Starring: Felix Wilde, Windsor Wilde and Norbury Ackland

Directed by: Will Sharpe

This review contains a Kitty Carnage Warning!

Cat Out of the Bag Alert! This review contains some spoilers for this film!

Synopsis: The eclectic life of noted cat illustrator Louis Wain (Benedict Cumberbatch) from meeting his wife Emily (Claire Foy) to his eventual descent into madness.

Featured Feline: The star of the show is undoubtedly the tuxedo kitten whom Louis and Emily find shivering in the rain right after finding out about Emily’s breast cancer diagnosis.

The couple take in the kitten and warm him with blankets. It is love at first sight. They decide to name him Peter.

Peter is later shown as a slightly older cat, sharing many wonderful times with the couple.

As Emily’s companion, Peter is often on her bed during her illness. In one scene Louis puts glasses on Peter and gives him a voice, which sadly does not amuse the poor ailing woman.

Peter is on hand when Emily finally passes away, becoming Louis’ most treasured companion and friend.

As Louis becomes more famous, he takes great comfort in Peter, even when they are joined by other cats in the home.

Kitty Carnage Warning! When Louis finds Peter has passed, he is understandably inconsolable.

Cat Burglars (Scene Stealers): As one would expect in a film about this brilliant feline-centric artist there are plenty of cats. In the opening scenes several cats are standing alongside the road in the rain.

There are also cats throughout the film, including one ginger tabby who enjoys some tender attention from some boys after Wain has published his first Christmas illustration.

A beautiful bicolor Persian is painted in a portrait by Wain.

When Wain is shown being made chairman of the National Cat Club, several cats can be seen on display in separate cages. Wain himself is holding a small Persian cat.

Interestingly enough, Wain’s theory about cats eventually being able to communicate with humans seems to play out when there are actual subtitles for some of the cats in one scene in his home. (Note, I did not notice this during the first viewing of the film, when we did have subtitles on, but when I watched it later without subtitles the titles for the cats appeared! One black cat says “I do my best but I am a cat,” when addressed by Louis and a kitten jumping over some items under a bed is captioned as saying “Jumping! I like jumping!”

As Louis slips into further mental distress, he envisions the people around him with cat heads in the style of his drawings. He also sees a gray shorthair cat with extraordinarily large eyes.

A cat is shown as being the cause of Louis’ fall from an omnibus and another cat is present in Louis’ subsequent future vision.

When Louis finally moves to a better facility for the mentally ill where cats are allowed, a few kitties are seen on the grounds.

Behind the Scenes:

The cats who played Peter were credited in the end sequence as Felix Wilde as Peter, Windsor Wilde as Young Peter and Norbury Ackland as Kitten Peter. They were trained by Charlotte Wilde (presumably mom to Felix and Windsor) with Dena Chamberlain as First Assistant Cat Handler and Kelly Williams as the Supervising Vet. One of the cats accompanied Benedict Cumberbatch and Claire Foy to a London screening of the film (photograph from Tom and Lorenzo).

Several adorable posters were made for the film, including ones in which the stars pose with various cats.

The Real Peter

The stories of how Peter came into Wain’s life vary wildly from article to article. Some claim the kitten was a wedding present (not clearly stating who gave whom the cat). Some say that Wain got Peter for his wife when she became ill (some even saying that he paid more attention to the cat than his dying wife). Another account says that Wain started drawing cats when he was nineteen years old and his sisters gave him Peter, which Wain began to train. The article reads, in part, “Louis started to train the kitten, and soon he had the animal so docile that, at his command, the cat would pick up a piece of newspaper, kneel down and join its paws together as if in prayer, and do a hundred little tricks.”

Reportedly from Louis’ own account, the September 15, 1899 edition of the Manchester Weekly Times and Examiner explained about “Louis Wain’s Original Cat.” He explained that Peter came to himself and Emily ” almost with his first sight of the world. To him properly belongs the foundation of my career.” In the article Wain explains, “Born in 1883, Peter lived to the March of 1898, and died in my hands, a baby kitten again, talking and answering me as of old.”

In the March 20, 1890 edition of The Pall Mall Gazette, Wain also shared some stories about Peter. “Some years ago Peter was a black-and-white kitten with an inordinate love for mouse-hunting. I had him when he had just gained his eyesight, and the second day in his new home he brought a half-dead young mouse who had held on so tight to Peter’s nose that it bled. Peter was so plucky that I took a fancy to him, for he declined to part with the mouse, and marched up and down the house with his tail bolt upright in the air till the mouse was killed for him.

“Presently I began to teach him tricks, in which he took keen delight. For instance, he would run downstairs after a rabbit’s foot, and bring it up and lay it at my feet. Then he would run and hide behind the door and peep round till he saw me coming. Then he would bolt, and I ran after him and he ran after me, and away we went upstairs and downstairs, and all over the house. In such wild frolics as these I began to study him. Imagine me rolling all over the floor, now on hands and knees, now crouching up and down stairs. Peter striking a hundred queer attitudes which I have never seen in any other cat, jumping sideways and round on the tip of his toes, twirling around with blazing eyes and open mouth, his whiskers up and his hair standing on end. But — at the sight of the pencil or the sketch-book on the ground he relapsed into sulks and lay down on the hearth-rug. So that practically the only sketch I ever made of him was while his back was turned from me, a back view, and yet he was the best model I could have had.”

The most touching part of the account comes when Wain explained Peter’s affection and support for Emily: “You ask me if I think a cat is capable of affection and sympathy. His mistress was bedridden, and suffered intensely. At first Peter only looked on and wondered, but at last he would not move from her bed, and sat by her side from morning till night. Or he would lie on her arm, the warmth and electricity of his body giving her the only respite from pain she ever had. All the play went out of him, and he became a staid and mournful cat till the end came, when he again took his place at the top of my drawing-board, but much older in his ways and more solemn.”

Final Mewsings: Anyone who champions cats is indeed a champion.

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