It's not a symmetric mustache, it's like one side is bigger than the other.
He's very, very crudly and he cannot stand giving attention to anything that is not him.
(18:59):
And Grumpy, that's Frida, she's just adorable.
She's a bit of a diva.
She sits very close to us and we pet her a lot.
But if she doesn't want to be touched and he's trying to touch her, she's just going to
run away and hide for the whole day.
(19:20):
Some cats that give you the stink eye have a certain je ne sais quoi that makes them so appealing
to portray.
They seem to have a sense of humor, even with other cats they'll mess with each other.
Yeah, they are extremely smart.
One of the cutest things about them.
In our pictures too, a lot of people want to do writing or something around Miyasaki films
(19:42):
and I love the cats.
You can really feel their cat personality and all of the magic that all creatures and
animals have in those films, the magic in all beings.
That was Anya Charbonneau, and my company is called Broccoli.
We're a publisher of unusual delights.
(20:04):
We make many different magazines, books, other printed goods.
The one that's especially relevant today is a magazine about cats called Catnip.
Catnip really just came from my love of cats.
All of our magazines start with a central theme.
Cats have been in our world for so long and humans and cats have had a relationship for
(20:25):
so long.
So the storytelling potential is just so deep.
I just said to my other editors one day like, "I want to make a cat magazine."
It would be so fun, and joyful, and playful.
Cats are so beautiful and interesting and people love them so much.
(20:45):
Looking back to when there may have been other print magazines, I don't know if you've ever
seen old editions of Catfancy magazine, but I went to the Portland Central Library a few years
ago and they still had the bound old editions of a bunch of different publications.
So I found the Cat Fancys, the first issue I believe came out in 1960 and I was like spellbound
(21:07):
going through all these pages because the designs were crazy.
They were so fun.
We really wanted to make it feel kind of retro and give it almost a seven news inspired
color palette.
I first spotted this magazine at a bookstore in Brooklyn and what really stood out to me
was the gorgeous cover art.
(21:28):
In fact, I recognized the designer.
The collage artist named Stephen Eichorn.
He and I have collaborated a few times over the years and other projects and he's pretty
famous for his cats and plants collages.
Which is an interesting artistic choice too since cats and plants don't mix very well in
the real world.
(21:50):
They're always eating things they shouldn't and they're just not safe so it's fun to be
able to combine them in this way.
It's like cat safe and very fun and weird.
He uses a lot of vintage magazines so it really tapped into that perfect same energy I wanted
for catnet.
That's kind of 70s, a little bit grainy kind of homemade feeling to it.
(22:15):
One of the collections of cat art that Anya's team has produced are the 33 beautiful
cards in the cat oracle deck.
Oracle decks are really accessible.
You don't need to know anything going into them.
Usually a card will have a piece of art and then sometimes maybe just a single word
is a prompt or a few different prompts or definitions.
(22:39):
You can go into a booklet and read or.
When I was thinking about the cat oracle deck I wanted it to feel like some of the art direction
from catnet where it's a little punchier, it's a little brighter, a little more like vivid
70s aesthetics.
Steven was the perfect artist to work with.
(22:59):
And he was able to use some of his old cat collages that just fit the prompts perfectly
and made a whole bunch of new ones for the deck and it's really colorful and fun.
We always have different suits within our decks, the different cat archetype, your alley
cat, your lap cat, scary cat, things like that.
(23:21):
We have cat parts so the whiskers, the ears, the tail, the paws.
Another suit is the cat behaviors, the ways cats act like if they're hiding or hissing or
kneading or napping.
And then we have of course the cat things which are the accessories that they love, you know,
a sun beam, treats scratching post, a mouse catnet, things like that.
(23:46):
Every card has the name.
If you have drawn the zoomies card there will be a few different keywords that are sort of
like connected to the idea of the zoomie mode.
And then you can go in the booklet and sort of read more and it's often like a little questioning
idea to go along with it.
(24:06):
So people will use these cards all kinds of different ways.
We know people who are artists who use them as creative props, people who will even use
them as color inspiration or design inspiration, or you can take the more introspective route
of being like, okay, I'm going to pull three different cards.
You could do the most basic version in the whole world of past present future.
(24:28):
It is the vibe and we've also included different sample spreads and really fun themes of how
to interpret them.
Or if you just want to see a cool piece of art every day.
So nice way to do that too.
One of the most important things about great art is that it opens us up.
