Bad Kitty is a series of children's books written by Nick Bruel, beginning with the picture book Bad Kitty in 2005. The series follows the titular bad Kitty, a black cat who is extremely prone to temper tantrums, especially when she doesn't get her favorite foods. She shares her dwelling with the drooling simpleton dog Puppy, who stars in the sequel picture book Poor Puppy.
The book was widely popular, and received a more fleshed-out sequel in Bad Kitty Gets a Bath. This spun off into a franchise of black-and-white illustrated chapter books, which introduced more characters, such as several other neighborhood cats and a new human baby in Kitty's family. The chapter books, originally printed in black-and-white, would later be re-released in full color. There is also a series of shorter paperback picture books.
List of Bad Kitty books
Full-Length Picture Books
- Bad Kitty (2005)
- Poor Puppy (2007)
- A Bad Kitty Christmas (2011)
- Bad Kitty Searching for Santa
- Bad Kitty's Tasty Treats (Board book for younger readers)
- Bad Kitty Scaredy Cat
Chapter Books
- Bad Kitty Gets a Bath (2008)
- Happy Birthday, Bad Kitty (2009)
- Bad Kitty vs. Uncle Murray: The Uproar at the Front Door (a.k.a. Bad Kitty Vs. The Babysitter) (2010)
- Bad Kitty Meets the Baby (2011)
- Bad Kitty for President (2012)
- Bad Kitty School Daze (2013)
- Bad Kitty Drawn to Trouble (2014)
- Puppy's Big Day (2015)
- Bad Kitty Goes to the Vet (2016)
- Bad Kitty Takes the Test (2017)
- Bad Kitty Camp Daze (2018)
- Bad Kitty Kitten Trouble (2018)
- Bad Kitty Joins the Team (2019)
- Bad Kitty Goes on Vacation (2020)
- Bad Kitty Gets a Phone (2021)
- Bad Kitty: Supercat (2022)
- Bad Kitty Makes a Movie (2023)
Paperback Picture Books
- Bad Kitty Does NOT Like Thanksgiving
- Bad Kitty Does NOT Like Candy
- Bad Kitty Does NOT Like Dogs
- Bad Kitty Does NOT Like Snow
- Bad Kitty Does NOT Like Video Games
Tropes seen in the series include:
- Added Alliterative Appeal: The foods Kitty likes in the first book are listed alphabetically and all have alliterative names, like rhino ravioli or shark sushi.
- Anthropomorphic Personification: The "What the Heck is That Thing?!" chapter in Meets the Baby has Kitty's basic emotions — panic, hunger, and lazy — represented by cats who compete on a game show trying to figure out how to react to the new baby.
- Apathetic Pet: Kitty is often indifferent to her owner (the narrator) and isn't afraid to attack him for any perceived slight. In Happy Birthday, Bad Kitty, it's revealed that this is because she used to be a kind kitten until he adopted her. She was furious that she had to leave her mother and became the crabby cat that we all know today.
- Ascended Extra: Uncle Murray only appeared twice in the original book as a joke where he was lumped in with Kitty's foods in the "U" category. He becomes the host of "Uncle Murray's Fun Facts" in the chapter books, which went into further detail about cat behavior (despite Murray not knowing much about it), which would give him little subplots. He would become a major character in Bad Kitty Vs. Uncle Murray and has had prominent appearances in most books since then.
- Badly Battered Babysitter: Uncle Murray often babysits Kitty and Puppy and ends up far worse off than he started. For example, in Meets the Baby, he not only has to get Kitty and Puppy down from a tree, but he ends up stuck in the tree himself, and somehow a refrigerator ends up there too. By the end of the week, he needs a new tree.
- Bait-and-Switch Comment: The series includes a line of books that begin with the phrase Bad Kitty Does NOT Like... The first lines of Bad Kitty Does NOT Like Thanksgiving read "Kitty does not like Thanksgiving. Kitty LOVES Thanksgiving. Kitty loves Thanksgiving for one reason- TURKEY!"
