This list of fictional cats in literature is subsidiary to the list of fictional cats. It is restricted solely to notable feline characters from notable literary works of fiction. For characters that appear in several separate works, only the earliest work will be recorded here.
A black and white tom, often considered the 'second-hand-man' to Munkustrap. He saves Demeter from Macavity, and is the first to attack him after he defeats Munkustrap.
A kitten depends on his nine lives and the magical powers of his owner (a friendly witch) in order to emerge safely from various adventures.[1][2][3][4][5]
Bangs is a little girl's cat in this winner of the 1967 Caldecott Medal. In a variant of Aesop's The Boy Who Cried Wolf, Samantha romanticizes her life, pretending that Bangs can talk and that her mother was a mermaid. When a neighboring boy, Thomas, believes her and goes to search for the mermaid, Bangs follow him; they are caught in a seastorm and lost. They return safely, and Sam learns the folly of spreading "moonshine," or nonsense.[7]
An abnormally large black cat who walks on his hind legs and carries a pistol. Being a member of the Devil's entourage, he is wicked and devious. He has a penchant for chess, vodka, and pickled mushrooms.[8][9]
Borregad and Lyrec are of an energy-based race who can shapeshift. When they hunt their archenemy into another world, Lyrec takes human shape, but Borregad has only enough strength to take the form of a cat.[11] Borregad, a Jester figure, finds a variant of Guinnessstout to cheer himself in this fantasy world.
A telepathic tom cat who works happily alongside humans to fight outer space monsters known as Dragons, Captain Wow perceives them as rats and is a successful slayer of these invaders.
Carbonel: the King of the Cats is the first of a three-part series about this royal cat, all published between 1955 and 1978. (Reprinted versions have different titles: Carbonel: the King of the Cats, Carbonel: the King of Cats, Carbonel: the Prince of Cats, and so on.) Carbonel's feline subjects miss him after the witch Mrs. Cantrip abducted him. Unfortunately, he cannot return to his throne until the enslavement spell which Mrs. Cantrip cast on him is undone.[12] He is helped by the human children Rosemary and John. Carbonel is depicted as a black cat, as shown by the book cover illustrations of a wide variety of reprints. Library Journal called it "A must for all libraries." New York Journal-American wrote, "A truly bewitching story reminiscent of Alice in Wonderland," and The Horn Book Magazine enthused, "Magic and everyday life blend smoothly in this highly enjoyable fantasy, perfect for reading aloud."
Sometimes raises philosophical points that annoy or baffle Alice. It does, however, appear to cheer her up when it turns up suddenly at the Queen of Hearts' croquet lawn, and when sentenced to death baffles everyone by having made its head appear without its body, sparking a massive argument between the executioner and the King and Queen of Hearts about whether something that does not have a body can indeed be beheaded.
This unfortunate cat is killed by a truck, buried in the ancient burial ground of the title, then returns home, in a manner reminiscent of the dead son in the horror story "The Monkey's Paw".
C'mell is an uplifted Persian cat with reddish fur who looks, in these stories, like a red-headed woman with discreet (and discrete) feline features. She is the heroine of both stories, being a far-future cat/woman with psychic powers including telepathy. She courageously helps her society, both in gaining more rights for "underpeople" (animals given intellect, speech, and physical make-overs) such as herself and in saving the lives of humans.[14] She appears in only two short stories, but remains "the most enduringly popular cat in science fiction and fantasy."[14]
Conrad
The Cat Who Caught A Killer
L.T. Shearer
Conrad is a male calico cat who talks and helps Lulu Lewis, his chosen human who is a retired police officer and lives on a canal boat, to solve murders.
Male twin to Tantomile. Coricopat and Tantomile are often portrayed as psychic cats, as they sense the presence of danger before it becomes apparent to the other characters.
