the rayist cat

There appear to be two black cats, with a tiger-striped one between them. You can see the sinuous curves of their bodies, while the paint glances out in sharp motions like sunlight on shiny fur, foretelling their quick action.

This is what you can see in Cats (rayist percep.[tion] in rose, black, and yellow), painted in 1913 by the Russian artist Natalia Goncharova. If this work seems treated in a similar fashion to that of the Italian Futurists (that one with the dachshund whose legs are just a blur of stumpy motion), there's a reason. The rays of paint indicating the movement that the cats will make and have made are an adaptation from the machine-inspired works the Italians developed. Learn more here from the Guggenheim Museum New York.