(24:49):
I think there's one card in the deck that really exemplifies this openness and creativity.
Wild card is the amplifier that you can get.
And it is the cat lady's card, the cat lady.
It sits apart from all the other suits of cards in the deck.
(25:09):
And Stephen, I'm really into the art that he chose for it because it's a very surprising
representation of a cat lady.
At first I was like, huh, that's not what I would have chosen or what I would have imagined.
This other that you wouldn't have pictured.
That makes it that much more interesting.
(25:30):
And that's why it's perfect.
Okay, Snuggles, I'm needing some creative inspiration.
Want to help me pull the card?
Okay, that one.
All right.
So that one is the cat lady.
(25:53):
So it's settled, cats are cuter than babies.
Folks, Michelangelo's Vitruvian man should have been a Vitruvian cat.
Beauty is, at the end of the day, in the eye of the beholder.
Speaking of eyes, tune into the next episode where we'll take a look at what makes those
(26:14):
peepers pop. I want to thank my experts Natalia Garcez, ErgoJosh and Anya Charbonneau.
The research and work is theirs.
If you'd like to learn more about them, please check out our show notes, which also include
the references and research that went into this episode.
And if you loved it, please do keep sharing our podcast with people who love cats or podcasts
(26:39):
or just would be into this.
Go on and give us a five star rating where you listen or write us a glowing review.
They really help.
If you'd like to further support the podcast and have a little cash, please head on over to
the show notes to see where you can donate.
All of this is so gratefully received and just keeps us keeping on.
See you next time.
(26:59):
And remember, everything beautiful in this world is connected.
6 degrees of cats is produced, written, edited and hosted by yours truly, Captain Kitty,
aka Amanda B. Please subscribe to our mailing list by going to linktr.ee/6degreesofcats
(27:22):
or look us up on all those social media platforms.
You'll be first in line for the extra audio and more treats if you connect with us there.
All episodes are dedicated to the misunderstood, the marginalized, the resilient and the
weird.
And of course, all the cats we've loved and lost.
Okay, so you will really love this.
(27:53):
One of my cat's names is Amanda.
People really react to it.
Like when I take her to an event or something, they're always like Amanda.
She came with the name from the Humane Society and we were like, "That is the silliest name
for a cat because it's so human."
And then you try to think about like, "Well, what's a funny name I can come up with?
(28:13):
A cute, funny name for my cat."
But then you know, getting to know her after the first few hours, she's Amanda.
It is dang.
So we have a beautiful fluffy long hair tortoise shell named Amanda.
She looks like a forest creature.
And then we have the like bad younger sibling named Toadette, aka Toad.
(28:34):
Also another Humane Society name that we just decided to keep.
Their pairing is so perfect because they don't match.
They don't look anything like each other.
Toads like a silver tabby.
Amanda is this multi-colored being. They're different shapes, sizes.
So there's something beautiful about their partnership and they love each other.
Okay, peanut, hold still, bothers trying to paint too.
(00:07):
I think we need to remove the hat.
Welcome back to 6 Degrees of Cats, the world's number one and only cat-themed culture,
history and science podcast in which I, Captain Kitty, aka Amanda B, and my feline co-executive
producers Binky, Snuggles and Peanut navigate the weird wild world from the past to the
(00:32):
present with the help of an exceptional array of guest experts.
All aboard!
Hi!
I can't see you, but I know, as a 6 Degrees of Cats listener, you're extremely charismatic
and super attractive to all the things you want to attract.
(00:53):
I just have that sense.
So, what's been keeping you whole and grounded lately?
I'm pretty sure we can all say it together.
Cats!
Cats!
Wine
Lit smut! Cats!
Let's keep it PG here.
Cats!
Which is a surprise to no one who's read the title of this podcast.
(01:17):
It's such a gift to have been chosen by these magical desert monkeys several millennia
ago.
Not only defenders of the grains, but true joys to behold.
(01:37):
I mean the silky soft fur, the nubby little feet, the toe beams, those large shimmery
eyes, the chorus of meows, rouse, axe.
Perts and subliminal perts.
A smell of warmth, sunshine, home.
Cats are truly a full sensory experience.
I've said it before and I'll say it again.
(02:01):
Their works of art.
By design!
And in this episode of 6 Degrees of Cats, which is also a work of art, we will try to get
to the bottom of what makes cats the perfect meows.
And why they are truly cuter than babies.
(02:29):
As I said earlier, cats are works of art.