The pet cat of Hermione Granger. He is described as having a "squashed face," which was inspired by a real cat Rowling once saw, which she said looked like it had run face first into a brick wall; most likely a Persian. Hermione buys Crookshanks from a shop in Diagon Alley out of sympathy, as nobody wants him because of his behaviour and his squashed looking-face. Rowling has confirmed that Crookshanks is half Kneazle,[15] an intelligent, cat-like creature who can detect when they are around untrustworthy people, explaining his higher than normal intelligence and stature.
Demeter is black and gold with a few patches of white and red or orange (and she wears gloves instead of arm warmers, giving her a more elegant touch.) She is the cat who unmasks Macavity when he tries to disguise as Old Deuteronomy.
One of the youngest female kittens in the tribe of Jellicle cats. Like many of the other young feline characters, she is in awe of the Rum Tum Tugger, a flirtatious roguish male main character.
The main character for the first arc of Warriors books (the "Original Series") as well as a major supporting character for the subsequent arcs, he is a flame-colored tom with deep green eyes.
In this 1989 German-language mystery,[16] which has been translated into 17 languages and became a worldwide best-seller, Francis ("a wise-ass of a cat and new to the town"[17]), investigates the murders of several cats. Publishers Weekly wrote, "A clever, offbeat thriller in which the sleuth and most of the other main characters are cats, this ... won Germany's prize for best crime novel of the year in 1990. As an allegory on Germany's Nazi past, it is facile and ambivalent. The detective/narrator, Francis, an irrepressibly curious house cat, deduces that whoever is murdering the neighborhood tabbies has a warped mind and is attempting to breed a 'super race' of felines."[18]Felidae was adapted into a 1994 German animatedneo-noirfilm directed by Michael Schaack and starring Ulrich Tukur as Francis.
A talking cat of Narnia, he is a four-legged member of the triumvirate who cause civil war and real terror among his compatriots. Ginger lies at every opportunity ("Aslan would want you to do this!"). His co-leaders are Rishda Tarkaan, Calormene captain leading the battle against Narnia with the sole motive of bellicosity, and Shift, a greedy ape who seeks power to sate his gluttony. Ginger is finally punished for his evil deeds by having his ability to speak removed and being banned from Aslan's Country.
A foul-tempered, one-eyed grey tomcat whose owner, Nanny Ogg, insists against all the evidence that he is a sweet, harmless kitten. In the course of the books, he has killed two vampires, eating at least one of them in the novel Witches Abroad:
"The bat squirmed under his claw. It seemed to Greebo's small cat brain that it was trying to change its shape, and he wasn't having any of that from a mouse with wings on."
Companion to Mungojerrie, a white fluffy Persian queen who first appears in the poem Growltiger's Last Stand. She inadvertently leads to the demise of her suitor, the dreaded Growltiger, at the hands (paws) of a gang of Siamese cats.
As Fritz Leiber, a cat-lover, describes him, "Gummitch was a superkitten, as he knew very well, with an I.Q. of about 160. Of course, he didn't talk. But everybody knows that I.Q. tests based on language ability are very one-sided. Besides, he would talk as soon as they started setting a place for him at table and pouring him coffee."[19] Gummitch is unable to prove himself by coffee; he proves himself by saving a life in his household.
A grey tabby cat designated SCP-529 by the SCP Foundation, whose rear half is invisible and intangible. Josie moves normally despite her absent half.[21] Character was the mascot for the SCP Series.[22]
A bloated, evil ginger tabby worshipped as a living god by sewer rats. He dwells in a dark chamber and no one has ever seen any more of him than his blazing red eyes, so his rodent followers are unaware of the true feline nature of their deity.
She is a housecat who acts as an occasional antagonist, frightening and hunting Omri's animated toy Indian. Kitsa is black and white, with green eyes, noted for her independence and disobedience.
She is a housecat who wreaks havoc around her owner's home when she is in a bad mood, hence the name. She has black fur and a white tuft of fur on her chest.
A telepathic cat who works happily alongside humans to fight outer space monsters known as Dragons, she perceives them as rats and is a successful slayer of these invaders. Her human partner, Underhill, is in love with her, knowing that no human female mind could ever equal the Lady's.
