The Internet loves nothing more than cats, but it’s rare that we look beyond the cute photos and memes to more seriously consider their place in our world. Flavorwire’s Highbrow Cat Week is an attempt to remedy that, with a series of pieces devoted to analyzing their impact on the cultural realm.

Despite their endless dumbing-down at the hands of everyone with a wifi signal and a copy of Photoshop, cats have been rich symbols for thousands of years, commonly associated with intelligence, femininity, evil (more on that later this week), sin, and class. Themes like these prove that there’s a lot behind the surface of our culture’s most ubiquitous animal, and cats continue to be incredibly stimulating subjects in books, movies, and the like. The creators of the following feline characters expanded upon those themes, subverted them, or ignored them completely to create some of culture’s most interesting cats. … Read More