And appreciating art, my friends, has a lot of value in our daily lives.
Not just in our mental health, but our holistic well-being.
There's a whole field called neuro-esthetics that has documented through various clinical
studies the positive impacts of art on the body, brain and spirit.
(02:56):
This is something our ancestors and most cultures have already known.
Some of them have also been included into the myriad of health benefits to having the
love of a cat in your life.
So cats and art are pretty much the answer to everything.
Seriously.
You see cats inspiring arts across all formats.
But what is it about them that makes them so fun to portray exactly?
(03:19):
I'd say their personality comes into play.
I just paint very judgmental and grumpy cats.
They are always fired by my older cat.
She's always giving me that look all the time.
And meet the amazing Natalia Garcez.
(03:42):
I'm originally from Brazil, so now I'm living in Denmark for the past almost five years.
I'm in Europe for eight, nine years now.
I am actually a brand designer, the chunky grumpy.
It's an illustration of passion projects.
When I started the chunky grumpy page, basically I was like, okay, I'm not a painter.
(04:06):
So let me call myself an illustrator.
In the beginning, I would even call myself just a human handling the paint.
And now that I share with the Chunky Grompy and people are so responsive and so loving
about it, then it gives me more confidence to call myself an illustrator of judgmental cats.
Sometimes I have to explain that it's like an intentional misspelling of "chunk" and "grumpy".
(04:33):
I just started because I needed to put some happiness in my day to day.
I think I was just making mostly funny videos of my cats.
And then once in a while I would post a painting.
And then I made this one video where I painted a family of five cats.
And suddenly one of my first videos went quite viral.
(04:56):
People really really engaged with it for some reason.
No kidding.
Go see for yourself (05:00):
chunky, grumpy cats.
Natalia's art certainly has a multi-generational appeal.
I get a lot of messages from parents or caregivers saying that they really like doing this technique
with their kids.
(05:24):
And I receive so many pictures in my DMs of people that just spent the day painting
with their kids.
There is this very cute story of this boy that is two years old and his mom sent me pictures
of him just like holding his own paintings inspired by mine.
And he was just walking around in his neighborhood and telling people how he did it and explaining
(05:47):
the process.
I found this so amazing and that was where everything was so, so nice.
Cats.
The Family Muse.
One of my fondest childhood memories is sitting with my grandfather, the one who was married
(06:09):
to my beloved maternal cat-loving grandmother, drawing cats together at their apartment.
Grandpa is a pretty good ill-strator and we'd spend hours drawing on paper that my paternal
grandfather, a paper mill worker, gifted the family by the reen.
Did Natalia too grow up among a family of cat worshippers?
(06:32):
We had a couple of cats growing up and we also had dogs growing up.
But my dad was this very stereotypical Latin dad that says that he doesn't wear the
pads inside and all the cats and the dogs have to be outside of the house.
I think that's understandable given his vocation.
My dad, he is, I will have a very hard time saying that word, but a foster, like he renovates
(06:58):
couches.
And yet we always had the very deep love for animals and we always adopted, we never bought
any animal.
My dad always treated the animals like family.
Even though the animals would always be out, the whole house was fully enacted so that
(07:20):
the cats and the dogs could not get out.
There would be this amount of care.
I'm still wondering though, Natalia's inspiration to portray cats may not have come directly
from her folks, but they certainly weren't a random choice.
And it's definitely not random that cats have gone viral in pop culture, time and again,
(07:44):
in art and in real life.
For someone like me, saying cats are artworthy is like saying water is wet.
But there's clearly something to their essence, the way they look, the way they act, that
grants kiddies this extra appeal.
(08:04):
And it turns out Natalia and I aren't the only ones to have looked into this.
And I think the scientists talking about the domestication of cats, she was saying like,
there are some things that attract humans more than others.
We always find it extremely adorable.
(08:26):
She mentioned about the bigger eyes or more juvenile traits.
And I think that something that we see in many other animals as well, cats just manage to
keep this feature.
So then we still keep loving them and adoring them.
And though they are old and pranky with us.
(08:48):
But either the why we humans love that thing with the big round eyes.
So in my perspective, it's kind of a chicken egg situation that we get inspired by cats
or by cute things.
When Natalia describes us related to kinden schema, the cluster of features and traits that
(09:09):
German ethylogist Dr. Conrad Lorenz in 1943 described as the most desirable features
and traits in babies that motivated parents to keep them alive.
