Cats, come with me! We have crimes to stop!
In New York City, where superheroes are seen as totally normal and accepted, a girl named Katie... wants to raise money to go to summer camp. But after getting a job catsitting an eccentric lady's even more eccentric cats, she eventually discovers that the lady, Madeline, is secretly a superhero! And her superintelligent cats help her fight crime!
Madeline protests various causes by day, and punishes evildoers by night as her alter ego, the Mousetress. And she's being slandered as a villain!
Katie soon decides that she wants to become Madeline's sidekick, and begins training and investigating the crimes in her area, as well as attending Madeline's protests. Meanwhile, she also has to deal with the usual trials and tribulations of middle school.
Katie the Catsitter is a graphic novel series that combines comedy, relationship drama, mystery and superheroes.
This graphic novel series contains examples of:
- Animal Lover: Madeline fights many causes, including such things as a corrupt animal-related charity that doesn't actually do anything for animals. She even takes Katie to an animal shelter, where Katie loves the animals there. Protecting animals - and humans - from harm is big for Madeline.
- Animal-Themed Superbeing: Madeline, as the Mousetress, who dresses like a mouse, ironically despite having cats as her helpers. Katie briefly suggests becoming the "Moosetress" and being moose-themed, but drops that idea. There's also Eastern Screech, an owl-themed man.
- Big Applesauce: Where else other than New York City would you find superheroes, supervillains, giant robots and very intelligent cats?
- Black Bead Eyes: Not all characters have this, but many do, including Katie. However, Katie's eyes show their whites when she's particularly surprised or excited.
- Can't Catch Up: Once Katie's friend Beth is allowed to train under Madeline along with her, Katie is initially excited... but then notices that Beth is better than her at every test they try.
- Cassandra Truth: No-one believes Katie about the Eastern Screech's true identity, not even Madeline, who knows he's secretly a villain, and who he's specifically after!
- Crazy Cat Lady: Madeline, the woman who owns an enormous number of cats. She's also secretly a superhero named The Mousetress.
- Disowned Parent: One of Katie's friends takes very poorly to the fact that her (the friend's) parents are supervillains.
- Engineered Public Confession: Set up so that Eastern Screech will admit to being a criminal.
- Failure Montage:
- Katie's early attempts to get stronger and more athletic so she can become a good sidekick is nothing but fail.
- Later, when Katie's friend Beth tries out the training, there's a montage showing Katie failing and Beth succeeding at every test.
- False Flag Operation: A giant robot with the logo BB on the side attacks the city, and says, "This robot attack brought to you by Buttersoft Bionics." Hmm, is Buttersoft Bionics really behind it?
- Hero with Bad Publicity: The Mousetress is overwhelmingly seen by many as a villain. Even when she stops a giant robot, people assume that it was simply someone else dressed as her who did it.
- Humongous Mecha: A few show up and menace the city, but they're mostly developed by incompetent designers who don't know how to keep them running.
- I Know You Know I Know: Katie keeps seeing a certain man show up everywhere a robot attack occurs. When she sees him later, the man says he's working on gadgets, and Katie asks if he's working on any... robots. The two then glare at each other, as Katie knows what he's up to, and he knows that she knows.
- Intellectual Animal: Essentially, the Mousetress's "superpower." Her cats are all very smart and capable of many things, from picking locks to high jumping to building inventions. If she or Katie need a job done, there's often a cat for the job. It's later revealed that Madeline adopts cats from shelters and lets them discover their own interests and skillsets. It's simply a given that cats are very smart.
- Jet Pack: How some superheroes fly. After all, no-one in this world has actual superpowers!
- Keeping Secrets Sucks: Madeline is upset about hiding her true identity from her parents. Katie is upset, though less so, about hiding her sidekick training from her mom. Katie's training is revealed to her mom, who warms up to it after a while. But Madeline revealing to her parents that she's the Mousetress goes terribly.
- Kid Sidekick: After discovering the Madeline is a superhero, she asks to become her sidekick and begin training.
- Kind Hearted Cat Lover: Madeline is really nice to Katie and to people in general. She also cares deeply for the environment and animal welfare, which are a focus of some of her protests and her superhero actions.
- Le Parkour: Madeline/The Mousetress is an expert at this. She tries to teach Katie, but Katie sucks at it.
- New Friend Envy: Katie's best friend finds a new friend who she likes more and hangs out with more, making Katie very upset. That said, Katie also finds a new friend group.
- Non-Powered Costumed Hero: None of the superheroes or supervillains have actual superpowers. They just work out a lot and use technology to help them. Or in The Mousetress's case, lots of intelligent pet cats.
- Open-Minded Parent: Two examples:
- Although Katie's mom is unaware that she's becoming a superhero's sidekick, the mom of Katie's friend Beth also turns out to secretly be in the superhero business, and is totally cool... with Katie being a superhero's sidekick, but not her own daughter! Though she later opens up to the idea of Beth doing training, but not actual sidekick action.
- When Katie's mom discovers she's been trained by the Mousetress, who is widely believed to be a supervillain, she is upset, though less so than most parents would be. After about a week, and a presentation by the Mousetress's cats, she warms up to the idea of Katie having sidekick training from a superhero, as long as she gets to see what the training is like.
- Secret Identity: There's a handful. The crazy cat lady is really The Mousetress.
- Slice of Life: One of the genres this comic inhabits, as parts of the story are about Katie's friendships and the difficulties she has between her old friends shifting away from her, and trying to fit into her new group of friends.
- Snooping Little Kid: Katie sometimes turns to sneaking around to try to find out what the bad guys are up to, or even find the secret lairs of other superheroes.
- Soapbox Sadie: Madeline protests many causes by day, when she's not fighting them directly at night in her superhero form. She gets Katie to be involved as well.
- Stealing the Credit: Every time the Mousetress does something obviously good, like stopping a giant robot attack, some other superhero who did nothing to help but just happened to be there will receive the credit.
- Sticky Shoes: Katie asks repeatedly if she can use suction cup shoes, while Madeline keeps telling her that suction cup shoes are impractical.
- Technologically Blind Elders: An elderly superhero, Super Carl, is clueless about social media and superheroes having online rankings.
- Villain with Good Publicity: Eastern Screech, a corrupt "superhero" who actually rigs things to improve his superhero ranking and popularity, is popular in the city.
