Cute Kitten

Fluttershy: I think this widdle puddy tat has your name written all over it! Yes he does...
Kitten: Mew! *nuzzles Rainbow Dash and generally looks adorable*
Fluttershy: ... aww, look, he likes you!

—My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic, May the Best Pet Win! [1]

... Admit it, how long did you spend looking at the picture to the right before you started reading this article? Looking at the picture with automatic Bambi eyes setting in, with brain geared to "Such wee small biddy kitties? Whosa cute kitty? Sleepy kitty."

Kittens seem to provoke an automatic pleasure/protective/affection reaction in many (if not most) people. For this reason, they are often used by creators to arouse those feelings toward a character as well. Want to show that someone is a softy despite their crusty exterior? Have them rescue a kitten! Want to indicate that they're a Complete Monster instead? Torturing or killing a kitten will do it. Want to lighten a mood that's gone Darker and Edgier? Add a kitten or two.

Kittens increase the cuteness factor exponentially. Examples on this page should be limited to works where this is deliberately used with kittens or cats, not simply "this work includes a kitten", or "this work includes a cute little animal."

Catgirl is a Sister Trope.

Compare Fun Size, Mega Neko, Precious Puppies, Cunning Like a Fox, Kindhearted Cat Lover, Cuteness Proximity, Crazy Cat Lady, If You're So Evil Eat This Kitten.

Contrast with Cats Are Mean. (Except when Cute Is Evil, in which case they go hand-in-hand.)

Examples of Cute Kitten include:

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Anime

  • Osamu Tezuka's "Astro Cat": In a world where Astro Boy is just a cartoon show, a bullied Astro Boy obsessed kid is forced to take his little tomcat away from home. When a group of aliens disguised as humans accidentally run over him and his pet cat, they try to cover it up by healing both the boy and cat up and erasing their memories of the event. However, because they have never seen a cat before, they unwittingly give the near-death tomcat all the powers of Astro Boy based from their readings of the injured boy's memories. With the ability to speak, lift heavy objects and fly, Astro Cat spends the rest of the series saving his sweetheart, Mink, or his owner from danger, both mundane and supernatural.
    • Subverted by one of Astro Cat's enemies, Mephisto, a devil-like feline with supernatural powers who's lived since Egyptian times, who attempted to make Mink his bride.
  • In another of Osamu Tezuka's works, Yuusha Dan, a young Ainu native, Kotan, who's a Friend to All Living Things befriends a white tiger after it escapes from a train carrying him to the zoo. Together they fight off villains while searching for a fantastic treasure.
  • Chi's Sweet Home.
  • Tailmon from Digimon Adventure and Digimon Adventure 02... which makes it even funnier when she kicks your ass.
  • Nya from Zatch Bell. Sadly, this is a filler Mamodo.
  • Kamineko and Mayaa in Azumanga Daioh.
  • Cute kittens seem to be all over Fullmetal Alchemist omakes...Al taking in a stray is probably part of the reason "Flame vs. Fullmetal" is a favorite in the first anime. (bear in mind, Al is an animated suit of armor.)

Ed: Come on Al, don't run! Think of the kitten!
Al: I know, I'm the only one who is! [Cut to the kitty holding on to Al for dear life]

