by Moe Zilla

Created on: January 22, 2008   Last Updated: January 21, 2009

The first popular cartoon cat appeared in 1919 - Felix the Cat, who moved through surreal animated situations in a line of popular silent cartoons. This ultimately led Felix to another feline triumph. The first image ever broadcast on television was also Felix the Cat. A 13-inch doll of the black-and-white cat was propped under hot studio lights in 1928 while engineers adjusted the first experimental pictures, and they broadcast the cat (rotating on a turntable) for two hours a day.

MGM created their first Tom and Jerry cartoon in 1939, and "Puss Gets the Boot" was nominated for an Academy Award. (After which, the still-anonymous cat and mouse were given names!) The duo continued making cartoons for the next 17 years, even appearing in Gene Kelly's 1945 musical, "Anchor's Aweigh."

The popularity of animated cats soon spread to other studios. In 1942 Warner Brothers created their "Tweety Bird" character - chased by two cats modelled after Abbott and Costello - but it wasn't until 1945 that they introduced his most famous cat nemesis - Sylvester! Sylvester also appeared in cartoons without Tweety, bragging to his son (Sylvester, Jr.) about his skills chasing a "giant mouse," only to be confronted with an escaped baby kangaroo! And in The Scarlet Pumpernickel, Daffy Ducky plays a medieval swashbuckler while Sylvester plays the villain.

In the 1960s there was even an animated cat in primetime television - Top Cat! The scheming alley cat lived in New York with a gang of kitty friends based on characters from "The Phil Silvers Show," and their scams put them in conflict with local police officer Dibbs. Hanna-Barbera created 30 episodes, as the show only lasted a single season, but it achieved immense popularity in Mexico, as the cat's voices were dubbed with accents from the different regions of Mexico.

Hanna-Barbera returned to cat characters with "Pixie, Dixie, and Mr. Jinx." Jinx wore a bowtie and talked in a laid-back voice, even while trying to capture the two talking "meeses" (whose voices sounded a lot like Elroy Jetson). This cartoon relied more on its voices and characters for laughs than on its animation - and the two mice remained friendly, secure in their confidence that the cat would never catch them.

But by the 1960s, short cartoons were moving from movie theatres to television. Surprisingly, new cartoon cats continued appearing, now in full-length movies. In 1962 "Gay Purr-ee" told the story of three Parisian cats (with the voices of Judy Garland, Robert Goulet, and Red Buttons.) And in 1970 Disney even created an all-cat cartoon in which Eve Gabor plays a spoiled rich cat mingling with a jazz-loving tomcat (voiced by Phil Harris).

There were other famous cartoon cats in the television era - including Garfield, Heathcliffe, and Klondike Kat. And of course, there have been famous non-animated cats too - notably the orange tabby in Audrey Hepburn's "Breakfast at Tiffany's" in 1961. (Animal shelters reported that after the movie, they were flooded with requests from people who now wanted to adopt an orange tabby cat.) Patrick McGoohan - famous as the star of TV's "The Prisoner" - even appeared in a heart-tugging Disney film called "Three Lives of Thomasina" in which another orange tabby repairs the strained relationship between a father and daughter.

These are only the highlights, but I think there's one obvious conclusion. People love cats - which is why the history of film is full of memorable kitty characters.

Learn more about this author, Moe Zilla.
Click here to send this author comments or questions.