A devilish cat. Part of the poem about him says, "Macavity, Macavity, there's no one like Macavity, For he's a fiend in feline shape, a monster of depravity".
An anthropomorphic cat who lives in Morningside, Edinburgh, Maisie wears a kilt and her adventures have taken her from Glasgow to New York to Brazil and even climbing in the Himalayas. Her feline friends are Professor Mackenzie and Mrs McKitty.[23] Maisie is featured in over 20 books, and has a line of soft toys; the books have been adapted for a television series, with dubbing by Scottish comedian Stanley Baxter.[24]
The eponymous fast-talking confidence trickster cat who operates a 'pied-piper' scam in the Discworld series of books - organising teams of rats to infest a town and then rapidly withdraw after payment to a 'tame' human.
An alley cat who is the best friend of the cockroach Archy. Drawn in a series of newspaper comics, she is "a toujours gai" ("always in a good mood") old dame with the soul of Cleopatra." A song, "Toujours Gai," was written for Mehitabel in the 1971 animated musicalcomedy filmShinbone Alley. It was later covered by Eartha Kitt on her CD album Purr-fect: Greatest Hits.[25]
20 lb (9kg) tomcat companion to (and fellow investigator with) amateur sleuth Temple Barr, occasionally assisted by his sire 3 O'Clock Louie, his Ma Barker and her 24th Street gang, and his kit Midnight Louise.
A bob-tailed grey tomcat belonging to the wizard Harry Dresden. He is often used as a vessel for Bob (a spirit of intellect) to inhabit on intelligence missions.
The pet cat of Hogwarts caretaker Argus Filch. She patrols the corridors of the school looking for students skipping class, often foreshadowing the appearance of Mr. Filch himself. J. K. Rowling named the character after Mrs. Norris from Jane Austen's 1814 novel Mansfield Park.[26][27]
Set to music by Samuel Barber and others. The cat in this 9th-century Irish monastic poem is described as a happy mouser, whose simple enjoyment of success in the hunt is likened to that of the author, a monk, when he learns something new in his studies.
This cat is thought, by the narrator, to be an extraordinarily stupid cat "who could never learn the simplest of tricks";[28] in fact, Peter is extraordinarily brilliant. He is part of a race of Felidae who originally lived on the Moon and who came to Earth, ages ago, to enjoy being spoiled by the Egyptians. This science fiction tale explains why dogs howl at the Moon, why the Great Sphinx of Giza has its shape, and even why the Moon has craters.
The smart, loving cat of protagonist Daniel Boone Davis, who occasionally carries him in a carrying-bag and gives him saucers of ginger ale to drink. Dan calls him Petronius the Arbiter because he thinks that Pete is a good arbiter (judge) of personality. If Pete dislikes someone, Dan will distrust that person; Pete has always been proved right.
The title character of the book, who has an inexplicable tendency to be wherever the narrator happens to be. In one scene Pixel does, in fact, walk through a wall, and it is explained that Pixel is too young to know that such behavior is impossible.
Pluto is the narrator's cat. After becoming an alcoholic he starts abusing the cat, then trying unsuccessfully to kill it. When his wife intervenes in one incident he kills her instead then bricks the body up in a wall. The narrator is caught when the police come and hear sounds behind the wall, where the narrator accidentally entombed the still-living cat along with its mistress.
Poppy Cat, a young neckerchief-wearing kitten who is the protagonist of the series and the leader of her teammates, Alma, Zuzu, Owl and Mo. She takes them on big extraordinary adventures to faraway places by every vehicle they need, but they have to stay away from Egbert, because he is not nice to them.
Princess Arjumand is the beloved pet of Tocelyn 'Tossie' Mering in the 19th century whose great-granddaughter in the 21st century will control a very large endowment that the time travel faculty of Oxford greatly needs. Princess Arjumand is brought into the future to save her from drowning and sets off the plot of the book when the hero is tasked with returning her to her own time. Is particularly fond of goldfish.
