Cats Are Popular Stars in Animated Movies

Along with being surefire favorites in live-action children’s films, cats have always been a popular subject of animated movies. Below you’ll find some of the very best cartoons and anime movies where cats steal the show.

The Aristocats

The Aristocats features a carefree stray tomcat that has a chance encounter with a pampered female housecat and her three kittens. The Aristocats is an animated movie from the golden age of Disney cinema. With a jazzy musical soundtrack and a darling cast of characters, The Aristocats has a story that will delight young and old.

The Secret Life of Pets

Featuring cats on their worst behavior when their owners aren’t looking, The Secret Life of Pets tells the story of Max, a Jack Russell dog who becomes separated from his owner Katie and has to make his way back to their Manhattan apartment.

The Secret Life of Pets has several scene-stealing cats, from the fat tabby cat Chloe who shares Max’s building to the villainous Sphynx cat Ozone, who leads to Max and his friend Duke being captured by Animal Control. If you’ve ever wondered what your cat gets up to when you’re not around, The Secret Life of Pets promises to give you a humorous look at the hypotheticals.

Puss in Boots

Puss in Boots is a spin-off animated film from the blockbuster hit Shrek, which just goes to show you how charismatic this animated cat character is—he was such a popular character in the original film he was given his own.

This animated prequel about a cat, his rapier, and his footwear is a tongue-in-cheek riff off the classic English fairytale. While Puss in Boots might not bear much resemblance to the original story, the movie features beautiful CGI animation and actor Antonio Banderas reprising his role as the notorious Puss.

Oliver and Company

Another animated classic from Disney, Oliver and Company is a modern retelling of the classic Dickens novel Oliver Twist, with a small orange kitten taking the role of the orphan Oliver as he is taken in by a gang of canines pickpockets led by the down-on-his-luck criminal lackey Fagan.

Oliver and Company is a great animated movie about an adorable kitten and his quest to find a forever home, but it’s also a heartfelt love story to the vibrant city of New York. The soundtrack also features the vocals of Billie Joel in an unforgettable chase scene musical montage to his song, “Why Should I Worry?”

The Lion King

While The Lion King isn’t about housecats, this animated movie about big cats is still one of the must-see films of the Disney canon. As with many Disney films, The Lion King is a retelling of a classic tale, but this time the movie took its inspiration from Shakespeare rather than fairytales. The Lion King is a savannah-based reboot of the Shakespeare play Hamlet.

Coraline

Coraline has a very different (and definitely creepy) vibe compared to the other cat-based animated films on this list. Based on the Neil Gaiman children’s story of the same name, this fantasy horror film tells the story of a little girl named Coraline, who discovers that her new households some truly dark and sinister secrets.

The cat in Coraline is a black cat who is never named. Still, this cat is a significant character in the movie and helps to act as Coraline’s guide as she travels between the normal world and the dangerous Other World, a mirror reality where Coraline’s life is in danger. Coraline is an excellent addition to any Halloween movie lineup and is a great film for black cat lovers.

Kiki’s Delivery Service

For another animated movie with a black cat as the star, look no further than the famous Studio Ghibli anime Kiki’s Delivery Service. In the movie, the black cat in question is Jiji. Jiji is the familiar of Kiki, a witch apprentice who uses her ability to fly on a broomstick to deliver goods across the Japanese port city of Koriko.

Studio Ghibli is known for its singular animation style and its sweeping magic realist narratives about innocence and adolescence. If you don’t watch any other Studio Ghibli film, Kiki’s Delivery Service is the one you need to see.

A Whisker Away

Another more recent anime film that recently released on Netflix, A Whisker Away tells the story of an awkward and eccentric teenage girl Miyo Sasaki who finds a festival cat mask that can magically transform her into a white cat. She uses this newfound magical ability to get closer to her schoolboy crush Hinode, who takes Miyo in as her cat form and names her Taro.

This sweet high school romantic comedy features tons of animated cats and even a beautifully rendered magical Cat City full of cats who speak and wear human clothes, so it’s worth watching for that alone. (Note that while the trailer linked here is in Japanese, the movie now has an English dub on Netflix.)

