Meowcasso — Cubist Cat Scratching Mat, Natural Sisal 60×40cm
He doesn't scratch the furniture.
He signs it.
A cubist sisal scratching mat for the cat who has, frankly, always considered himself an artist. One eye blue. One eye fire. Beret on tilt, of course.
A designer sisal scratching mat that saves your sofa, and gives your cat somewhere far better to be brilliant.
Buy now · Ships from the UK
£16.99 · Free UK shipping · No frame required.
🎧 Prefer listening? Track 7 plays at the bottom of the exhibit.
As displayed at the entrance
A formal label, in the gallery's preferred typeface.
- Artist
- MEOWCASSO (b. coastal Spain, indeterminate)
- Title
- Untitled Mat, c. now
- Medium
- Natural sisal, rouge, ochre, the scratch of a serious cat
- Dimensions
- 60 × 40 cm
- Edition
- Unlimited, signed by paw
- On loan to
- Living rooms across the United Kingdom
Things this little gallery piece can do
For the visitor who likes to read the small print before they admire the work.
Before this, it was the corner of the sofa. The leg of the chair. The one place you wished he wouldn't.
- Scratch-ready sisal. Durable, natural texture cats love. Promotes healthy claws and stress relief, plus the occasional 3am philosophical sit-in.
- Anti-slip latex backing. Stays firmly in place on tile, wood, or rugs. No curling, no sliding during zoomies.
- Wall-mountable. Hang it vertically like a real piece. Hook-and-loop strips included, hardware-ready backing built in. (Always test on a hidden patch first. The adhesive can lift delicate wallpapers or freshly painted surfaces.)
- Meowcasso's cubist artwork, printed bold in non-toxic ink, right into the natural sisal weave.
- Protects sofas, carpets, and the leg of the chair you'd been mourning.
- Works best where your cat already scratches. Cats are creatures of habit; this simply gives them a better option than the sofa arm.
- Has its own song. On Spotify. (Honestly.)
The tale of Meowcasso, and how he became an artist
A short biography, mostly true, partially imagined, entirely his.
It begins, as these things do, in a back-alley in a small whitewashed fishing town, the colour of a pulled tooth.
The alley belonged to a young, shouting painter with charcoal under his nails and a habit of leaving the studio door open on Tuesdays. A small kitten with mismatched eyes (one blue as the sea, one orange as a struck match) wandered in while a portrait was drying, walked across the canvas with his small wet paws, and walked out again without comment.
The painter did not repaint the canvas. He sold it, in fact, to a man from Barcelona who said something kind about the intentional disruption of the foreground.
The kitten travelled, as cats sometimes do, on the inside of a coat pocket. He came to Paris in the spring. He found his beret in a back-street gutter (slightly squashed, but he liked it that way; he said it had been somewhere). He found his name in a gallery window where a critic had written "oh là là, who is this Meowcasso?" in lipstick on the glass and never come back to wipe it off.
He took an attic in Belleville, above a paint shop run by a tired, kind woman who fed him sardines and whispered "travaille bien, petit" every morning. He worked. He scratched. In strokes.
We can't prove the story, mind. The attic is gone. Meowcasso, sadly, has moved on to other galleries.
But we made the mat. In his colours. With his cheek.
If your cat needs somewhere to make his masterpiece, now there's a canvas waiting.
Acquire this work →A note on his major artistic phases
Four phases. Each one wholly committed. None of them rushed.
He scratched only at twilight. He refused fish on Mondays. He looked, for several weeks, like a soft sad smudge, which a French magazine called "très mélancolique, magnifique."
Lighter palette. More confidence. A great deal of stretching in shafts of late afternoon light. The mat warmed. He warmed. The room, briefly, was washed in honey light.
It was, frankly, just a Wednesday. The critics overcomplicated it. He had had tuna. He had felt moved. He had scratched accordingly.
The mature work. Confident, unhurried, deeply textured. Strokes of considered violence followed by long contemplative naps. Many art historians consider this his finest phase. He doesn't disagree.
Selected works currently on the mat
A short list. The full catalogue is, naturally, somewhere on the sofa.
In his own paw
Translated from the French, lightly.
Some scratch to fight. I scratch to feel.
Each mat, a masterpiece. Each nap, surreal.
The sofa is overrated. The rug is a coward.
The carpet, in my view, has nothing to say.
I work in sisal because sisal answers.
Beret on tilt. Paint on my toes.
Don't disturb the work.
I am, as the critic put it, in the rose.
M.
(If you've read this far, your cat already knows.)
Track 7. Meowcasso.
Run-time: just enough. Press play. Read along. He'll work in the background, on the mat, in his beret. Don't watch him too directly. He prefers to be observed sideways.
Psst… the artist has arrived.
He don't chase mice, he paints them bold.
With tuna tins and strokes of gold.
One eye blue, one eye fire.
He sketches dreams with feline flair.
Scratching post? A canvas, dear.
Every claw mark, avant-garde here.
No ordinary tabby, oh no no.
He signs his name: Meowcasso.
Beret on tilt, tail in a curl,
paws dipped in paint, changing the world.
He's a whiskered wonder, a furball pro.
The gallery gasps, "Oh là là! Meowcasso!"
A rebel muse, a velvet rogue,
he doodles thoughts in every pose.
The critics purr, the crowds all stare.
But he just blinks, like he don't care.
Some scratch to fight.
He scratches to feel.
Each mat's a masterpiece.
Each nap surreal.
He once painted a tuna…
and it cried.
The work in a real home
(coming soon)
Meowcasso doesn't ask if he belongs in a room. He just begins working in it.
Tested by visiting artists
Left in a room with three cats and one self-described impressionist.
Ten minutes later, the impressionist had a movement. The other three pretended not to be impressed but were, frankly, taking notes.
Left in the gallery guestbook
All entirely invented. Real reviews live below the work, in the gallery's living guestbook.
Beret on tilt, the
sofa unscratched, the rug spared.
The rouge of his nap.
Acquire this work
Some cats sharpen their claws. Some cats develop a body of work.
Let him have his canvas.
Let your sofa retire from the gallery.
Let Meowcasso play in the kitchen while the room becomes, quietly, the most interesting room on the street.
£16.99
Buy now · Ships from the UK
We make these in small batches. The artist doesn't rush.
A small note from the maker
There was an afternoon I was in the National Gallery, slightly damp from a London rain, looking at a portrait that could not have cared less about me. And I thought: somewhere, a cat is doing this for free, on a sofa, every day, without asking for an audience.
So I made him his canvas. Properly. In sisal.
If your cat is, secretly, an artist, this is for him.
More mats with stories
Each one a different cat. Each one a different small mythology.
A village cat who rode the great wave off Kanagawa. Tail high. Whiskers steady. Entirely unbothered.
meet her →A Soho basement cat who only danced on Tuesdays. Had Opinions about Donna Summer. Has her own song.
meet her →A scrappy ginger boxer cat with a sweatband. A tiny mouse with a foam finger. A whole comeback.
meet them →A toasted-sesame tabby who runs a six-stool ramen shop in a back-alley behind Shinjuku. The soul of the broth.
pull up a stool →