The cat is a time-traveller from ancient Egypt. It returns whenever sorcery or style is in vogue. In the Decadent aestheticism of Poe and Baudelaire, the cat regains its sphinxlike prestige and magnitude. With its taste for ritual and bloody spectacle, conspiracy and exhibitionism, the cat is pure pagan pomp. Uniting nocturnal primitivism to Apollonian elegance of line, it became the living paradigm of Egyptian sensibility. The cat, fixing its swift predatory energy in poses of Apollonian stasis, was the first to enact the frozen moment of perceptual stillness that is high art.