    • In another omake even Scar loves them, then things got weird...
  • Sketchbook. Sora would love to take one of the strays as her own.
  • Ryo-Ohki from Tenchi Muyo!. Nyaa~
    • Not technically a cat, but close enough.
      • Even better. She combines the cuteness of kittens with the cutness of bunnies, for a massive cuteness overload.
  • Not only can Kyo from Fruits Basket turn into a cat when hugged by a girl, but he even attracts cats to him, like a pied piper of cute. He's just chilling in class, minding his own business, when BAM! a dozen cats are suddenly draped all over him.
    • We can't forget Kisa, can we? She turns into a tiger. An adorable pint-sized baby tiger (who still has quite a bite, though. Tohru knows that well)
  • Aria.
  • Jiji from Kiki's Delivery Service is so sweet he can cause a sugar high!
    • In the English dub, he's voiced by Phil Hartman, so you get cute and snarkiness.
      • Why did I just go "Aawwww!" at that?
  • Suzuka's house in Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha is filled with lots and lots of cute kitties, including one that got its wish to become a bigger kitty.
    • Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha ViVid later increases its usage of Rule of Cute by introducing Asteon, Einhart's Device which Hayate, Rein, and Agito made in the form of a snow leopard kitty.
  • In the twelfth episode of Keroro Gunsou, Giroro takes a liking to a white kitten he finds in the rain (the FUNimation dub gives her a name—Miss Furbottom). She goes on to become a recurring character.
  • Sphinx, the cute little kitty Index smuggled home in A Certain Magical Index. She was so taken by his cuteness she'd named him shortly after she saw him.
    • Also, MISAKA. Aw, she's taking care of the kitty and oh shit Accelerator just ruptured all her veins by making her blood flow backwards.
  • Mikoto Minagi from My-HiME has two pet cats that follow her around.
    • Mikoto from Mai-Otome, on the other hand, is a cat. Well, one of the Mikotos is, anyway. The other one is a cat-themed god with the sleeping habits of a cat.
  • When Ichigo Momomiya gets excited, the extreme result is turning into an adorable black kitten.
  • Shamisen in The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya series, owned by Kyon's family after participating in the movie the SOS Brigade made. Unusually, it's a male calico. A talking, philosophical male calico.
  • Windy Tales has massive amounts of cats. Everywhere. And they can fly.
  • A "small black cat" appears, randomly and inexplicably, in each episode of Trigun. Her name is Kuroneko-sama and you will refer to her as such! [2]
  • Cat Soup uses kittens as the "cute" half of Grotesque Cute.
  • Shampoo from Ranma ½ is cursed to turn into a cute kitten with pale pink fur and violet socks and ears. One of the more adorable transformations, but unfortunately Ranma's number one phobia.
  • The Student Council mascot Arthur in Code Geass. He enjoys biting Suzaku, his unofficial owner, but he's much nicer toward pretty much everyone else in the show.
    • Word of God says that Arthur does like Suzaku. His bites are supposed to be his way to show his affection.
  • In Axis Powers Hetalia, Greece is shown as a diehard cat lover. And China has an obsession with Hello Kitty Shinatty-chan?
  • Ridiculously Human Robot Chachamaru in Mahou Sensei Negima has a Friend to All Living Things scene when she fed the kittens (she was supposed to be evil at the time). Yes, it was adorable.
    • Taken Up to Eleven later on, when Chachamaru gets her artifact: a Kill Sat with a cute cat motif.
    • Meanwhile, the Alternate Continuity series Negima!? includes a kitty character in the form of Shichimi. While the cat may be annoying at times (although not as annoying as Motsu), Shichimi also has her share of cute moments (especially when said moments involve Nodoka in some way).
  • The Cat Returns exists solely because of this trope. It's about a girl who's taken to the magical world of cute, talking kitties and then herself begins to transform into a cute, talking kitty.
  • He doesn't look much like one, but Doraemon is a robot cat. He had cat ears once upon a time, but they were chewed off by a mouse when he was sleeping. Poor guy is now terrified of them. His sister Doremi invokes this trope full force.
  • Sailor Moon stars Luna, Artemis, and in later seasons, their Kitten From The Future Diana.
  • No wonder why Lucky Star has a kitty mascot, who turns out to be Kagami Yoshimizu's Author Avatar. The character is sometimes referred to as Nyamo.
  • Yoruichi from Bleach has the ability to turn into a black cat, which for some reason makes her voice sound male. Rather amusingly though, one of Yoruichi's first appearances consists of Urahara perhaps succumbing to this trope, and tossing her up and down in the air in a playful manner, while saying something nonsensical.

