Louis Wain became famous to Victorians for his humanlike – anthropomorphised – animal drawings, particularly cats, which were widely published, as magazine illustrations, books and cards. He was ‘the man who drew cats’. The image here is from a children’s page in C. Arthur Pearson’s popular women’s weekly Home Notes in 1899, at a time when the prodigious Wain contributed at least a drawing an issue to this magazine alone. However, it is signed ‘Felecie Wain’, Louis Wain’s sister, who was also known as ‘Felice’.
Frog tableaux were popular at the time and Dickens had a small statue of sword-fighting frogs on his desk at his Gad’s Hill home when he died.
According to a Margate newsletter, Wain moved to the neighbouring seaside town of Westgate in 1894 with his four sisters and mother at the suggestion of Sir William Ingram, who lived there and owned Illustrated London News (founded by his father in 1842). Wain’s wife had recently died and Ingram also owned Illustrated Sporting and Dramatic News, where Wain had worked since 1882. The newsletter shows photographs of Wain’s homes and the graves of both his mother and Felecie.
The image below is a drunken Wain cat held by the V&A Museum.

Louis Wain’s ‘Hallo there! We won’t go home till morning’ showing a cat out on the razzle