But I'm a Cat Person
In a world not too different from our own, humans share the planet with a mysterious servant species known as Beings. Shapeshifting, flying battle monsters, they have spent countless ages dueling each other in a contest with no end, known as the Game...
...which most of humanity has spent just as long ignoring. It's not really that interesting if you're not involved.
Into this contest stumble two Ordinary College Graduates, cheerful Bianca and skeptical Sparrow, when a Being on the run drops into their life. He's called Patrick in human form (or Spot, when he's a dog), and at Sparrow's insistence he makes a contract to serve Bianca in return for a place in their home. But mysterious figures are keeping an eye on Patrick, and the Game has a way of not letting you go.
(None of this would have happened if they'd gotten a kitten instead.)
But I'm A Cat Person is the latest[when?] web comic from And Shine Heaven Now creator Erin Ptah. The official description from the website is "what happens when you take a heap of shounen-power-up and mahou-shoujo tropes, dump them all in a blender, and then throw the blender away and make a sandwich instead."
Not to be confused with But I'm a Cheerleader. Also has nothing to do with actual Cat People.
- Badass Adorable: A lot of the Beings have especially cute animal forms.
- Cats Are Snarkers: Reseda. Not so much when she was known as Lily; it only began to come out after her then-Master died.
- Christmas Episode: The first interlude, between chapters 4 and 5, consists of holiday-themed flashbacks for several of the characters.
- Don't Call Me Master: Bianca to Patrick. (His refusal is one of the few stands he takes, though, so she goes along with it.)
- Expy: The full cast will bring in several AU versions of characters from the artist's earlier works.
- Miranda originated in The Eagle of Hermes.
- Timothy and Reseda were last seen in And Shine Heaven Now.
- Fan Nickname:
- With his real name still a mystery, Cybele's Master has been referred to as Nevada-san, based on his unfortunate choice of sweatshirt.
- When the tiger-Being made its first full appearance, two readers immediately referred to it as Hobbes.
- Mr. Cohen (first name unrevealed) has readers calling him Jon, after another adult male Jewish media figure with whom he shares design similarities.
- Female Feline, Male Mutt: Reseda and Patrick.
- Fluffy the Terrible: Taking into account the powers beings have, they have the capability to be this.
- Hair Tropes and Hair Colors:
- Dark-Skinned Blond: Timothy, both with his natural hair and the wig he wears as Camellia.
- Every Girl Is Cuter With Hair Decs: Miranda's omnipresent beads, and Bianca's butterfly clip.
- Hair Color Spoiler: The comic is all in greyscale except for green spot-coloring...and the eyes and hair (or, in Miranda's case, hair decs) of certain characters, mostly Beings and their Masters. If you see someone with colorful hair, odds are they're going to be important.
- Multicolored Hair: Patrick, whose blonde hair includes a brown Skunk Stripe.
- Show the Forehead: Sparrow in her pseudo-drag outfit; Timothy at his day job (except for one troublesome strand).
- You Gotta Have Blue Hair: Bianca, unless she's an example of Purple Is the New Black; Cybele, a Rose-Haired Girl; Bennett, whose dark hair is kind of magenta-ish. Character sketches indicate more blue and purple hair to come.
- Kick the Dog: Literally, from the dog's point of view.
- Meaningful Name: Since a Being's name is chosen by its master, it doesn't tell you much about the Being's nature, but might give you a clue about the master's interests.
- The raven goes by Poe. No wonder Miranda was first seen lurking in a graveyard.
- Mon: The fighters in the Game.
- Rule 34: In-story. Sparrow searches the web for information about Beings, and finds, among other things, links to Being porn. Some of them quite squicky.
- Talking Animal: The animal forms of the Beings. Inconspicuous as long as they don't open their mouths (and aren't of too exotic a species).
- Two Girls and a Guy: Bianca, Sparrow, and Patrick.
- Unreadable Disclaimer: Unreadable-entire-contract, even. There's no written version of Bianca's agreement with Patrick, and the spoken version consisted entirely of "I, Bianca Washington."
- Of course given how short their memory is, they would (or may already have) forget anything longer
- Wholesome Crossdresser: Timothy.