‘The Sublime is Meow’ takes the art of cat toys seriously

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First, Republican vice presidential candidate JD Vance blamed the erosion of America’s maternal instincts on “childless cat ladies.” Then his running mate Donald Trump unwittingly created a meme when he falsely claimed immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, were eating the cats and dogs of their neighbors.

“I thought there was a really strange thing where animals suddenly became part of this very human world of electoral politics,” said Chris Hammes, an artist and co-founder of Big Ramp, a small art gallery in Kensington.

He is not alone. When Hammes put out a call for submissions to “The Sublime is Meow,” an exhibition of artist-made cat toys, more than 40 artists sent in work.

These include felted art supplies dangling from strings by Ayla Shadya Alsebai, a mouse toy with its head cut off and fixed to the wall as a tiny taxidermy wall mount by Shawn Beeks, and a vial of a testosterone cypionate, a hormone injection commonly used by people in gender transition, crafted by artist Elliot Engles as a soft plushy.

Contributing artist Katie Dillon Low describes herself as a “gold-levelstar cat lady.”

“I do have a very special cat. Her name is Nugget,” she said, explaining that she sews her feline clothing and even owns a leash harness for when they go on camping trips together.

Low, who earned a master’s in fine arts at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, submitted a piece inspired by conceptual art progenitor Marcel Duchamp and his Readymades, or common objects elevated to fine art through presentation, such as a toilet.

Low swept underneath her couch, stove, refrigerator and every piece of furniture in her home to rediscover the lost objects Nugget had played with: twist ties, little felt balls pulled from the fringe of a throw pillow, hair scrunchies, the plastic pull-tops from milk containers and empty spools of medical tape.

She cataloged and pinned each artifact to a large board inside a plexiglass vitrine, as though they were specimens prepared for a natural science display. She titled it “The Hoard.”

“Some of it is literally trash,” Low said. “There’s no reason, really, to buy a cat toy because for a cat, anything is a toy.”