A cat with a love for mouse pie, a good friend of the dog Duchess and cousin to Tabitha.
Rroû
Rroû
Maurice Genevoix
In the film, the gray tabby kitten is born in an attic, sees his mother fall to her death, is taken in by a girl, lost in the woods, injured, recovers, and is left to live in the woods with a white cat. The novel Rroû by Maurice Genevoix was published in 1931 and republished in 2023 upon the release of the film adaptation, Mon chat et moi, la grande aventure de Rroû (My Cat and I, the Great Adventure of Rroû). Where subtitled in English in English-speaking countries, the cat’s name is Lou, and the film is called A Cat’s Life. The film is rated PG for fear, death, violence, and language.
The Tailor's pet cat who fetches an essential cherry-coloured silk twist, but angrily hides it after he finds the tailor released his captive mice. After a change of heart, he gives back the twist.
Small Bob is Bob, AKA Iapetuse's skeleton cat in Tartarus. He is a dead cat, only made from bones. His image flickers, making him seem different at times.[30]
Sprockets is a stowaway feral kitten who becomes spaceship mascot. The crew members superstitiously believe that his finally learning to purr will portend success in their search for an inhabitable planet.[31][32]
Squire Julian Gingivere was odd among cats in the fact that he was a vegetarian. He lived with the owl Captain Snow, but the owl's appetite for meat, his bad table manners and their conflicting personalities led to a disagreement and then separation.
Tab is one of a gang of talking cats who live at Nuthanger Farm. When the protagonist rabbits raid the farm, the cats prove to be bold, dangerous enemies and are subdued only by the wits of Hazel and Blackberry, the brawny courage of Bigwig, and the speed of Dandelion. On his next trip to the farm, Hazel is assaulted by the green-eyed Tab, but the little girl of the farm saves Hazel.[33]
A Siamese cat who accompanies Luath, a Labrador Retriever, and Bodger, a Bull Terrier, on a 300-mile journey through the Canadian wilderness to rejoin their human family.
In a short story by Saki, a cat is taught to talk, but knows too many personal facts about people and is all too willing to talk about them.[34] He is taught by mild-mannered Cornelius Appin, who calls Tobermory "a Beyond-cat of extraordinary intelligence".[35] When Tobermory embarrasses everyone present by proving to be a consummate gossip, his owner attempts to poison him. Saki's biographer comments, "The cat eludes the strychnine left out for him and falls instead in combat with a big yellow tom from the rectory. Not a hero's death but an honorable one, and comedy depends heavily on a sense of honor."[36]
Trillion is a large, three-headed lion that cannot swim. He lives in the Central Plains. Tom, with the help of Tagus, defeats Trillion, and Tom goes through the Lion's Gate into Gorgonia, home of the wizard Malvel.
Yoko is a Japanese-American kitten who is getting ready for her first day of school. Unfortunately, her first day at school goes badly when she gets teased by the other students for her lunch: sushi.
A mild horror story in which a black kitten becomes an abnormally large black cat, who haunts the isolated house of the heroine, Rachel. In its kittenhood, it had led the other thirty cats of Old Miss Mulgrave to dine on her when she died in her home and the cats were starving. Rachel fears it is stalking her and her baby, with reason: "It was starving.... Now it would eat anything."[37]
In this macabre tale originally published in a 1958 issue of Esquire, a black cat slowly displaces a retired captain from his bed, his wife, and his home. The surprise ending is worthy of Alfred Hitchcock Presents. More than one commentator compared the writing with Poe's.[38][39][40]
Commander Suzdal saves a colonial planet by imprinting a genetic message on cat cells, which instructs them to train themselves and to be ready to fight in the time of his need, then sends them back in time to a nearby moon. "A subjective second later, the cat-people save Suzdal" from an overwhelming alien attack.[41]
This science fiction story describes a world full of far-future cats on a planet where "cats were the closest thing to a religion that they had" and where cats "wandered freely and slept wherever they chose. There were huge communal cat boxes everywhere...filled with some form of brightly colored pellets, which automatically emptied and were refilled with more of the same stuff." The fact that cats are no longer fed actual meat is a clue to the mystery in the story, about whether men are any longer real men.[42]
Science fiction comedy or comic science fiction is a subgenre of science fiction or science fantasy that exploits the science fiction genre's conventions for comedic effect. Comic science fiction often mocks or satirizes standard science fiction conventions, concepts and tropes – such as alien invasion of Earth, interstellar travel, or futuristic technology. It can also satirize and criticize present-day society.