- Big Bad Wannabe: Dr. Lagomorph tries to be a diabolical supervillain, but he's really just a cute little bunny wearing a helmet made from a plastic bottle.
- Big Eater:
- One of Kitty's signature traits. She eats twenty-six giant meals in the first book alone and continues to eat towers of food for dinner in subsequent books.
- The baby is just as ravenous as Kitty; she's not only fed the same amount of food (though unlike Kitty's Bizarre Taste in Food, the baby eats things like apples, bananas, and cereal), she cleans her plate before Kitty can take a bite of her own food.
- Bizarre Taste in Food: Some of the foods Kitty eats in the first book include penguin pizza, quail quiche, and a Tyrannosaurus rex.
- Bland-Name Product: In School Daze, there's a cutesy stationary character called Love Love Angel Kitten who has a lot of merchandise, such as school supplies.
- Card-Carrying Villain: Dr. Lagomorph believes that he is a mutant supervillain and never stops talking about how "evil" he is.
- Cats Are Lazy: Several books begin with Kitty lying in her bed sleeping, not caring about the antics of her owner or Puppy...unless it involves something that catches her interest, like food or an amazing cat toy.
- Cats Are Mean: If the title didn't clue you in, Kitty isn't exactly a ray of sunshine. She turns into a hissing, scratching, yowling mess when she doesn't get her way.
- Cat Stereotype:
- The titular Kitty is a stubborn black cat who brings misfortune to anybody who slights her.
- Big Kitty is a Maine coon and a Gentle Giant.
- Pretty Kitty is a white Turkish Angora and a beautiful upper-class priss.
- Chatty Kitty is a Siamese, and while not particularly mean, she's pretty self-centered and won't stop talking about her daily life.
- Strange Kitty is a Sphynx and a Cloudcuckoolander.
- Cat Up a Tree: In the first chapter of Meets the Baby, Uncle Murray's week babysitting Kitty begins with her getting stuck in a tree, then escalates to Puppy getting up there, Uncle Murray being stuck there for two days, a fridge getting stuck in the tree (Uncle Murray has no idea how that happened), and eventually Murray has to just order a new tree. After this section, there's a "Fun Facts" section that provides the scientific context behind the trope, while Uncle Murray keeps cursing about how crazy cats are.
- Comically Small Bribe: Kitty bribes Uncle Murray into funding her presidential campaign by offering to give him a tasty fish.
- Does This Remind You of Anything?:
- Kitten Trouble is an allegory about the 2010s refugee crisis, as confirmed by Nick Bruel himself. It features several kittens living with Kitty after their neighborhood is destroyed in a vague conflict, and Kitty and Uncle Murry have to learn to trust the kittens and share their space with them as their neighborhood is rebuilt. Strange Kitty also mentions the "United Neighborhoods" is working to resolve the conflict, a parallel to the United Nations.
- Runs For President contains many political allegories. Notably, the issue of stray cats seems to be related to immigrations debates, and Kitty creates conspiracy theories about Big Kitty actually being a dog, which may be commentary on the Birther conspiracy about Barack Obama.
- A Dog Named "Dog": We have a cat named Kitty and a dog named Puppy. Plus an infant named Baby.
- Dogs Are Dumb: Puppy doesn't do much but eat, slobber, and annoy the heck out of Kitty.
- Early-Installment Weirdness: Bad Kitty and Poor Puppy were not chapter books, but picture books structured around alphabetical sequences. Kitty also had smaller eyes and was generally much less expressive than she is in later books.
- Enemy Mine: Kitty and Uncle Murray, who usually fight each other constantly, briefly team up during Kitten Trouble as neither of them want to share their space with the neighborhood kittens. Ironic, since Kitty is the entire reason Murray hates cats.
- The Faceless: We never see the face of Kitty and Puppy's owner; usually it's just his body and hands.
- Facepalm: In Kitten Trouble, Kitty facepalms at the idea of bringing a group of kittens into the house to temporarily shelter them during a neighborhood conflict.
- Fantastic Racism: In School Daze, Petunia the bulldog hates cats. Because of this, Kitty pretends to be a cow around her, but once Petunia learns the truth she's remorseful of her previous views.