Urahara: Upsy daisy! Upsy daisy! - tossing Yoruichi up and down -

  • Prince of Tennis Ryoma's adorable cat Karupin exists to show that he's not a complete Jerkass.
  • Tama & Shiranui of Hayate the Combat Butler invoke this trope when they show up. Isumi even comments on Shiranui being a cute kitten, before he starts his evil plan.
  • Would you believe this trope is used in Battle Royale? The island the students fight on seems to have a lot of kittens. Shuya and Noriko get a literal Cat Scare moment, a kitten is cruelly killed by a maddened student and there is a whole Flash Back sequence about one guy who took to his class a very young kitten. All those kittens are realistically drawn.
  • In Nyan Koi, the main character Junpei, has been cursed to understand cats which he has an allergy to. To cure the curse (which will turn him into a cat over time), he has to grant 100 wishes to the cats he meets. Meanwhile, he's surrounded by a growing harem who likes cats.
  • Even Neon Genesis Evangelion is cuter with kittens, until Kaworu murders them with his bare hands.
  • Keroberos and his "Evil Counterpart" Spinel Sun in Cardcaptor Sakura are pretty darn cute in their power-conserving size. Kero's Big Eater tendencies and love of sweets, and what happens to Spinel when he eats sugar, only add to the delight.
  • Piro in Kanon. Nayuki loves the little guy.
  • Pa-pa-pa-pa Panda Neko! Hinagiku is also playing with a kitty in the eighth ending.
  • Who can forget "Tama! Tama and Friends!"
  • Episode 21 of Maison Ikkoku, in which Godai has to look after a cat called Kyoko.
  • Blair in Soul Eater. True to the series form, she actually kicks a lot of ass as a magical kitten!
  • Okay, Pharaoh was pretty amusing from the second season onwards, but in all its seriousness 5Ds manages to top him.
  • My Neighbor Totoro got a short film sequel, Mei and the Kittenbus, that plays exclusively in the Studio Ghibli museum. And if anything on earth is cuter than a Catbus, it's a Kittenbus.
  • Kimba the White Lion. No points for guessing who the main character is.
  • In Umibozu's case of City Hunter fame, it would rather be "Everything's Worse With Cute Kitten". He has a debilitating fear of cats, particulary if they're adorably cute kittens. This is mainly used for Hilarity Ensues purposes, but it also lead to a few serious scenes, such as, in one story, one of Umibozu's worst enemies knowing this weakness, and cornering him with it (but is ultimately saved by Ryo, who immediately after bursts into laughing at this scene).
  • Seto no Hanayome has an entire revolve around a kitten. Merfolk regard cats as their natural enemies, so when Nagasumi picks up a stray kitten, he finds out he can weaponize it and reduce hardened gangsters to gibbering wrecks. Everybody else at his school is just awed at the cuteness.
  • Early in Yu Yu Hakusho, Kuwabara is being blackmailed by a random thug who is holding his kitten hostage. That's right - the character who looks most like a normal street thug is a kitten lover.
  • WHENEVER Sebastian from Black Butler finds a cat (cue Ciel calling him a neko-baka, cat-obsessed idiot. Even if it's true when he sees one). Yes, cats are cute enough even to make demons gush over them.
  • Bulma's father in Dragon Ball has a gigantic soft spot for animals, and takes in stray cats, dogs, and dinosaurs (yes, dinosaurs) and lets them have free roam of Capsule Corporation. His favorite is a small, black, seemingly never-aging cat that spends almost all of its time perched on his shoulder. The cat is named Tama in the Japanese version and Scratch in the American dub. One of the very few times it moves off his shoulder is to rest in Android 16's hand and nuzzle into it. And that's not even getting into Yamcha's best friend Pu'ar, a sentient, floating shapeshifting cat; well, more of a cat-like thing, but still...
  • A black cat named Amy in the opening of Puella Magi Madoka Magica. Other than a drama CD, she doesn't exist anywhere else.
    • According to the PMMM wiki, Gen Urobuchi admits that he was not aware of any cat and that he was surprised when he saw it at the storyboard of the OP. Amy was never part of the original storyline as she was fabricated by SHAFT for the OP of the Anime to mislead viewers and fans with a Red Herring. However, SHAFT approached Urobuchi for the Drama CD and asked him to include the cat in it, so Urobuchi accepted and she was included in the drama CD. Amy is actually the reason why Madoka was a Magical Girl in the third timeline; her wish to Kyuubey was to save the kitty's life when she was seriously injured.
  • Yune of Ikoku Meiro no Croisee has a knack for finding cats wherever she goes, and she just can't... help... petting... them-- 'scuse me, gotta chase a cat! Even the ending theme and mid-episode transition cards feature her with cats.
  • While not a kitten, Naruto gets help from an adorable cat named Ishi in completing the first step of the Rasengan.

Card Games


Comic Books


Fan Works

Film

  • Subverted/Inverted depressingly in Trainspotting. That's right, they subverted cute kittens.
  • The section of Allegro Non Troppo set to Sibelius' Valse Trieste. Watch this without tearing up at least a little. Bet you can't. No other animal would have worked as well as the cat. Not even a puppy.
  • The Adventures of Milo and Otis has this in spades double with Precious Puppies.
  • In universe example: Leo Spitz of Revenge of the Fallen started off his conspiracy website by selling kitten calendars. Later, Sam uses them as his Madness Mantra.
  • The Secret of Kells has Pangur Ban, the white cat of Brother Aidan of Iona.
  • Horribly, horribly subverted in The Brothers Grimm. The most infamous part in the movie is when a small, adorable white kitten is walking along the floor during an absurd scene where a woman is being threatened with a large, spinning blade. When the torturer sees the animal, he gets startled and (read at your own risk) kicks it in the air, where we see it hit the blade and get chopped up into pieces as its flesh flies everywhere.
    • Crosses the Line Twice: the evil General then takes the kitten's eye that's been splattered to his coat, and eats it like a rare delicacy - a Take That at French food?
    • Similar horrible, horrible subversion in the sequel to Pet Sematary: at one point the evil, reanimated dog is shown in a kennel at a vet's office, growling at another kennel with three adorable tabby kittens in it. The kittens hiss back. Cut to the next morning, where we see an excited little girl being led into the room by her mom who tells her that she can pick whichever kitten she wants, only to scream in horror at the sight of the dog's busted-open kennel and the kittens' busted-open kennel caked with blood and gray fur.
  • Hellboy's film counterpart likes kittens even more than his comicbook version, keeping entire litters of kittens in his room. In the first film's Crowning Moment of Awesome, he whups a baddie while simultaneously rescuing a basket of itty-bitty kitties.
  • Invoked in the DVD commentary of A Series of Unfortunate Events where Daniel Handler, assuming his Lemony Snicket persona, spends most of the movie trying to convince viewers to watch something else:

You know what I really like? A basket of kittens. I think everyone watching this film should just go out and buy, or otherwise procure, a basket of kittens.

  • Several kittens appear in Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers. Strangely enough, Michael, who is known to kill dogs, completely ignores the kittens.
  • Now who can forget Jonesy in Alien? Not even the xenomorph can resist thinking the cat is cute.
  • The Spirit establishes that the main character likes cats, and The Octopus the villain pretends like cats and introduces us to a cute kitten, Muffin, "his favorite" who he then proceeds to... melt to death.