In essence, survival of the cutest.
Y'all have heard me say many times that cats are cuter than babies.
(09:34):
Cats and babies have a story relationship that will explore in a future season.
I'm sure.
But I will say that their cuteness is the key thing that offsets all the things that would
otherwise have left them behind on the Oregon Trail.
And it's those very traits that make them such ideal muses.
We'll get more into the nuts and bolts of cuteness after the break.
(09:59):
Before the break, with some minor exceptions, we were in full 100% agreement that cats
(10:21):
are cuter than babies.
But you know, stuff call.
According to a research team led by Dr.s Makenzioniel and Lani Shiotta, key cuteness features
include.
Soft, rounded features.
A small, tightly clustered nose and mouth.
(10:42):
A high forehead and large cheeks.
Large eyes.
Short, stubby limbs.
And physical clumsiness.
Rich that both cats and babies possess.
It just seems like it's something ingrained in us.
We like cute things.
(11:04):
And it took me a while to realize I was a big part of what I found the most enjoyable to
draw and paint as well.
It's super obvious that that's what they're going for with these characters in Disney.
That was Ergo Josh, who, like Natalia, has found a vast audience for his art online.
(11:27):
I am a digital artist, specializing now in character design, but I've also done a lot
of educational work through my YouTube channel, and I share most of my artwork on my Instagram
accounts at ergo.josh, there specifically.
How is about the name?
(11:48):
Why "Ergo" Josh?
It sounds like a little bit of a sob story for me to like go into the full detail, but I was
driving back home from work one day, and it was just a real big drag, and I was like, this
is my life now, right after college.
I'm really not happy with it.
(12:08):
I just go to work, go back home, sleep, drive.
So I thought, well, if there's going to be something notable about me, it might as well
be my artwork.
So I looked up, I believe it's Latin for the phrase therefore, which is Ergo.
(12:29):
And so I thought of making my handle art to therefore Josh were one and the same, but
I shortened it to art ergo Josh and then just ergo Josh.
My partner Eddie, the designer of this podcast, Keyart and the father to my three biological
children, Binky, Snuggles and Peanut, first flagged Ergo Josh's work to me, through a video
(12:53):
I'm linking in the show notes.
Yeah, that was one of the most successful videos on my channel.
Basically, in my mind, I was breaking down a wide Disney with so successful designing
their characters because they made them look cute like cats.
(13:13):
I was aware that there was a similarity to babies, but specifically cats, it seemed there
was a more direct comparison just because of how streamlined their faces are.
They don't have snouts like dogs.
In that video, I was just like, hey, don't you notice that the characters look like cats?
(13:35):
Beyond the cuteness factor, ergo Josh points out another interesting thing about drawing
kitties.
What makes a face difficult to draw is the depth of the nose.
It's like this big thing that protrudes off of your face.
I have always found flatter faces easier to draw and that's why in anime they don't draw
(13:56):
it.
They just draw like an accent symbol or a line.
So that makes it a lot easier to understand and then you can capture it better.
We focus on the eyes as humans and a lot of other animals on the planet.
I've noticed they focus on our eyes as well.
(14:17):
A cat's eyes are bigger proportionately compared to a dog.
I think the size of the features, the narrowing in the angle of the rotation of the eyes helps
because it's easier to put those expressions in there.
If you think about a cat's nose, it's just to upside down triangle and then you just continue
(14:40):
a line down from halfway in the triangle and then once it goes down past the bottom of
the triangle a little bit, you just draw two lines going in opposite direction.
Then you have their little mouth and it's like a little button stitch thing and that's
it.
It just feels very cute, very like they're smiling at the right angle and they look even
(15:04):
cuter because you can see the like bulge where the whiskers come out.
If you look at Disney or Pixar illustrations of anything with eyes, the eyes are huge
and other proportions are also exaggerated.
What's going on here?
(15:25):
I realized if I made eyes bigger, the character would look more feminine.
After the video I realized what was actually happening is they looked more cute and childlike,
which tends to be a trait that's exaggerated in feminine characters.
It doesn't necessarily have to be gendered because what it does is if you increase a male
(15:50):
character's eye size, they look younger, not necessarily more feminine.
But again, there's this pre-existing stereotype of like, "Oh, that's obviously what women
are trying to do right all the time."
Is this like youthful nature?
Men aren't typically trying to look more youthful and untouched.
(16:13):
These youthful, super normal features or stimuli are often exploited to encourage behaviors
that drive us to seek out these exaggerated traits over normal traits.
