愛德華‧馬內以第二帝國時期巴黎的都會人物題材著稱，但他的動物畫質量亦相當可觀，目前流傳最廣的是為襄富樂希的《貓族》所作的兩幅圖繪。馬內經常描繪馴貓的各種姿勢與周遭配置差異，在1880年前後他畫了大約三十件貓習作，並納入東亞水墨技法。本文探索襄富樂希關於貓的智能的論述，以及馬內如何刻劃貓的活動和姿態，並對照相應圖像與自然史論述，藉此說明馬內的貓圖開拓動物畫的新視角，並突破既定的藝術類別界線。

Edouard Manet, best known for his figure painting of Parisian life under the French Second Empire, also produced a number of animal paintings and studies. Among them, the two illustrations for the realist writer Champfleury’s Les chats have been the most frequently exhibited to date. Manet depicted various significant gestures of cats and their surroundings. Around 1880, he painted about thirty cat studies and also integrated techniques from East Asian ink painting. This essay explores how Champfleury argued about feline intelligence, how Manet depicted cats’ activities and gestures, and how his cat pictures relate to naturalist descriptions and imagery. The author contends that Manet’s cat pictures expand the scope of animal subject matter and thereby cross over conventional boundaries of artistic categories.