Literature

  • You (yes, that's her name), in the Discworld novel Wintersmith, even softens Granny Weatherwax. Slightly. Deny it though she may.
    • Nanny Ogg's possibly demonic tom cat Greebo, on the other hand, found an encounter with her somewhat disquieting, to say the least.
    • Death, who is normally dispassionate about his job, has a soft spot for cats and gets really upset when he has to collect a bunch of kittens at once because someone drowned a sack of them in a rain barrel.
      • In The Last Hero, he also had a few things to say about Schrödinger's famous thought experiment.
    • And then there's this exchange from Thief of Time, on a diorama of stuffed kittens.

Susan: I wonder what happened when the man who did this met my grandfather.
Lobsang: Would he have met your grandfather?
Susan: Oh, yes. And my grandfather is rather fond of cats.

  • In A Song of Ice and Fire, one of the ways it's made clear that Tommen Baratheon isn't bad is that Tommen is given a pair of kittens, whom he becomes very fond of. This is in contrast to his older brother Joffrey, who was once told that a cat was pregnant with kittens, so he cut them out of her with a knife. It is mentioned that Princess Rhaenys also had a black kitten; after her death it is implied that her kitten grew up to become a true Targaryen; it is the toughest, meanest old cat in the Red Keep. Martin has even basically confirmed this
    • One may note that this is a recurring theme in George R. R. Martin's work. People who like cats are good. People who dislike cats are bad. People who harm cats die in hideous, unspeakable, nightmarish ways.
      • And if you think that A Song of Ice and Fire could never be cute, just listen to the names Tommen picks: Ser Pounce, Lady Whiskers, and Boots. After four books full of endless betrayal and suffering, this is exactly what the audience needs.
  • In The Belgarion and The Malloreon series by David Eddings, Kal Zakath, the "evil" emperor of Mallorea, is foreshadowed as turning out to be a decent guy at heart by his affection for his striped tabby cat and her kittens. A Running Gag soon develops where 'Zakath is constantly trying to give the kittens away to people, as his cat keeps having so many of them.
  • Warrior Cats. They manage to even make Tigerstar and Scourge look adorable when they're written/drawn as kittens.
    • And of course, fan artists will always fall back on this trope when it comes to drawing chibis.
  • In the Cat Who series of books by Lillian Jackson Brown. There is a cast of several Kitties, but the main stars are the Psychic cat Koko, and his partner Yum Yum.
  • In T.S. Elliot's "Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats" and the musical based off of it called Cats, there's a couple dozen, and a subversion: Grizabella, the Glamour Cat, is now quite old and ugly.
  • Subverted by Umbridge in Harry Potter. Just because she likes (moving!) pics of kittens, this doesn't mean she's one of the good ones.
  • In Whispering Nickel Idols, Garrett acquires a bucketful of kittens whose very presence seems to radiate feelings of happiness, contentment, and party-time good cheer. It turns out that they're disguised lesser avatars of a goddess of merriment and the night.
  • Subverted by the kitten trees in Cetaganda.
  • H.P. Lovecraft loved cats; most of his bizarre dream based stories featured magical cats that lived on the moon and were generally very helpful. He also wrote an essay on why cats are better than dogs. here.
    • Only one of his stories features the helpful moon-cats. Another features the same cats in a creepier context, where they eat a couple of cat-haters to the bone for revenge of killing a kitten.
  • In The Witch of Blackbird Pond, Hannah's cure for sad children is blueberry cake and a kitten. It never fails.
  • There is an entire subgenre of mystery books called the "cozy mystery" in which the protagonists have a pet cat that helps them solving the murder that happens.
  • German philosopher Oswald Spengler wrote in The Decline of the West this: "A peacock is indubitably speaking when he spreads his tail, but a kitten playing with a cotton-reel also speaks to us, unconsciously, through the quaint charm of its movements." Even cultural pessimists think everything's cuter with kittens!
  • Letters Back to Ancient China has the narrator/protagonist often talking about his Shiao-shiao and how misses her.