A sad effect of this preference is what we see in flat-faced cats and dogs from breeders,
or the impact of diet culture and contemporary industrialized cultural norms on body size.
(16:41):
Back to all natural kitties.
Is it simply their baby-like features that make cats so amusing?
I think the best drawings of cats are the ones where they're slightly, what is that word,
anthropomorphic?
Not to like the degree of, "I'm a walkin' talkin' cat with a trench coat and hat."
(17:06):
It's these expressions that they make sometimes.
The work where the details of the fur are not in focus and it's really just capturing
the essence of the expression of the cat or what they're doing or even better, their fluid-like
movement and the way they like to relax and the way they move.
(17:29):
I think that really is the most important thing.
I haven't drawn many very many cats.
The one drawing of mine on Instagram that does feature a cat one viral because of exactly
what I'm saying, right?
It's like the expression.
(17:50):
It took me a while.
It wasn't the most anatomically correct, but I nailed the expression that cat had in the
video, the hugable, soft nature of it.
There was this meme where the upset woman was pointing.
The other one was like kind of holding her in support and the next slide was a cat like,
(18:10):
"What did I do at the table?
I can't just try and eat my food."
The cuteness factor is you can only see its little head poking out.
I think just capturing their body essence and their expressiveness is really cute.
And it's personality that draws Natalia's audience to Chunky Grumpy.
(18:36):
So it's Chunky because of Freddy.
He's slightly overweight, extremely crudly cat.
He has this amazing mustache that is slightly wonky.
It's not a symmetric mustache, it's like one side is bigger than the other.
He's very, very crudly and he cannot stand giving attention to anything that is not him.
(18:59):
And Grumpy, that's Frida, she's just adorable.
She's a bit of a diva.
She sits very close to us and we pet her a lot.
But if she doesn't want to be touched and he's trying to touch her, she's just going to
run away and hide for the whole day.
(19:20):
Some cats that give you the stink eye have a certain je ne sais quoi that makes them so appealing
to portray.
They seem to have a sense of humor, even with other cats they'll mess with each other.
Yeah, they are extremely smart.
One of the cutest things about them.
In our pictures too, a lot of people want to do writing or something around Miyasaki films
(19:42):
and I love the cats.
You can really feel their cat personality and all of the magic that all creatures and
animals have in those films, the magic in all beings.
That was Anya Charbonneau, and my company is called Broccoli.
We're a publisher of unusual delights.
(20:04):
We make many different magazines, books, other printed goods.
The one that's especially relevant today is a magazine about cats called Catnip.
Catnip really just came from my love of cats.
All of our magazines start with a central theme.
Cats have been in our world for so long and humans and cats have had a relationship for
(20:25):
so long.
So the storytelling potential is just so deep.
I just said to my other editors one day like, "I want to make a cat magazine."
It would be so fun, and joyful, and playful.
Cats are so beautiful and interesting and people love them so much.
(20:45):
Looking back to when there may have been other print magazines, I don't know if you've ever
seen old editions of Catfancy magazine, but I went to the Portland Central Library a few years
ago and they still had the bound old editions of a bunch of different publications.
So I found the Cat Fancys, the first issue I believe came out in 1960 and I was like spellbound
(21:07):
going through all these pages because the designs were crazy.
They were so fun.
We really wanted to make it feel kind of retro and give it almost a seven news inspired
color palette.
I first spotted this magazine at a bookstore in Brooklyn and what really stood out to me
was the gorgeous cover art.
(21:28):
In fact, I recognized the designer.
The collage artist named Stephen Eichorn.
He and I have collaborated a few times over the years and other projects and he's pretty
famous for his cats and plants collages.
Which is an interesting artistic choice too since cats and plants don't mix very well in
the real world.
(21:50):
They're always eating things they shouldn't and they're just not safe so it's fun to be
able to combine them in this way.
It's like cat safe and very fun and weird.
He uses a lot of vintage magazines so it really tapped into that perfect same energy I wanted
for catnet.
That's kind of 70s, a little bit grainy kind of homemade feeling to it.
(22:15):
One of the collections of cat art that Anya's team has produced are the 33 beautiful
cards in the cat oracle deck.
Oracle decks are really accessible.
You don't need to know anything going into them.
Usually a card will have a piece of art and then sometimes maybe just a single word
is a prompt or a few different prompts or definitions.
