Cat (Red Dwarf)

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The Cat in Series 5 of Red Dwarf

The Cat is a character in the British comedy television series Red Dwarf. He is played by Danny John-Jules.

Life

The character has no name other than "The Cat" or simply "Cat". He is the humanoid descendant of a modern domestic cat called Frankenstein who had been Dave Lister's pet cat. He may be the last remaining member of his species, Felis sapiens. Most of the rest of the race departed in two great space arks to find Lister, one of which promptly crashed into an asteroid. The assorted lame, sick and stupid were left behind, although it would appear that he was mainly raised by a blind Cat Priest. He has an alternate version of himself in an opposite universe called The Dog. Among his other alter egos is the 'Prince of Dorkness', Duane Dibbley, who represents the 'nerd' stereotype and Cat's idea of a meaningless existence. We also encounter Cat's mirror opposite in the mirror universe (Series VIII episode - Only The Good...), a wise professor who finds it ridiculously easy to pronounce profoundly long words. We are to assume that this version of The Cat is more intelligent than both the original Cat and Duane Dibbley.

Personality

As a humanoid cat, he exhibits the qualities of coolness, vanity, and aloofness. He loves to dress well in extravagant clothing, and to dance and scream like James Brown. He often carries a mirror and is meticulous about his appearance. His first words in Episode 1 are: "How am I looking? I'm looking nice!". He rarely calls his crewmates by name, preferring to call Kryten "Novelty Condom Head" or "half eaten lollypop head", Rimmer "Goalpost Head", "Alphabet Head", or "Trans-am wheel arch nostrils", Lister "Buddy" or "Gerbil-face" and Kochanski "Officer Bud-Babe" ("Officer BB" for short).

In early episodes, The Cat exhibits typical feline behaviours such as licking anyone who gives him food, playing with 'shiny things' and marking his territory, for which purpose he carries a small spray-can, of which the contents are unknown, in his pocket. While scent-marking, he repeats, "This is mine, this is mine, and all of this is mine." The Cat also seemed self-absorbed and had shown little concern for the welfare of his crewmates. He believes himself to be irresistible to women, without ever having met any. In one program, where they have discovered a stasis leak which allows them to go back before the crew are wiped out, he sees actual human females, and remarks "They make me want to do something. I don't know what it is! Whatever it is, I wanna do a lot of it!" By Series IV, the Cat becomes less obsessed with mating, and begins to develop a friendship with Lister — possibly due to their mutual contempt for Rimmer.

As he learns to relate to the crew, he eventually stops licking them and marking his territory, and even begins to show genuine concern for others on several occasions. He becomes a skilled pilot of Starbug and develops an ability to "smell" danger, even in space. Although he does not grasp scientific terms, describing anomalies as either 'wibbly thing' or 'swirly thing'. His escape plans are almost always fashioned out of fantasy (such as his suggestion that they 'drop the defensive shields' when they have none or don their, sadly nonexistant, 'rocket pants'), and when the crew finally go with one of his plans, he questions their sanity.

He particularly takes pleasure in using the food synthesizer to get fish dinners, at one point standing in front of it repeating the word "fish" over and over again as the machine cranks out meal after meal, much to his obvious delight.

In the episode "Parallel Universe", The Cat performs the song "Tongue Tied", which appears as a dream sequence on a "dream monitor". The song was later released as a single in 1993, and reached number 17 in the UK charts. The artist was listed simply as "The Cat".

In the first and second pilot episodes of an American version of the television series, the Cat was played by Hinton Battle and Terry Farrell respectively.

The Cat is an anthropomorphised caricature of a cat, and thus recalls the cats of T. S. Eliot's book, Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats.

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