All of this makes them a wonderful projectile weapon. Forget the Bee-Bee Gun, terrify your enemies with the Cat-apult!™
Expect to see Amusing Injuries in the form of tiny cuts to the face, where the cats will inevitably attach themselves. Variants include swinging a cat around like a melee weapon, or using a cat that can launch its own weapons.
A primarily comedic subtrope of Abnormal Ammo. Related to That Poor Cat. When an actual catapult is involved, it's usually a Visual Pun.
Examples
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Comic Books
- Górsky & Butch, in its Asian cinema parody episode has the protagonists witness a battle where one of the combatants uses a "Cat's Claw" attack, which consists entirely of tossing a cat at the opponent's face.
Films — Animated
- In the film version of Coraline, the title character throws a cat at the Other Mother in order to buy herself time to run away. The cat makes it out alive, but he gives Coraline a cross look when they meet each other again in the human world.
Literature
- In Find Waldo Now, "The End of the Crusades" has a cat loaded onto the rightmost catapult.
- In the Discworld book Lords and Ladies, Magrat takes out an elf by stuffing Nanny Ogg's amazingly dangerous cat Greebo into a box and having the victim open it, upon which Greebo "went off like a claymore mine".
- In the Raymond Chandler story "Finger Man", when the villainous corrupt politician has the protagonistnote taken to his turf in order to threaten him, the protagonist tosses the villain's pet cat into his face and uses the distraction to grab his revolver and hold him at gunpoint.
Live-Action TV
- A variant: the Saturday Night Live Digital Short "Lasercats" and its sequels are about a pitch for a sci-fi series where cats can shoot lasers, and thus have replaced guns.
- In the TV adaptation of Gormenghast, Flay throws one of Gertrude's cats at Swelter.
- A sketch in Monty Python's Flying Circus, where a grotesque, played by Michael Palin, boasts to a sceptical TV interviewer, played by John Cleese, that he owns an amazing flying cat. When pressed for specifics, Palin reluctantly admits
I fling her....
Pinball
- In Medieval Madness, a cat is one of the things that can be fired from the catapult after you hit the ramp three times (the others are a cow, a chicken, a bowling ball, and the No Fear skull).
Toys
- The toy of Soundwave from Transformers: Revenge of The Fallen has a missile that's based on his jaguar minion, Ravage.
Video Games
- In Postal III your character can throw vicious cats at opponents. Once the cat hits it holds on and continues to attack the victim.
- Awesomenauts brings us Derpl Zork, astoundingly dim-witted heir to Zork Industries. When asked what form of devastation should be issued forth from his mighty combat walker, he simply drooled and said "I wuv cats". Thus came the holo-cat cannon. Yes, holographic cats.
- With Second Life having tons of user created stuff, it wasn't long before a Cat Cannon was built.
- Kitten Cannon
is, well... a game where you shoot kittens with a cannon.
- One of Yukari's attacks in Touhou Hisoutensoku ~ Choudokyuu Ginyoru no Nazo o Oe is throwing Chen to the enemy.
- In Melty Blood, Len can throw out cats to attack the opponent.
- One of the many, many improbable weapons that can be shot in ShellShock Live.
- In the second level of The Simpsons Hit & Run, one of the level gags is a catapult that can launch cats.
- In Umineko: Golden Fantasia, one of Bernkastel's attacks is to use her cat minions as projectiles. She kind of does it in Umineko: When They Cry too, although they "fly" rather than being thrown.
- A Bullet Soul called Student Witch in Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow and Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow allows Soma Cruz to throw out black cats that run across the screen and damage any enemies in their path.
- In the Blazing Dragons Licensed Game for the PS1 and Sega Saturn, Flicker can partake in a royal cat-a-pult target range, where knights practice launching cats at enemy soldiers.
- the man, one of the various Lethal Joke Items in item asylum, lets you do this by throwing a cat to deal damage to your enemies and ragdoll them.
Webcomics
- The aptly named Cat-A-Pult from League of Super Redundant Heroes has the power to levitate cats. This was his go-to attack, until he got more creative.
- In The Order of the Stick #520, Belkar suddenly throws a cat into the face of the evil cleric he has been talking to. Turns out he was really looking forward to flinging an angry cat into someone's face.
- Used as a Funny Background Event in this Penny Arcade comic.
Western Animation
- Mayor Adam West defends his home in Family Guy with a crossbow that fires cats, which he stores in a large sack on his back.
- The Crazy Cat Lady in The Simpsons ends any conversation she doesn't like by throwing some of her innumerable cats at someone.
- Futurama: In one episode where Fry is leading an army of Neanderthals against Zapp Brannigan they catapult a saber-toothed cat through his flagship's windshield.
Real Life
- A Real Life example: During the siege of Pelusium in 525 BC, the Persian general Cambyses was known for hurling live cats over the walls of the Egyptian fort to demoralize the defenders (to whom the cats were sacred). He also instructed his men to drive cats before the army, and tie cats to their shields to further deter the Egyptians. He was not a nice person.
- Cats, and other dead animals (as well as occasional dead people or parts of their bodies), were flung over walls during various medieval sieges. The goal was to spread disease inside the walled city, as a sort of early bioweapon. Remember: Medieval Morons is not Truth in Television. The attackers may not have known why, but they knew that close contact with dead bodies wasn't good for you.
- Kunoichi (female Ninja) who kept cats would sometimes use them as surprise weapons, throwing them into the faces of their enemies.