Live Action TV

  • In an episode of Scrubs, after the guest star psychiatrist told JD about "Takotsubo cardiomyopathy" (broken heart syndrome), where the heart muscle weakens due to emotional stress, JD wonders how he's supposed to treat emotions. Cue an Imagine Spot where he dumps a box of kittens over a patient having a heart attack ("Get the kittens! Stat!") and then lists the possible side-effects of kittens. Namely, allergies, tiny scratches, and erectile dysfunction.
    • Just to make you go "Awwww!", here's a link.
  • Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Poor Miss Kitty Fantastico...
  • Earlier on in their run, X-Play sometimes censored scenes of horribly gory, mangling violence with poorly cropped photos of kittens.
  • Not even the Doctor is immune to the power of kittens, as the Doctor Who episode "Gridlock" shows.
  • In Mighty Morphin Power Rangers season three, P.C. -- short for Park Cat—who was actually Kat under Rita's spell to spy on the Rangers.
  • Extremely subverted in Hyperspace, where anyone who is sentenced to their equivalent of rehab gets put in a room where all they see is kittens, and a voice saying stuff like, "Look at the kitten. The kitten obeys authority. The kitten is happy. Be like the happy kitten. Obey authority and be like the kitten." Everyone who goes in comes out brainwashed, although it does appear to wear off, otherwise the entire show would be full of people wandering around singing silently.
    • Cats obeying authority? Definitely science fiction!
  • On The Colbert Report of March 5, 2009, Stephen Colbert discussed the imploding U.S. economy with CNBC analyst Jim Cramer while videos of kittens and puppies played in the background. Well, I sure feel better about the economy!
    • Don't forget the incident of Dead Baby Comedy in the form of Colbert challenging a guest to debate him on the subject of throwing kittens in a wood chipper.
  • House: Death Cat. How can something so cute be an omen of your doom?
  • An episode of Top Gear has Jeremy discussing the finer points of twin turbocharged engines, but before he launches into his explanation, he remarks that some people in the audience tend to find such explanations boring, "so here's some soft little kittens for you to look at." The screen splits halfway between Clarkson and a mound of cuddly little kittens.
  • In the "Charlie" episode of The Mighty Boosh, Naboo advises Howard to look at a picture of kittens in a barrel to soothe himself whenever he feels himself getting too angry. The kittens in a barrel reappear during the end credits of the episode, apparently entirely for the viewer's benefit.
  • The Daily Show, during the healthcare debate, had the great toss-up between healthcare and a video of kittens playing in an empty tissue box.

Jon Stewart: Healthcare is today's hot-button issue, but...how did the kitten get in the box?

  • Conan O'Brien-hosted The Tonight Show puts puppies and this trope together and gives us Puppies Dressed As Cats! (Note: link is from Hulu and may not work in all regions. Sorry.)
  • The Closer provides a possibly deliberate example in introducing Joel, Brenda's new kitten, given that the case the episode revolves around is particularly draining emotionally.
  • Orange Kitten and Periwinkle of Blue's Clues are of the Talking Animal variety.
  • Mimsie, the adorable kitten in the MTM Enterprises Vanity Plate.
  • Animal Planet uses footage of kittens at play as the "half-time show" for its annual Puppy Bowl.
  • Data's cat, Spot, in Star Trek: The Next Generation. Possible subversion swinging back towards a straight play when Barclay's Protomorphosis Syndrome causes her to de-evolve into an iguana and then have a litter of perfectly normal kittens.
  • Craig Ferguson's version of The Late Late Show always ends with the feature "What did we learn on the show tonight, Craig?", which is introduced with an animated kitten.
  • Red Dwarf starts when Lister doesn't want to give up on his cat.
    • In an alternate universe, Kochanski discovered Lister's kitten when he smuggled it on board, and its Kitten Eyes convinced her not to disintegrate it.
  • Operation Kitten Calender on VH-1 was an extreme example of this trope. It's basically a spot on parody of The Apprentice except people are competing to make the best kitten calender, not work for Donald Trump.
  • Mystery Science Theater 3000: Crow had a tendency to exclaim "Kitties!" with delight whenever a kitten showed up in a movie...or any kind of cat...or, well, pretty much any animal at all, especially if it happened to be deadly.
  • The Chaser's War on Everything: The Hamster Wheel's "Australian Politics, as told through YouTube videos of cats" segments play on this.


Music

  • In the song Wretch by the Canadian band Protest The Hero, there is meowing at 3:31.
  • "Jakdo" by pinknruby has purring most of the way through. The band made a stop-motion animation of the first 30 seconds featuring the sleeping cat and some scrunched up paper: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gyY9Y7XUCRU
  • There is also Fatboy Slim's music video to his conversion of The Joker, which shows only kittens doing cute things.
  • "Black Cat" by Gentle Giant has the band making various cat meows with guitars and violins.
  • Subverted hard by Presidents of the United States of America's song "Kitty." After a few verses of petting the kitty, it scratches.

"Fuck you kitty, you're gonna spend the night OUTSIDE!"

Tabletop Games

  • Swords and Scorcery Creature Collection - Moon cats. Magical kitties that appear after moonrise. Those who encounter them get good luck afterwards. Although sought by mages believing them to hold access to powerful magical energy, there are no known instances of them being captured. The rare times a moon cat has been caught, it vanished by sunrise.
  • In Warhammer 40,000, The World Eaters, despite being blood knights in the service of Khorne, are quite fond of khittens.