The Movies Are Full of Dramatic Cat Cameos

Cats are often the stars of movies, both animated and otherwise, but just as often, they play a more subtle role in films as a sidekick. Below you’ll find a list of movies where cats may not be the stars of the show, but they do more than their share of scenery-chewing.

Cat’s Eye

Cat’s Eye is a horror anthology film based on a Stephen King short story collection Night Shift, and the movie features three of Stephen King’s short stories woven together.

The cat in Cat’s Eye is a gray tabby tomcat named General, who is used as a framing device in the film to jump from short story to short story. The film shows each of the different narratives through the cat’s perspective as he attempts to escape the sinister situations presented in each one.

These include a company who tortures people to get them to quit smoking (“Quitters Inc.”), a hostage who is forced to walk around the ledge of a high rise by a mobster (“The Ledge”), and finally, the story the cat stars in (“General”) where he protects a little girl from a monster in her room.

The Godfather

The Godfather may not be a movie about cats, but the nameless cat held by Don Corleon in the opening scenes of the movie are some of the most iconic moments in classic film.

If nothing else, this film deserves a spot on this list because the cat in question wasn’t even supposed to be in the movie. Ad-libbing, Marlon Brando picked up the cat—who had been wandering around the movie set all day—and incorporated him into the scene.

After Brando’s insistence that the cat remain in the film (did he make Francis Ford Coppola an offer he couldn’t refuse?), this cat is still one of the most famous cat cameos in all of cinema history. Mafia cat or no, The Godfather is a film that shouldn’t be missed.

Catwoman

In the 2004 movie Catwoman, Halle Berry is revived by a group of Egyptian Mau cats who are messengers of the cat goddess Bast who grant Catwoman her extraordinary abilities.

Even though Catwoman is one of the most notoriously bad movies of the 2000s and was universally hated by critics, it introduced the world to the Egyptian Mau breed (a breed of cat few people had heard about before).

Seeing Halle Berry make bad cat puns and cracking a whip in a spandex catsuit is well worth the price of admission. Just because this is a must-see movie doesn’t mean it’s a good one, but it’s one of those movies that is so bad it might be a little great.

Captain Marvel

Here’s another tally mark for the ginger tabbies—the Marvel film Captain Marvel featured a test pilot named Carol Danvers, who ended up becoming a member of the Kree Empire when she lost her memory testing an experimental light-speed engine.

In Captain Marvel, the cat cameo is a pale ginger tabby named Goose who is hiding a secret—this cat isn’t a cat at all, but like The Cat from Outer Space, it is an alien that happens to look like a cat. These dangerous aliens are called Flerken and can unleash Lovecraftian tentacles from their mouths in a fight.

Goose might seem like so much fluffy window trimming in Captain Marvel. Still, this not-a-cat has several pivotal roles in the Avengers story arc of the Marvel universe, saving the Tessaract (a powerful alien relic) from the bad guys and even scratching out Nick Fury’s eye, leaving him with his well-known eyepatch.

Spiderman: Homecoming

The cat cameo in this other Marvel film isn’t quite as heroic as Goose, but Murph is the bodega cat who lives in a deli-grocery across the street from Peter Parker’s home in Queens. During Spiderman: Homecoming, an altercation between Spiderman and some henchmen working under the villainous Vulture brings Murph into the limelight.

The deli is set on fire, and Spiderman rushes in to rescue his favorite bodega buddy. New York City has always been as much of a character in the Spiderman series as Spiderman himself, and nothing says New York City like a bodega cat. The rescue of Murph shows that Spidey really does care about the little guy after all. 

Cats Shine in Horror Movies

Cats have always had a reputation for being a little spooky. Rumored to see between the worlds of the living and the dead, it’s hard to imagine our favorite household felines as supernatural entities. But these classic horror films featuring cats beg to differ.

Strays

While a single cat might not seem that scary, things are a little different when you’re facing a giant clowder of them. That’s the case with the B-horror classic Strays from the early nineties, where a divorce attorney and his wife are terrorized by a pack of starving stray cats in their isolated country home.

One interesting thing about Strays is the freehand cat’s-eye view camera angles, which add a lot of disorientation and anxiety to the movie. If you’re looking for a horror movie where cats are the main threat, look no further.

