Robert Vavra, if he hadn`t invented himself, might well have been a character Ernest Hemingway created for one of his books set in Spain--''The Sun Also Rises'' or ''Death in the Afternoon.''

Tall, spare and handsome, Vavra is elegant in the way people are when everything extraneous about them has been burned away by the fires and acids of a passionate life.

He is seated in a chair in the Ritz-Carlton, grousing good-humoredly about his profession:

''As a photographer I hear this crazy blank-blank thing about photographers not being artists. They ask about the models I used in my books, `What was that? A box boy from the Safeway?` If someone had painted these things, they would never ask that,'' Vavra says of the fantastic illusions he has created, often with mundane settings and ordinary people (except for a rare shot of a pearl-browed Bo Derek with a white Persian cat).

But never ordinary animals.

As he speaks, Tut, his Abyssinian cat, ping-pongs around the room, while Vavra, the writer and a photographer fall all over themselves trying to make him pose.

It`s something Tut already did on several of the spectacular pages of the new book ''Vavra`s Cats'' (William Morrow, $39.95.); but, short-memoried, Tut has no interest in repeating.

Patience, patience

''I busted my behind on this. If you`ve ever been around domestic cats . . . ,'' Vavra says, letting the rest fall to the imagination, adding that he often waited for the cooperation of each of his subjects ''till I turned to stone.''

Vavra`s collection of cat photographs comes along at a time when the market has been glutted, when one thinks there can be nothing new on the subject.

But thanks to his special eye, he has once again created something incomparable.

Considered one of the world`s finest photographers, Vavra already was the creator of or collaborator in at least a dozen other books, including the classics he did with Fleur Cowles, ''Tiger Flower'' and ''Lion and Blue.'' The latter two have recently been voted to an American Booksellers Association list of 10 all-time children`s favorites, including ''The Little Prince'' by St. Exupery. ''To me, a wonderful compliment,'' Vavra says.

Born in California, Vavra lived there until 1958, when he was 23. He boarded a plane that took 14 hours to go from Burbank to New York, then a boat that took 9 days to reach Spain, where he has since spent most of his time.

He began by covering the toros bravos for bullfight publications and

''awful men`s magazines.'' He then met James A. Michener, who asked him to provide the photographs for ''Iberia,'' which became a best-seller.

He then broke the mold of ''look-alike horse books'' with his spectacular ''Equus,'' for which he received international acclaim.

A `romantic eye`

''I looked at horses in a creative graphic form, in a way no one had ever interpreted the horse before,'' with what he admits is ''a romantic eye'' in an era when most photographers` eyes are brutally realistic.

Later came ''Such is the Real Nature of Horses,'' ''Stallion of a Dream,'' ''All Those Girls in Love with Horses'' and ''Unicorns I Have Known.'' He has recently collaborated with Cowles on another book, ''To Be a Unicorn,'' already in its second printing after a month out.

Vavra grew up in Glendale, Calif., near the Griffith Park Zoo, and early memories of the big cats there, of Kipling`s stories in ''The Jungle Books''

and Jim Corbett`s in ''The Man-Eaters of India'' inspired him to turn his camera`s attention from ungulates, real and mythical, to felines great and small.

''I wanted to get away from horses for a little bit,'' he says.

''I had no appreciation of domestic cats--I loved large cats as a child

--until 1959, when I was having a drink with Hemingway in Malaga,'' he says. ''And I said to him, `It seems strange, since you are a hunter, that I see you photographed with cats rather than dogs.`

''Hemingway said, `Don`t you know, Robert, the fireside tabby is just a shrunken lion without a mane.` We were in a fish place, and there was a cat stalking a moth, and he said, `It could be a lion stalking an antelope on the Serengeti.` ''

Nearly 30 years later Vavra sifts all cats big and small, one among the other, on the pages of his book: lions and black Persians, snow leopards and short-haired tabbies, wildcats and white Persians, servals and woolly barn cats--all the world`s great family of felines.

Michener, who Vavra says ''has always given me marvelous advice,'' had encouraged him to do this pictorial departure.

''I owe more to Michener than to anyone. He gave me a showcase for my work,'' says Vavra, referring to ''Iberia.'' They met through a mutual bullfighter friend, John Fulton.

''Michener then hired me as a research assistant, which was a way of saying, `You`re struggling, and I don`t want to just give you money.` He gave me $1,000 for 150 photographs. I just got a check for $700. For my lifetime I get 10 percent of what he gets,'' adds Vavra, who will be updating the book for its 20th anniversary in 1988.

He has his debts to Hemingway too, he says: ''I had the good fortune with Hemingway to see the good side of him and not the supermacho. I was completely broke,'' and at the Feria de Seville, ''he put a fair program in my pocket. Later I found a check for $100 in it. That was very encouraging, as I figured he didn`t give checks to just anyone around.''

Those years were ''completely insane,'' he says. ''What was I doing, going with $300 and a one-way ticket to someplace I`d never been?''

But he has ''no regrets'' for being ''down on the very bottom of the boat where they kept the cars, with 16 people to a cabin,'' on the crossing in `58, or for the three years when he ''ate standing up like a horse at the bar because it was cheaper than sitting down.'' Or even for not having money to buy film so that the professional experiences he should have had at 26, ''I did not experience until I was 29,'' says the man who now shoots 20 or 30 rolls at a sitting, ''like sketching.''

He counts those years ''the best, the best! Paradise! Sorry, I have to say it. There are good things in my life now, but there was so much quality in my life then.

''It was like falling onto the back lot of `Blood and Sand` on 20th Century-Fox, except it really smelled of jasmine. For a kid falling into a country like that it was incredible.''

He`s far beyond struggle now.

''I`ve got a 150-acre ranch 45 minutes outside Seville with a swimming pool, and a three-story house in Seville. I drive a Mercedes, but the quality of my life was so much better then. I have fancy friends.'' He hesitates, then corrects--''acquaintances''--with a wistful smile.