Video Games

  • Fragile Dreams relies heavily on this. Not only can you feed and play with stray cats, but there are three mandatory quests that involve Seto following or befriending a cat. Part of Ren's motif is her strong friendship with the cats. Cats are arguably the one thing in Fragile Dreams that is happy, put there to cheer the player up.
  • There's Evil Kitty Good Kitty in the Arfenhouse games and movies.
  • In My Sims, the cat statue ground flair adds 3% to a building's cuteness.
  • Wario Ware: Smooth Moves has disco dancing kitties in Jimmy T's stage.
  • In Chrono Trigger, the main character has a cat, and he can win more kitties at the fair (as well as a supply of food!). Later on, we learn Magus used to have a cat named Alfador...and if you have Magus in your active party and go where the cat is, he'll follow his owner around the area! Aww...
    • Cats are pretty much a running gag in the game. When you fight Ozzie as part of Magus' sidequest, you hit a switch and fall down a pit. After heading back, everyone prepares for battle, then stops and they all watch as a cat randomly wanders in and presses the switch that kills Ozzie, then leaves. link.
  • There are plenty of stray cats to feed and befriend in Persona 3. One of Elizabeth's Requests is to feed one in particular.
    • Persona 4 has them too, including one you can spend time playing with to increase a social stat.
  • Okami also provides lots and lots of cats to feed in the game's strangely endearing "Animal Feeding" mini-quests. The game went as far as to reinstate the Cat as a Chinese Zodiac constellation, and this Brush God gets along quite well with Amaterasu despite the latter being a canine.
  • Even Kel'Thuzad has a cat. And he gets angry if it's killed (however, rumors about doing so making him harder to kill or altering the Randomly Drops have been proven false).
    • On the other hand, an undead questgiver has nothing better to do with her kitty than using it as a guinea pig for experiments with demonic substances.
  • There are quite a few cats in The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, who always come up and greet Link (be he human or wolf) with a 'Mew!'. You can even cuddle them! In the Hidden Village you can even play a game where you have go talk to them all, and one of the responses you can get if you talk to cat which you've already talked to is "We're already friends, meow!". Awww.
  • Dwarves in Dwarf Fortress are susceptible to this trope, often adopting the fort's ludicrous supply of cats. This can be very bad for your framerate. The main developer, Toady One, has his own feline companion, Scamps, and the update log often includes lines such as "Scamps fell asleep on my shoulder like a very tired parrot today." Awwwwwwww...
  • In Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia, there are cats hiding in some areas. Upon picking a cat up, it will go back to the village. Normally you can't do anything with them (aside from hitting them to make them freak out), but if you have a particular glyph, you can transform into a Catgirl and talk to them to get some hints. Also, the cats are all named after various ingredients (like Soybean, Flour and Tofu), which makes them all the more cuter.
    • Not to mention that holding the stylus on the screen while one of the cats is present will cause a toy mouse to appear, allowing you to tease the cats with it and make them jump after it.
  • Chen from Touhou is sometimes depicted in fanart as having cat subordinates. And her animal form, as part of her nekomata shtick, is a two-tailed cat.
    • She canonically tries to have cat subordinates. They don't listen to her and only hang around because she feeds them.
    • GENTLEMEN... behold... Chen is sleeping.
  • No More Heroes—Jeane the cat, the closest thing to family our homicidal hero Travis has in Santa Destroy. The player can interact and play with her by selecting the "Jeane" option in Travis' living room. There is absolutely nothing gained by doing this. Try to stop yourself doing it every time you're in the room.
    • Jeane returns in the sequel, much chubbier. A major sidequest is to bring her back down to brainshattering cuteness, which also nets a nice extra.
      • But chubby Jeane was already brainshatteringly cute!
    • One of the jobs in the first game has Travis wondering around picking up runaway cats.
  • The Game Boy version of Mega Man V introduced players to Tango, a cute, green robotic cat that meowed endearingly when summoned—and then sprouted spikes and rolled menacingly into enemies!
  • Mario & Luigi: Bowser's Inside Story has a Collection Sidequest in which Bowser collects Blitties, kittens made out of coin blocks by sucking them out of an enemy. Collecting all of them grants him his ultimate attack: The Broggy Bonker, which if performed perfectly will have Broggy lead the blitties in a blitzkrieg against the foe.