Michael Diamond Resnick was an American science fiction writer and editor. He won five Hugo awards and a Nebula award, and was the guest of honor at Chicon 7. He was the executive editor of the defunct magazine Jim Baen's Universe, and the creator and editor of Galaxy's Edge magazine.
Dark fantasy, also called fantasy horror, is a subgenre of fantasy literary, artistic, and cinematic works that incorporates disturbing and frightening themes. The term is ambiguously used to describe stories that combine horror elements with one or other of the standard formulas of fantasy.
An extraterrestrial or alien is a lifeform that did not originate on Earth. The word extraterrestrial means "outside Earth". Extraterrestrials are a common theme in modern science-fiction, and also appeared in much earlier works such as the second-century parody True History by Lucian of Samosata.
Mind uploading—transferring an individual's personality to a computer—appears in several works of fiction. It is distinct from the concept of transferring a consciousness from one human body to another. It is sometimes applied to a single person and other times to an entire society. Recurring themes in these stories include whether the computerized mind is truly conscious, and if so, whether identity is preserved. It is a common feature of the cyberpunk subgenre, sometimes taking the form of digital immortality.
Andy Duncan is an American science fiction and fantasy writer whose work frequently deals with Southern U.S. themes.
The concepts of space stations and space habitats feature in science fiction. The difference between the two is that habitats are larger and more complex structures intended as permanent homes for substantial populations, but the line between the two is fuzzy with significant overlap and the term space station is sometimes used for both concepts. The first such artificial satellite in fiction was Edward Everett Hale's "The Brick Moon" in 1869, a sphere of bricks 61 meters across accidentally launched into orbit around the Earth with people still onboard.
Fiona Kelleghan is an American academic and critic specializing in science fiction and fantasy. She was a metadata librarian and a cataloguer at the University of Miami's Otto G. Richter Library. She left the university in 2011.
"Time Is the Traitor" is a science fiction short story by American writer Alfred Bester, originally published in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction in September, 1953. It is included in the Bester collections The Dark Side of the Earth (1964), Star Light, Star Bright (1976) and Virtual Unrealities (1997) and has been extensively anthologized.
Immortality is a common theme in fiction. The concept has been depicted since the Epic of Gilgamesh, the oldest known work of fiction. Originally appearing in the domain of mythology, it has later become a recurring element in the genres of horror, science fiction, and fantasy. For most of literary history, the dominant perspective has been that the desire for immortality is misguided, albeit strong; among the posited drawbacks are ennui, loneliness, and social stagnation. This view was challenged in the 20th century by writers such as George Bernard Shaw and Roger Zelazny. Immortality is commonly obtained either from supernatural entities or objects such as the Fountain of Youth or through biological or technological means such as brain transplants.
Gary Wesley Westfahl is an American writer and scholar of science fiction. He has written reviews for the Los Angeles Times, The Internet Review of Science Fiction and Locus Online. He worked at the University of California, Riverside until 2011 and is now a Professor Emeritus at the University of La Verne.
Recursive science fiction is a subgenre of science fiction, which itself takes the form of an exploration of science fiction within the narrative of the story.
"5,271,009" is a science fiction/fantasy short story by American writer Alfred Bester. First published in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, in 1954, it is also known as "The Starcomber".
