Most cats can go to the vet. But what if your cat is made of bronze, and at least a hundred years old? For this month's #ConnectingCollections, we're exploring this small bronze cat through a scientific lens. This statuette was bought by J. Paul Getty for his brand-new Getty Museum in 1955 from a dealer, Spink & Son, in London. Decades later, it remained off view, thought to be a modern imitation of these popular Egyptian artworks. But in 2019, a member of the antiquities curatorial team investigated a clue to its earlier history: a message from the late 19th century written on its base by a restorer and dealer: "Mounted By W.T. Ready, Nov 1892, 55 Rathbone Pl(ace), London W." The surface of the cat suggested that it might be worth a closer look—and that’s when we turned to conservators Jeffrey Maish and Almoatzbellah Elshahawi. Conservators at the Getty Villa use many kinds of scientific techniques to better understand how objects in the collection were made, repaired, and used o...