(22:39):
You can go into a booklet and read or.
When I was thinking about the cat oracle deck I wanted it to feel like some of the art direction
from catnet where it's a little punchier, it's a little brighter, a little more like vivid
70s aesthetics.
Steven was the perfect artist to work with.
(22:59):
And he was able to use some of his old cat collages that just fit the prompts perfectly
and made a whole bunch of new ones for the deck and it's really colorful and fun.
We always have different suits within our decks, the different cat archetype, your alley
cat, your lap cat, scary cat, things like that.
(23:21):
We have cat parts so the whiskers, the ears, the tail, the paws.
Another suit is the cat behaviors, the ways cats act like if they're hiding or hissing or
kneading or napping.
And then we have of course the cat things which are the accessories that they love, you know,
a sun beam, treats scratching post, a mouse catnet, things like that.
(23:46):
Every card has the name.
If you have drawn the zoomies card there will be a few different keywords that are sort of
like connected to the idea of the zoomie mode.
And then you can go in the booklet and sort of read more and it's often like a little questioning
idea to go along with it.
(24:06):
So people will use these cards all kinds of different ways.
We know people who are artists who use them as creative props, people who will even use
them as color inspiration or design inspiration, or you can take the more introspective route
of being like, okay, I'm going to pull three different cards.
You could do the most basic version in the whole world of past present future.
(24:28):
It is the vibe and we've also included different sample spreads and really fun themes of how
to interpret them.
Or if you just want to see a cool piece of art every day.
So nice way to do that too.
One of the most important things about great art is that it opens us up.
(24:49):
I think there's one card in the deck that really exemplifies this openness and creativity.
Wild card is the amplifier that you can get.
And it is the cat lady's card, the cat lady.
It sits apart from all the other suits of cards in the deck.
(25:09):
And Stephen, I'm really into the art that he chose for it because it's a very surprising
representation of a cat lady.
At first I was like, huh, that's not what I would have chosen or what I would have imagined.
This other that you wouldn't have pictured.
That makes it that much more interesting.
(25:30):
And that's why it's perfect.
Okay, Snuggles, I'm needing some creative inspiration.
Want to help me pull the card?
Okay, that one.
All right.
So that one is the cat lady.
(25:53):
So it's settled, cats are cuter than babies.
Folks, Michelangelo's Vitruvian man should have been a Vitruvian cat.
Beauty is, at the end of the day, in the eye of the beholder.
Speaking of eyes, tune into the next episode where we'll take a look at what makes those
(26:14):
peepers pop. I want to thank my experts Natalia Garcez, ErgoJosh and Anya Charbonneau.
The research and work is theirs.
If you'd like to learn more about them, please check out our show notes, which also include
the references and research that went into this episode.
And if you loved it, please do keep sharing our podcast with people who love cats or podcasts
(26:39):
or just would be into this.
Go on and give us a five star rating where you listen or write us a glowing review.
They really help.
If you'd like to further support the podcast and have a little cash, please head on over to
the show notes to see where you can donate.
All of this is so gratefully received and just keeps us keeping on.
See you next time.
(26:59):
And remember, everything beautiful in this world is connected.
6 degrees of cats is produced, written, edited and hosted by yours truly, Captain Kitty,
aka Amanda B. Please subscribe to our mailing list by going to linktr.ee/6degreesofcats
(27:22):
or look us up on all those social media platforms.
You'll be first in line for the extra audio and more treats if you connect with us there.
All episodes are dedicated to the misunderstood, the marginalized, the resilient and the
weird.
And of course, all the cats we've loved and lost.
Okay, so you will really love this.
(27:53):
One of my cat's names is Amanda.
People really react to it.
Like when I take her to an event or something, they're always like Amanda.
She came with the name from the Humane Society and we were like, "That is the silliest name
for a cat because it's so human."
And then you try to think about like, "Well, what's a funny name I can come up with?
(28:13):
A cute, funny name for my cat."
But then you know, getting to know her after the first few hours, she's Amanda.
It is dang.
So we have a beautiful fluffy long hair tortoise shell named Amanda.
She looks like a forest creature.
And then we have the like bad younger sibling named Toadette, aka Toad.
(28:34):
Also another Humane Society name that we just decided to keep.
Their pairing is so perfect because they don't match.
They don't look anything like each other.
Toads like a silver tabby.
Amanda is this multi-colored being. They're different shapes, sizes.
So there's something beautiful about their partnership and they love each other.
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