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Webcomic: But Im A Cat Person

In a world not too different from our own, humans share the planet with a mysterious servant species known as Beings. Shapeshifting, flying battle monsters, they have spent countless ages dueling each other in a contest with no end, known as the Game...

...which most of humanity has spent just as long ignoring. It's not really that interesting if you're not involved.

Into this contest stumble two Ordinary College Graduates, cheerful Bianca and skeptical Sparrow, when a Being on the run drops into their life. He's called Patrick in human form (or Spot, when he's a dog), and at Sparrow's insistence he makes a contract to serve Bianca in return for a place in their home. But mysterious figures are keeping an eye on Patrick, and the Game has a way of not letting you go.

(None of this would have happened if they'd gotten a kitten instead.)

But I'm A Cat Person is the latest comic from And Shine Heaven Now creator Erin Ptah. The official description from the website

is "what happens when you take a heap of shounen-power-up and mahou-shoujo tropes, dump them all in a blender, and then throw the blender away and make a sandwich instead."

Not to be confused with But I'm a Cheerleader. Also has nothing to do with actual Cat People.

Tropes found in this webcomic are:

Animal Testing: The experiments regularly done on Beings may or may not be comparable to this, depending on who you ask.
April Fools' Day: April 1, 2013.
As The Good Book Says
Badass Adorable: A lot of the Beings have especially cute animal forms.
Batman Gambit: Congressman Bennett tries to pull one of these on Ann Walker, introducing a bill that will put limits on her with the assumption she will attempt to buy him off to get special treatment. She easily turns it around on him, playing on his one-note conservative rhetoric to trap him into inadvertently promising her some benefits.
Cats Are Snarkers: Reseda. Not so much when she was known as Lily; it only began to come out after her then-Master died.
Christmas Episode: The first interlude, between chapters 4 and 5, consists of holiday-themed flashbacks for several of the characters.
Combat Stilettos: A realistic way to use them: Camellia rams her narrow heel on a would-be mugger's toes to get him to release her.
Don't Call Me Master: Bianca to Patrick. (His refusal is one of the few stands he takes, though, so she goes along with it.)
Embarrassing Middle Name: Sparrow Elbereth.
Expy: The full cast will bring in several AU versions of characters from the artist's earlier works.
- Miranda originated in The Eagle Of Hermes.
- Timothy and Reseda were last seen in And Shine Heaven Now.
Fan Nickname:
- With his real name still a mystery, Cybele's Master has been referred to as Nevada-san, based on his unfortunate choice of sweatshirt.
- When the tiger-Being made its first full appearance, two readers immediately referred to it as Hobbes.
- Mr. Cohen (first name unrevealed) has readers calling him Jon, after another adult male Jewish media figure with whom he shares design similarities.
Female Feline, Male Mutt: Reseda and Patrick. Zig-zagged in the case of the Tiger, whose human forms seen so far include a little girl and a grown man. (It should be said that Beings are implied to be sexless and genderless, due to being shapeshifters, but Reseda and Patrick qualify for this trope since their currently favored human forms are female and male, respectively.)
Fluffy the Terrible: Taking into account the powers beings have, they have the capability to be this.
God Before Dogma: Timothy/Camellia, thanks to having spent several of his teenage years in a doomsday cult focused on Reseda. Identifies as a Catholic, but has a strong aversion to any imposition of one person's beliefs on another.
Hair Tropes and Hair Colors:
- Curtains Match the Window: Reseda (gold) and Cybele (pink).
- Dark-Skinned Blond: Timothy, both with his natural hair and the wig he wears as Camellia.
- Every Girl Is Cuter with Hair Decs: Miranda's omnipresent beads, and Bianca's butterfly clip.
- Hair Color Spoiler: The comic is all in greyscale except for green spot-coloring...and the eyes and hair (or, in Miranda's case, hair decs) of certain characters, mostly Beings and their Masters. If you see someone with colorful hair, odds are they're going to be important.
- Multicolored Hair: Patrick, whose blonde hair includes a brown Skunk Stripe.