- Female Feline, Male Mutt: Kitty is a girl and Puppy is a boy.
- First Day of School Episode: School Daze has Kitty and Puppy being sent to school to curb their bad habits (Kitty's sour attitude and Puppy's drooling).
- Gentle Giant: Big Kitty is the biggest kitty around, but he's also pretty cuddly.
- Gratuitous French: The Strange Kitty lookalike in Kitten Trouble speaks a few French phrases throughout the book, which are translated in a glossary.
- Hair-Trigger Temper: Kitty gets extremely destructive if she doesn't get exactly what she wants, and even slight annoyances can set her entire mood off.
- Happily Adopted: The narrator's baby. The narrator relates her to Kitty, who was adopted from a shelter, and it gets Kitty to finally accept the baby into her life.
- "Harmful to Pets" Reminder: In "Happy Birthday, Bad Kitty", Kitty is given a huge cake, but she's not the least bit grateful for it because it's not chocolate. There is then a two-page-long explanation on how you should never let a cat have chocolate or it can easily kill them.
- Homemade Sweater from Hell: The last present Kitty gets for her birthday is a hideous sweater, rather than the expensive cat toy she wanted. This results in her screaming temper tantrum that ruins the party.
- Human Disguise: To get her into the no-cats theme park in Goes on Vacation, Murray dresses Kitty up as his "son," Murray Jr. He removes her disguise while on trial so he can shock the courtroom by claiming humans are turning into cats.
- I Am Not Weasel: A variant with animals mistaking a human for another species. In Meets the Baby, Kitty thinks the new baby is another dog because she's big, drooly, and smelly. However, all of her cat friends think she's another cat since she shares characteristics with each one of them, leading to the baby beating all the other cats in the "Kitty Olympics."
- Intentional Mess Making:
- The original picture book is about Kitty's mischief, during which she causes several messes (including, but not limited to flooding the bathroom, knocking dishes off the table, and tipping her litter box over).
- In "Bad Kitty for President", the narrator tells Kitty that she can do a grassroots campaign, saying that it means "[they] dig hard to find the roots of what voters care about and then try to leave something of [themselves] behind for them to ponder". Kitty then digs a hole in a neighbor's yard and it's subsequently implied that she crapped in the hole.
- Ironic Hell: In Bad Kitty Goes to the Vet, Bad Kitty has a dream in which she learns that kitty hell is puppy heaven. Bad kitties that don't qualify for Pussycat Paradise are cast down into Puppydog Paradise because they're always looking for more cats to chase there.
- Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Kitty is usually lazy, grumpy, and petty, but in several books, she shows compassion to somebody else, particularly after learning An Aesop about acceptance and selflessness. She grows to love her owner's baby and protects her from getting a bath, and in Kitten Trouble, she accepts the kittens into her home and ends her feud with the paperboy. She also has a major soft spot for her biological mother.
- Modern Major General: Uncle Murray is recruited to provide "Fun Facts" about cats, but he doesn't actually know anything, forcing the narrator to do this instead. However, he is much more knowledgeable about other subjects, most notably US politics, and happily provides the fun facts in Runs for President when political fun facts are needed (unfortunately, his explanation of what a primary is is so complicated that the narrator decides to forgo it entirely).
- Motor Mouth: Chatty Kitty is constantly meowing. The translated text of her meows makes it even more inane.
- New Baby Episode: Bad Kitty Meets the Baby is about Kitty's owner bringing home a new baby. Kitty initially hates the baby because she thinks it's a dog, but when her cat friends come over, they believe the baby is another cat and put her through the "Kitty Olympics." The baby turns out to be better at acting like a cat than the cats. At the end of the book, Kitty's owner reveals that the baby is adopted just like Kitty, which leads Kitty to understand that she and the baby aren't so different and become protective of her.
- No Name Given: Kitty's owner/the narrator doesn't have a name. Oddly, he never refers to his baby by a name either.