The Greenwood Encyclopedia of Science Fiction and Fantasy: Themes, Works, and Wonders is an English language reference work on science fiction and fantasy, published in 2005 by Greenwood Press. It was edited by Gary Westfahl and consists of three volumes of 200 entries each. The first two volumes contain entries organized by themes, such as "Aliens in Space", "Asia" or "Rats and Mice", while the third volume lists works such as novels and films which are considered defining for the science fiction and fantasy genres.
"Tobermory" is a humorous short story by Hector Hugh Munro written under his pen-name, Saki. It was originally published in The Westminster Gazette in 1909, first collected, in a revised form, in The Chronicles of Clovis (1911), and has frequently been reprinted in anthologies.
References
↑ "The Nine Lives of Aristotle (book)". Kirkus Reviews. 71 (18): 1176. September 15, 2003.
↑ LC Online Catalog (2003). The Nine Lives of Aristotle. Library of Congress. ISBN0-7636-2260-5. Retrieved November 10, 2014. Aristotle, a little white kitten, goes to live with a witch in an old cottage, where he finds so many opportunities for risky adventures that he soon has only one life left.
↑ Kelleghan, Fiona (2005). "Cats". In Gary Westfahl (ed.). The Greenwood Encyclopedia of Science Fiction and Fantasy: Themes, Works, and Wonders. Vol.1. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press. p.106. ISBN0-313-32951-6. Cats in fantasy are frequently humorous sidekicks; for example, in Gregory Frost's Lyrec, Borregad is an alien who takes the form of a cat and thereby has little help, besides jokes, to offer the sword and sorcery hero.
↑ Kelleghan, Fiona (2000). W. A. Senior (ed.). "Something Hungry This Way Comes: Terrestrial and Ex-Terrestrial Feline Feeding Patterns and Behavior". Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts. 10 (4). Boca Raton, Fla.: International Association for the Fantastic in the Arts: 341.
↑ Adams, Richard (1975). "Dea ex Machina". Watership Down. New York: Avon Books. p.462. ISBN0-380-00293-0. "Tab!" called Lucy sharply. "Tab! Wha' you got?" At the sound of her voice the cat looked up for a moment and immediately, looked back again at is prey. T'weren't no rat, though; t'was a rabbit, layin' on its side by the kennel. It looked proper bad. Kicking out an' all. Then it squealed again.
↑ Saki. The Complete Works of Saki. Dorset Press, 1988, p. 109.
↑ Langguth, A. J. Saki: A Life of Hector Hugh Munro, with Six Short Stories Never Before Collected. Simon & Schuster, 1981, p. 172.
↑ Jordan, Lee. Cat's Eyes. New American Library, 1982, p. 64.
↑ Pollin, Burton Ralph (2004). Poe's Seductive Influence on Great Writers. New York: IUniverse. p.260. Additionally, in his new Collected Stories, 1984-1986... the fine and varied craftsman Wright Morris includes 'The Cat in the Picture', which is strikingly reminiscent of both 'The Black Cat' and 'The Oval Portrait'.
↑ Barrett, Sharon (December 24, 1986). "Morris Collection Recalls Edgar Allan Poe Influence". Chicago Sun-Times. p.24. A touch of the grotesque, which sometimes shades into horror, flavors many of the 26 stories in this collection. 'The Cat in the Picture,' first published in 1958, is the story of a man jealous of the attention his wife gives to a cat that decides to take up residence with them. The story, though lightened by irony, has a grim ending that seems less influenced by black humorists, in vogue at the time, than by Edgar Allan Poe.
↑ Pate, Nancy (August 16, 1992). "Moose Resurfaces to Review Cat Books". Orlando Sentinel. p.F8. Awful things happen to the featured felines in Susan Fromberg Schaeffer's 'Chicago and the Cat,' Wright Morris's 'The Cat in the Picture' and Roald Dahl's 'Edward the Conqueror.'
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