Purr-suing Stardom: Cats on the Silver Screen
- Chicago Movie Tours
- 5 days ago
- 3 min read
Take a quick look at cats across movie history—from early film reels to Chicago’s own feline film stars.
Cats, like their canine counterparts, have always graced the silver screen.
Perhaps the earliest example—that still exists—is the 20-second film Boxing Cats from 1894. (A similar silent short, Trick Dog Teddy and other Dog and Trick Cats, was filmed at roughly the same time in the same place. But as far as I can tell, it is lost.)
Boxing Cats depicts a boxing match between two cats who are wearing boxing gloves. In the background, "Professor" Henry Welton referees the tussle as part of his (clearly not humane) road show called Cat Circus.
Fun fact: Boxing Cats is often considered the first "cat video," despite the misnomer (it's not a video).
Cats in Hollywood (and Online)
Thousands of feline actors have appeared onscreen since Boxing Cats debuted in 1894.
Sometimes, cats are main characters that move the narrative forward, as in Homeward Bound or Puss in Boots. Other times, they are incidental to the plot, like a stray cat on a street or one in a window sill.
Cats appear in live-action, animated, and documentary film. They also show up in virtually all of Hollywood's traditional genres:
comedy (the Austin Powers series)
science-fiction (Alien)
crime (The Godfather)
horror (Pet Sematary)
western (The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly)
rom-com (Breakfast at Tiffany's)
action (Keanu)
What's more, these days, online outlets frequently rank movie cats, choosing the most iconic, most adorable, coolest, and ones with the best cameos.
Finally, blogs like Cinema Cats and Cats on Film (now defunct but also a book) take on the tasks of watching, analyzing, screenshotting, and categorizing decades of onscreen cat performances.
In short, if you want information about cats in movies, there's no shortage.
Chicago and the Clark Gable of Cats
What about the presence of cats in Chicago-based (or -related) movies? Sure, those exist too. Here are a few:
Harry and Tonto (1974)
She's Having a Baby (1988)
Next of Kin (1989)
Uncle Buck (1989)
Excessive Force (1993)
While You Were Sleeping (1995)
What Women Want (2000)
Cat City (2003)
Garfield: The Movie (2004), voiced by Chicagoan Bill Murray
Christmas with the Kranks (2004)
Additionally, Chicago Film Archives—a non-profit that collects, preserves, and provides access to films representing Chicago and the Midwest—includes several home videos featuring cats and kittens in its collection.
And let's not forget Morris, "the world's most finicky cat."
In 1968, Morris was discovered just outside Chicago, at a Humane Society in Hinsdale, IL. After auditioning for the role of spokescat for 9Lives cat food and getting the job, the art director reportedly said, “He’s the Clark Gable of cats!”
The Black Cat Auditions (1961)
But perhaps my favorite cat-movie connection is illustrated in the photos below of hundreds of people lined up outside a Los Angeles movie studio with their (mostly) black cats.
They show 152 black cats (and their owners) standing in line to audition for the film adaptation of Edgar Allen Poe's short story The Black Cat, starring Vincent Price and Peter Lorre.
"...big black cats, little black cats, black black cats, gray black cats, black kittens, black and white cats, white and black cats, nervous black cats, gentle black cats. There was even a white cat. It was there to keep a pal, a black cat, company."
The film's title role called for "a cat who gets plastered up in a wall [...] and reveals the crime with its ghostly mewing." As a result, cats were judged based on which had the most "sagacious" and "meanest" face.
But all of this—including the audition process—was a lie. Unbeknownst to the crowd, the studio had already given the role to a professional cat actor.
The heartening news: seven cats in line that day were chosen for understudies and studio publicity. So for a handful of participants, this visually striking audition was not necessarily "the biggest invitation to bad luck ever seen in one place," as LIFE magazine originally reported.