- "Not So Different" Remark: Kitty and the baby in Meets the Baby. The narrator points out how they're both loud, destructive Big Eaters, and most heartwarmingly they're both adopted.
- Only Sane Man: In Runs for President, Strange Kitty is the only one trying to focus on the issues while Kitty and Big Kitty are trying to discredit each other (and obsessing over fries, in Big Kitty's case). This ends up winning him the election, and is also lampshaded when the former president's vote describes him as "the only one at the debate worth listening to" (note that he was the moderator at said debate).
- The Pig-Pen: Stinky Kitty is constantly dirty and smelly, and proud of it. However, it turns out that Baby is too smelly even for him.
- Radio Contest: Goes on Vacation begins with Uncle Murray scrambling to phone in to a radio contest asking why cats hate baths. It takes him a while to get to a phone, but he does win the prize.
- Suddenly Speaking: During a chapter in Takes a Bath, when the owner is preparing Kitty for her bath by gently caressing Kitty and telling her he loves her, she suddenly tells him she loves him as well. This is explained when it's revealed she's actually a magical princess kitty! ...And then it's explained much better when we come back to reality and see it was a fantasy the owner had while knocked out, and Kitty still won't take her bath.
- Suspiciously Specific Denial: In Kitten Trouble, Kitty is tired of constantly being whacked by the newspaper delivered by the newspaper delivery kid. She sets up a trap for him, except she labels it with signs reading "Free baseball cards for horrible kids!", "Yes- free!" and most notably, "Not a trap." Unsurprisingly, it doesn't work.
- Symbol Swearing:
- Uncle Murray refers to cats as "#%&*@ crazy!" in one of the "Fun Facts" chapters in Meets the Baby.
- The third chapter of Meets the Baby is titled "Another [five symbols] Dog!" after Kitty "realizes" that the new baby is another annoying dog.
- Take That!: Goes on Vacation uses the Love Love Angel Kitty World theme park to take potshots at the Disney Theme Parks. Despite being billed as "the most super incredibly happy place on Earth," Uncle Murray spends most of his time waiting in line, buying overpriced food and merchandise, and going on the same Sickeningly Sweet repetitive musical ride (a clear parody of "it's a small world").
- Training the Pet: In "School Daze", Kitty and Puppy are sent to an obedience school to control Kitty's horrible temper and Puppy's tendency to drool a lot. Puppy ends up learning to drool less, but Kitty's still as obnoxious as ever (although the teacher points out that she had a lot of Pet the Dog moments while she was there), and she trips Baby in order to be sent back to the school.
- Troublesome Pet: Kitty isn't called "Bad Kitty" for nothing; she frequently destroys property, will go on a rampage at the slightest provocation (often attacking the unseen owner in the process), and bullies Puppy.
- Tuckerization: Uncle Murray is named after Nick Bruel's own uncle named Murray.
- Unexpected Kindness: In "Bad Kitty vs. Uncle Murray", Murray talks about when he used to have a dog named Sam. He mentions that he thought Sam would "go crazy" when he put a leashnote on him, but Sam turned out to be quite obedient about it and he even licked young Murray's hand.
- Used to Be a Sweet Kid: Happy Birthday, Bad Kitty shows Kitty's life as a kitten, where she was extremely kind and generous. It was only after she was taken away from her mother that she became the crabby kitty she is today.
- Vacation Episode: Goes on Vacation has Uncle Murray and Kitty go to a theme park after Murray wins a Radio Contest. Murray has a miserable time due to issues with traveling, finding a good hotel, and actually going on any good rides, and he ends up in jail after blowing his money on theme park merchandise.
- The Voiceless: None of the animals speak in English, barring Kitty in a few dream sequences and Strange Kitty and his mouse friend. Chatty Kitty is the only cat whose meows are actually translated into English.
- Wham Line: Near the end of Bad Kitty Meets the Baby, when the narrator finally gets Kitty to connect to the baby. The last line gets its own page.The two of you have so much in common. You both like to scratch things. You both like to chew on things you shouldn't. You obviously both like to eat a lot.
And you're both adopted.