Sleepwalkers

The movie Sleepwalkers also features a giant group of dangerous cats, but this time the cats end up as heroes. This film was the first Stephen King film that he wrote directly for the silver screen and featured a giant pack of vampire-killing cats from all over town and a sheriff deputy’s sidekick named Clovis.

In Sleepwalkers, the nomadic shapeshifting vampires that the movie follows are vulnerable to cats, who can sense what they are and mortally wound them. Not only does Clovis the cat get several meaty scenes throughout this vampire movie, but the scene where the collective cats of the town descend on the remaining Sleepwalker to attack her is also one of the best in early nineties horror cinema.

The Ghost and the Darkness

The Ghost and the Darkness is another cat-based movie that features big cats rather than housecats, but this nineties gem is still worth watching. The dark adventure horror film is based on a true story about a pair of man-eating lions known as the Tsavo Man-Eaters. They hunted and killed dozens of railroad workers during the construction of the Uganda-Mombasa Railway in 1898.

Featuring standout performances from A-list actors Val Kilmer and Michael Douglas, the two other shining stars of this must-see movie are the lions themselves. Striking in the night and leaving gruesome remains in their wake, these big cats were so stealthy and deadly that they were considered a supernatural threat.

Real-world accounts of the Tsavo Man-Eaters vary. Patterson, the man who killed them, claimed they killed over 135 people, while official records can only verify around 31. But in either case, these lions were frightening enough that railway workers flat-out refused to work until they were dealt with.

Pet Sematary

Pet Sematary is another Stephen King film where a cat plays a pivotal role in the plot (between Cat’s Eye, Sleepwalkers, and Pet Sematary, there seems to be a trend). In this throwback to the classic conflicts presented in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. Pet Sematary is about a pet cemetery, but it’s also about the cemetery beyond the pet cemetery, an Indian burial ground capable of reviving the dead.

The first victim of the cemetery’s gruesome power is the family cat Church, who is buried at the cemetery after being hit by a truck and is mysteriously brought back to life. But Church is changed and has been possessed by a wendigo demon.

After seeing his cat’s transformation into the living undead, it soon becomes clear to the movie’s protagonist Louis Creed that, like his friend Jud always said, sometimes dead is better.

The Grudge

Both the Japanese version and the American version of The Grudge feature a vengeful black cat spirit named Mar, who is used in the story to show the audience when the ghost is around by hissing, screeching, meowing, and just generally kicking up a fuss.

In the American version of the movie with Sara Michelle Gellar, the sound of Mar’s meow coming through the ghost Toshio’s mouth is easily one of the most hair-raising scenes in the film.

Ironically, despite their association with impending doom in Western culture, black cats are typically seen as good luck charms in Japan. They are associated with attracting handsome suitors, especially for unmarried young women. This symbolism takes a dark turn in The Grudge, however, as it is the ghost Kayako’s obsessive love for a handsome college professor that leads to her husband murdering her. 

Cat People

There are lots of movies about werewolves, but not that many about werecats. Cat People is probably the only movie to hold that title. This erotic horror film centers around the idea that when werecats in their human form mate with a human, they are transformed into a leopard and can only regain human form by killing.

While Cat People received mixed reviews and would be considered a B-horror movie by most, it’s still a must-see on this list because you aren’t likely to find a horror movie about werecats anywhere else.

Alien

Alien is a classic eighties science fiction horror film about an alien apex predator who infiltrates the spaceship the USCSS Nostromo, and the crew’s subsequent fight to survive and destroy it. Spawning several sequels, prequels, reboots, and video games, the Alien franchise has one of the most famous horror cat cameos in film—the ginger tabby Jonesy, who acts as the ship’s mascot.

Together with Ellen Ripley, Jonesy is the only other survivor of the Nostromo massacre by the end of the movie. This goes to show you that, whether they’re getting blown up in bodegas in a superhero’s neighborhood or they’re fighting aliens in space with one of the most famous heroines in science fiction, cats always have a few extra lives to spare.

Cats Have Held a Special Place in Cinema for Decades

Whether they’re just used as a dramatic cameo or the stars of the show, cats have been a popular subject of movies ever since people started making them. No matter what kind of cat movie you’re in the mood to see, the list above should give you more than enough must-see cat movies to choose from!