- You Gotta Have Blue Hair: Bianca and Jany, unless they're examples of Purple Is The New Black; Cybele, a Rose-Haired Girl; Bennett, whose dark hair is kind of magenta-ish; Kara Lynn, lavender. Justified in the cases of the Beings.
Healing Factor: Beings have this, within limits. Food and appropriate treatment will still make a difference in how quickly they recover. After a few thousand years of dealing with injuries, they can be pretty blas� about the gory details.
Hypocritical Humor: Leave your weird fetishes out of this!
Ironic Name: Bianca, whose name means "white" in Italian, is black and proud of it.
Jewish Mother: Sparrow's mother has traits of this (even as an ethnically Jewish pagan), as does her mother before her.
"And when is that lesbian separatist coven of yours going to give me some grandchildren, hmmm?"
Kick the Dog: Literally, from the dog's point of view.
Lonely Rich Kid: Miranda, whose Parental Abandonment comes in multiple flavors. As a child, she has a workaholic mother and a Disappeared Dad; as a teenager, she has a Missing Mom and an Archnemesis Dad.
Meaningful Name: Since a Being's name is chosen by its master, it doesn't tell you much about the Being's nature, but might give you a clue about the master's interests.
- The raven goes by Poe. No wonder Miranda was first seen lurking in a graveyard.
Meganekko: Miranda.
Mon: The fighters in the Game.
Rule 34: In-story. Sparrow searches the web for information about Beings, and finds, among other things, links to Being porn. Some of them quite squicky.
- Also on meta level: the first known BICP fanfic to be written is Sparrow/Reseda and rated NC-17.
Scary Shiny Glasses: Miranda.
Strong Family Resemblance: Sparrow and her mother Sharon. Justified in that Sparrow was conceived via a sperm donor, whom Sharon chose to look as much like her as possible.
Suspiciously Specific Denial: Bennett, insisting he doesn't care about Cybele.
Talking Animal: The animal forms of the Beings. Inconspicuous as long as they don't open their mouths (and aren't of too exotic a species).
Tell Me About My Sperm Donor: Sparrow to her mother.
Theme Naming: Reseda, whose previous name was Sister Lily.
Travel Montage: Lampshaded. "I wish we were in an anime or something, so that this whole trip could go by in a montage."
Troubled Backstory Flashback: Chapter 4 is an extended one of these for Timothy and Reseda. Jany and Kara Lynn get a cute little one. As of chapter 8, one for Bennett is just starting to be touched on.
Two Girls and a Guy: Bianca, Sparrow, and Patrick.
Unreadable Disclaimer: Unreadable-entire-contract, even. There's no written version of Bianca's agreement with Patrick, and the spoken version consisted entirely of "I, Bianca Washington."
- Of course given how short their memory is, they would (or may already have) forget anything longer
Voluntary Shape Shifting: Beings' most-used power, including the following properties:
- Magic Pants: Their outfits are part of the transformation, as much as their bodies are.
- Shapeshifting Squick:
  - There are background references to the use of certain forms of Beings in pornography that would otherwise be illegal.
  - And again with Kara Lynn, who has standing orders to earn her Master's family money as an exotic dancer and prostitute, and changes form to suit the fetishes of the highest bidder.
- Morphic Resonance: Every Being has a few visual traits that stay consistent across all human and animal forms, if only for the convenience of the reader. Cybele's pink eyes, Patrick's brown-and-blond hair/fur, Reseda's sharp teeth and claws, and so on.
- Shapeshifter Showdown: Understated so far; Beings tend to enter battle in a single form and stick with it, sometimes with the Masters agreeing on that form beforehand.
- Transformation Is a Free Action: Averted. They're frequently drawn out during quiet moments, but when they need to happen fast, they happen fast.
- Shapeshifter Weapon: So far, averted; Beings fight mostly with energy attacks and the natural weapons of their standard forms (fists, claws, etcetera). When Patrick used his arm as a club that one time, it stayed in its usual shape and was damaged accordingly.
- My Instincts Are Showing: Usually played for cuteness. The Cat will curl up in your lap for petting; the Raven has a hard time managing legs.
Wholesome Crossdresser: Timothy.
Windmill Political: Bennett, regarding the possibility of Beings as a terrorist threat.