Art of this sort featuring felids dates back to the Upper Paleolithic era, to 40,000 BCE, though it is uncertain when winged felines in particular were first represented.

In the Book of Daniel of the Hebrew Bible and Christian Old Testament, the first beast in the vision of the beasts from the sea (chapter 7, dating to around the 2nd century BC) resembled a winged lion.

The (probably unrelated) Lion of Saint Mark is the winged heraldic symbol of Mark the Evangelist of the New Testament (1st century AD), and features prominently in Christian art from the early church to the present day.

Winged lion sculpture from the Persian city of Ecbatana, 550-330 BCE

The winged cat – a feline with wings like a bird, bat or other flying creature – is a theme in artwork and legend going back to prehistory, especially mythological depictions of big cats with eagle wings in Eurasia and North Africa.

There is at least one stuffed winged cat, but this may be a nineteenth-century grift.

A "flying cat" was reported in India in 1868. It was shot by Alexander Gibson, and the skin was exhibited at a meeting of the Bombay Asiatic Society. Gibson believed it to be a cat, but others claim it to be a bat or flying fox.

In August 1894, a cat said to have wings resembling those of a duckling was being exhibited by David Badcock of Reach, Cambridgeshire, England. It was later stolen and turned up in Liverpool, England, but had shed its wings.

In 1897, a tortoiseshell cat with pheasant-like wings projecting from each side of its 4th ribs was reported shot and killed in Matlock, Derbyshire. The story appeared in the High Peak News of Saturday, 26 June 1897. Witnesses claimed the cat used its wings outstretched to help run faster.

In 1899, London's Strand Magazine reported a winged cat or kitten belonging to a woman living in Wiveliscombe, Somerset, England. Cat show judge HC Brooke also described it in the weekly magazine Cat Gossip in 1927: "This cat had growing from its back two appendages which reminded the observer irresistibly of the wings of a chicken before the adult feathers appear. These appendages were not flabby, but apparently gristly, about six or eight inches long, and place in exactly the position assumed by the wings of a bird in the act of taking flight. They did not make their appearance until the kitten was several weeks old." Someone attempted to cut off the wings, with fatal consequences for the cat.