Basic Trope: A character (usually female) who hoards animals, usually cats.
- Straight: No one wants to go near their weird neighbor Alice because she has several cats, but few human friends (and, of course, no significant other.)
- Exaggerated: Alice has over 50 cats, and hasn't interacted with a human being in over a decade.
- Downplayed: Alice has a Right-Hand Cat that she loves like it's her child, but she has friends and family and a career and maybe even a significant other.
- Justified:
- Alice is a fun but eccentric woman whose boyfriends all inevitably end up leaving her because she's "too much"; so she has a lot of cats, because unlike her boyfriends, they won't leave her.
- Alice has No Social Skills, which has left her unable to make human friends or find a lover. However, she likes cats because they give her company but don't have a whole bunch of confusing social cues that she needs to learn.
- Alice never wanted to get married for whatever reason, but still finds living alone to be boring or depressing (or even scary), so she uses pets to make her feel like she isn't all by herself.
- Inverted:
- Alice is a mean old recluse who makes a point of chasing everything off, especially cats.
- Alice lives with a group of other old ladies and a single cat that they all take care of.
- Rather than hoarding cats, Alice gives cats away to other people. (For example, fostering kittens and helping them to find loving, permanent homes.)
- Alice is the matriarch of a happy family that hoards cats.
- Gender-Inverted: Bob has more than five dogs and never interacts with any of his neighbors.
- Subverted:
- Alice has some cats, but also an active social life with humans.
- Alternatively: Alice barely even talks to other people when she's out in public, and refers to taking things home to her "darlings"... Which turn out to be dolls.
- Alice isn't a Crazy Cat Lady (indeed, may not even have a pet), but she is an Old Maid, and her family and friends try to "motivate" her to find a man by saying that she'll turn into a CCL if she doesn't find one and settle down soon.
- Far from being an Old Maid, Alice is married.
- Alice runs a cat shelter, fosters kittens, or runs a cat sanctuary.
- Most (if not all) of those cats merely pass through Alice's house on their daily jaunts.
- Alice turns out to be a well-adjusted Introverted Cat Person.
- Double Subverted:
- The only humans she interacts with are her relatives, or members of the Feline Appreciation Society.
- She has several cats, and (much to the chagrin of her Henpecked Husband Bob), keeps adopting new ones. She does this because she is unable to have children, due to an unfortunate accident that damaged her uterus. Also, apart from Bob and the cats, she doesn't socialize much.
- But after her husband dies, she feels left alone miserably and her cat is the only remaining thing for her.
- She's doing this out of her home, and she isn't really equipped for it. She's managing, but just barely; the cats would be better off in a real animal shelter.
- That doesn't stop her from caring for them.
- Until the stigma against her takes its toll on her sanity.
- Parodied:
- Alice doesn't even remember what humans look like, and she herself is a cat-ears-wearing Cloud Cuckoolander with no grip on reality whatsoever. The Animal Wrongs Group comes and takes the cats away from Alice.
- A cat hoards humans.
- Zig Zagged: Sometimes Alice interacts with her pets, other times with actual human beings.
- Averted: Alice is The Aloner and does not have any pets, not even a betta fish.
- Enforced: The writer worries that this will be her fate.
- Lampshaded: "How many cats does Alice have, again?"
- Invoked: Alice was a victim of Abusive Parents and bullying at a young age and the only friend she has was a cat, now she's old with the mindset that her only friends are cats.
- Exploited: Bob knows that Emperor Evulz is allergic to cats, so he leads Evulz into Alice's house and defeats him at his weakest.
- Defied: Alice doesn't have much of social life, but refuses to substitute animals for human affection. Instead, she resolves to get out and meet people and do things.
- Conversed: "Poor Alice. She should really get out and meet people."
- Discussed: "Cats are no substitute for human affection. And why cats anyway? Everyone knows Cats Are Mean. Can you say, Irony?"
- Implied:
- Alice is a single old lady who is never actually seen to have any cat and no one has been to her house, but she usually buys cat products, her outfit is full of fur and smells like a cat.
- Bob wanders into a home filled with 10 cats. He stumbles upon makeup and female hygiene products.
- Deconstructed: Alice hoards cats because she feels alienated from other humans. She craves human interaction, but can't break out of her shell, so she gets more cats. The loneliness builds up into actual craziness. And as she becomes more and more detached from reality, her house and her cats begin to suffer for it.
- Reconstructed: Alice seeks help for her social anxiety. She brings the cats to the local animal welfare society, or adopts them out to loving homes herself (except maybe one or two). She eventually comes out of her shell and develops an active social life.
- Played For Laughs: Alice not only has a lot of cats, but she's a board-certified Cloud Cuckoolander.
- Played For Drama:
- Alice and the cats are suffering, but Alice is too far gone to realize it.
- After her Dark and Troubled Past, Alice is Driven to Suicide. Her cats either starve or eat her.
- Alice is an exotic animal smuggler who breeds and sells exotic cats, and is paranoid of people investigating her.
- Played For Horror: Alice, traumatised by her past and rejected by society, starts killing those who show up on her property and feed them to her cats.
Go back to Crazy Cat Lady, unless you want to meet my pretties. They don't scratch...
