A small picture depicts a funny scene: a young officer is playing with a tiny kitten that has turned to its hind legs. Next to it is the orderly who is smoking a pipe. The entertainment of an officer playing with a cat is depicted as an ordinary picture of everyday life. The room is not very well furnished – a table with a candle and some objects left over from the recent tea party, a chair, a bed; everything else is lost in the shadows.
Items on the table glitter with smooth shiny surfaces under the light of a candle. The same light makes the red tablecloth blaze, big shadows from the candle fall on the walls. Silence reigns in the figures. but she is ready to break. The officer, whose appearance reminds Fedotov, holds a guitar in his hands, and in the other – a stick. His smoldering face is drawn to the cat. Batman, written from a real fedotovskogo batman Korshunov – a loyal friend and assistant artist – blows a chibouk. Glorious, without embarrassment, an image of officer leisure.
A slight sense of gloominess, if it occurs, is easily overcome by a good-natured smile on the officer’s face, and the household glow of the samovar, and the comic posture of a kitten that has become like a man. Gloomy – but this is because there is only one candle per room, it’s poor – but people do not make it up, they even have fun, sharing leisure time between a guitar and a kitten – in a word, it’s an everyday thing: honest poverty, youth patiently attending to future prosperity. A picture, not a god-news what a perfect one, but grabbing at the main thing, clarifying the characters and clearly marking the plot, it was possible to bring to a perfectly executed picture of the officer’s life.