  • Monster Hunter: Your character can interact with the simply adorable Felyne, a race of cat people. Keeping one as a partner has beneficial effects such as decreasing damage taken, enhancing the benefits of food consumed, reducing field tool breakage, affecting the size of your bombs, improve cooking results, negating the intimidation effects of some monsters, and much more. But watch out for the Melynx; behind their cuddly appearance lies master thieves and pickpockets.
  • You can easily buy kitten 'companions' (pets) in World of Warcraft, provided you have enough gold.
  • During one RuneScape quest, certain gruesome scenes (such as a brain transplant) are censored with animations of kittens performing adorable actions such as playing with yarn or wearing pirate outfits.
  • Oh so subverted in Dragon Age Origins "The Stone Prisoner" DLC. Kitties aren't nearly as cute when possessed by demons.
    • Played straight in Awakening. You can give Anders a cute little kitten that he will immediately gush over, naming it "Ser Pounce-a-lot". Anders' love of cats has a tragically hilarious backstory: the only fond memories he had of his time in the Circle Tower were the times he played with a cat that lived in the Tower named Mr. Wiggums. Sadly, Mr. Wiggums somehow became possessed by a Rage Demon and had to be put down -- but not before Mr. Wiggums killed three Templars by himself. Also, sadly Anders had to give up Ser Pounce-A-Lot after he nearly gotten him killed during an expedition to the Deep Roads (though he still has a deep love for cats).
    • Can't forget that in vanilla Dragon Age Origins Leliana and Sten have a conversation about Leliana catching the 'fierce Qunari warrior' playing with a kitten. Sten of course justifies it as 'training'. (As in, giving 'warrior training' to the cat. No one believes it for an instant.)
  • Subverted with Sukeban Shachou Rena for Wii, which, despite being based around a premise of cat love, ended up being the worst-selling Wii game at 100 copies sold.
  • One of the new 3DS games coming out is Nintendogs. Plus cats. Really, the name is "Nintendogs Plus Cats".
  • Cat Planet of course!
  • Several kitties in the Pokémon series, though getting into the evolutions will take too long. Meowth, Skitty, Glameow, and Purrloin are the proper kitten Mons.
  • The resident Kindhearted Cat Lovers of Tokimeki Memorial 2, Miyuki Kotobuki and Kaori Yae, have positively adorable scenes revolving around cats: you can see in Childhood Mode a young Miyuki with her kitten Mii-chan in the front pocket of her dungarees, playing with her; and Kaori has a post-She's Back scene where she finds and happily plays with a kitten, serving as a Crowning Moment of Heartwarming. In addition, Kaori has a beautiful Image Song named "Tsukiyo no Koneko" ("Moonlight Kitten").
  • Laury Callwell, the Tastes Like Diabetes character of Mitsumete Knight, gets a few scenes where she finds three cute kittens abandoned, adopts them, and later lose them, leading to the protagonist helping her to search for them. The latter scene also draw to this trope the tough as nails Gene Petromolla and Sam Burston, revealing them as adorable Kindhearted Cat Lovers.
  • The Sonic the Hedgehog series has Blaze.
  • An enigmatic black cat makes an unexplained appearance early in Ghost Trick. Turns out that cat is Sissel's real corpse, animated by another ghost's powers. At the end of the game Sissel rearranges the timeline so his body (currently a young kitten, since this is ten years before his death) was pierced by the Temsik meteorite shard rather than Yomiel, and he is adopted by Jowd's family. Living Forever Is Awesome, but it's extra awesome when you're an adorable kitten.
  • While Kintaro from Mortal Kombat would normally be classified as Panthera Awesome, if you manage to pull off a Babality on him in Mortal Kombat 9, you wind up turning him into a cute kitten version of himself, complete with kittenish mewling and purring and him drinking from a saucer of milk.
  • The musk cats from the Phantasy Star series, anyone? They're cute kittens that talk! In the first game, one is even a playable character!
  • In Shadow of Destiny, doing an extra side quest can result in the library being filled with cute cats. You just go back into the past and give the little girl there a kitten. Back to the future, and bam. The place is filled with it's descendants.
  • Something Else: Cat Beach has the gimmick of collecting 75 kittens for a giant cat before he allows Luigi to move onto the next level. The cat even does a cute smile at Luigi when Luigi completes this task.

Web Comics

"You can't sentence Sir Pounce to eternal torment!"
"It was an evil kitten. We can't give leniency for cuteness."

Web Original

Man 1: KITTEN FIGHT!
Man 2: No! Wait! I'm allergic to adorableness!

Carmilla: "No hurting the cute kitty!"

  • Subverted by SCP-2559-J which is a gigantic oncoming mass of kittens who crushed a researcher and her assistants when they tried to open a portal to an alternate Nazi universe, but instead ripped open another dimension known as the "Plane of Infinite Kittens" which is apparently where all kittens come from. The mass of kittens, or kitten pile as it's commonly called, are proven to be invulnerable to conventional weapons and can exist without harm from extreme temperatures and pressures.


Western Animation

  • When The Tick (animation) was trying to masquerade as a villain to track down another villain, he was asked to prove it by, well, eating a kitten. Naturally, he beat all the bad guys and saved the kitten, instead.
  • This trope + The Woobie = Furrball from Tiny Toon Adventures. Thankfully, he's a bit luckier than Sylvester or Tom.
  • You really can't blame the Misaimed Fandom of Kung Fu Panda for thinking Tai Lung is awesome - after all, he's incredibly Badass and cool and oddly sympathetic - but the real clincher comes when we see Shifu's flashbacks to raising him from a kitten. A rambunctious, big-eyed, fluffy-tailed, eager-to-please, kung-fu-lovin' kitten. The creators themselves admitted that they may have gone a bit too far in trying to avoid a one-note villain.
  • Spunky ("Catteries Not Included") and Boots ("Gorilla My Dreams") in Chip 'n Dale Rescue Rangers.
  • Flo and Zo from Clifford's Puppy Days.
  • Subverted in Super Robot Monkey Team Hyperforce Go!! where the team use time travel to wipe an invating insectoid species from existence, causing an alternate species of "space kittens" that transform into vicious monsters to take their place in the timeline. This is then completely averted where they visit a planet populated by cat people.
  • In Xiaolin Showdown, the cat wearing Catwoman wannabe Katnappe uses genetically altered super-kittens as weapons against the Xiaolin.
  • Elisa's cat Cagney from Gargoyles.
  • In a first-season episode of Teen Titans, a botched practical joke leaves Starfire angry at Beast Boy—who tries to cheer her up by turning into a kitten. It doesn't work the first time, but the second...
  • Tom and Jerry averted this trope in the cartoon "Triplet Trouble" when Mammy Two Shoes adopted three kittens who turned out to be complete brats that terrorized Tom and later went after Jerry. It was one of the few times Tom and Jerry teamed up against a greater foe.
  • The Disney shorts "More Kittens", "Three Orphan Kittens", "Lend a Paw", and several others.
  • Chuck Jones did a very effective series of cartoons where an adorable kitten brings out the protective, loving side of a big tough bulldog.
  • Sylvester is an alley cat who gets out of the cold when Elmer takes him in - then finds his position in jeopardy when an alley kitten gets taken in too. "I can't keep you both...hahaha, baby kittens are so cute!"
  • Inverted in The Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy episode "Anger Mismanagement". The counselor asks Grim Mandy and Skarr to imagine their happy place. Grim's is a cemetery, Skarr's is beating a man erecting a giant Skarr statue, (Mandy's only shows white noise). The counselor then asks them to think of "fuzzy cute kittens". Grim imagines a pet cemetery and Skarr has the kitten raising his statue instead.
  • Sagwa and her siblings in Sagwa the Chinese Siamese Cat.
  • Puss-in-Boots in Shrek, the cutest badass ever. He knows it and uses it to his advantage.
    • In his spin-off film Puss in Boots, a flashback shows Puss when he was an actual kitten.
    • A tie-in short film features Puss running into the Diablos, three adorable kitten siblings who are assassins for hire.
  • Oliver and Company is Oliver Twist... only the main character's a kitty.
  • The Aristocats. One must wonder why it took so long for Marie to make her appearance in Disney World, considering Japan's equivalent just had to have one of the kitties appear in TokyoDisney.
  • Many people find Mittens from Bolt cute.
  • In Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, Flint uses what is basically LOLcats to distract Sam. It is amazing effective.
  • There is an episode of The Powerpuff Girls ("Catastrophe") in which the Powerpuff Girls have to find one of the kittens for a giant monster in order to help him leave Townsville alone.
  • The Emperors New Groove - Villainess Yzma gets dosed with a vial of her own transformation serum and turns into an evil, terrifying... floofy little kitten.
  • The Archer episode "El Secuestro" has Archer finding out that Cheryl, the ISIS secretary, is secretly a heiress with a pet ocelot... and the notably Jerkass secret agent is instantly smitten with the exotic cat. "Oh my God, you guys! Look at his little spots! And his tufted ears!"
  • Figaro from Pinocchio
  • White Kitty from Goodbye Kitty. His rival Black Kitty, however, is a completely different story.
  • In My Little Pony Friendship Is Magic episode "May the Best Pet Win", one of the pets involved is an adorable little "putty tat". She makes her glorious return in "Read it and Weep" as part of a group of large predators trying to maul the hero of the Show Within a Show.
  • In ThunderCats (2011) young Catfolk Wilykat and Kit are cute Cheerful Children, but also experienced Artful Dodgers who very deliberately invoke this trope when searching for marks to pickpocket. When they try to convince The Hero Lion-O to let them tag along with his team of Thundercats, they Cat Smile, Faux Paw and employ kittenish mewling to play on their sympathies.
    • The new version of Snarf is this trope incarnate.
  • Edmund from Rock-a-Doodle gets turned into a cat by the evil owl because he finds kittens "more digestable."
    • "Jeepers, I'm all furry!"
  • Ruff is the brains side of Hanna-Barbera's do-gooding duo of Ruff and Reddy.


Real Life

  • When the (extremely popular) Sheffield branch of Virgin Megastore finally closed, they left a sign in the window reading "Thank you and goodbye. We love you all. P.S. HMV kills kittens for profit."
  • There's a Japanese train station which never got any service or tourism—so Tama, a cat, was made Stationmaster. The station's now raking in the tourism money, which, according to Stephen Colbert, goes to "repairing the horrific accidents that result from having a cat as stationmaster."
  • This is closely related to the idea of killing/eating kittens as a definite sign of evilness, as in this rather elaborate insult hurled at a Canadian politician.
  • PETA has been campaigning to rename fish "Sea Kittens", with the intention of making them seem cuter, more appealing, and less edible. It doesn't seem to be catching on...
  • Life subverts itself in that even adorable little kittens are proficient killers and learn to hunt as early as three or four weeks of age. It's creepy-cute to see a kitten carrying around a (nearly) dead mouse that looks to be nearly the size of its wee head.
  • Some studies have indicated that having a cat "may" have limited beneficial effects on the health and well-being of people, especially older adults. Also, medical researchers have demonstrated that stroking a purring cat can lower human blood pressure and pulse rate, as well as increase feelings of peace and well-being.
  • Just search for most popular YouTube videos for "Pets And Animals" and see how many you get featuring cats.
  • Taylor Swift has designed several greeting cards featuring kittens including this one. She's on record as saying "I feel like kitten cards make everything better, pretty much." Here.
  • For a website frequently referred to as the worst place on the internet, the people at 4chan (and the notorious /b/ board in particular) LOVE the hell out of kitties. Going so far as to hunt down people who idiotically post images or videos of themselves harming them, and basically making their lives a living hell.
  1. ↑ Unfortunately, Dashie is not looking for a pet who's "cute."
  2. ↑ Kuroneko-sama means "esteemed black cat".
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