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"Side note: Kittens make everything better."

...admit it, how long did you spend looking at the example picture before you started reading this article? Looking at the picture with automatic Bambi eyes setting in, with brain geared to "Such wee small biddy kitties? Whosa cute kitty? Sleepy kitty."

Kittens seem to provoke an automatic pleasure/protective/affection reaction in many (if not most) people. For this reason, they are often used by creators to arouse those feelings toward a character as well. Want to show that someone is a softy despite their crusty exterior? Have them rescue a kitten! Want to indicate that they're evil instead? Torturing or killing a kitten will do it. Want to lighten a mood that's gone Darker and Edgier? Add a kitten or two.

Kittens increase the cuteness factor exponentially. Examples on this page should be limited to works where this is deliberately used with kittens or cats, not simply "this work includes a kitten," or "this work includes a cute little animal."

Cat Girl can be a Sister Trope if you're creative enough. See also The Internet Is for Cats.

Compare Cool Cat, Fun Size, Mega Neko, Precious Puppy, Big Friendly Dog, Kindhearted Cat Lover, Cuteness Proximity, Bunnies for Cuteness, Panthera Awesome, Great White Feline, and High Koala-ty Cuteness. Contrast with Cats Are Mean, Hair-Raising Hare and Mister Muffykins. (Except when Cute Is Evil, in which case they go hand-in-hand.) In most cases, though, kittens are portrayed as more friendly and likable than adult cats, hence the contrasting tropes of Right-Hand Cat and If You're So Evil, Eat This Kitten!. In fact, when a dog is chasing an adult cat, the dog is usually portrayed as the hero but when a dog is chasing a kitten, the dog is often the villain.


Examples:

    open/close all folders 

    Advertising 
  • This Nexus S 4G Advertisement. Featuring a cameo of Nyan Cat!
  • This Bouygues Telecom commercial with live kittens as office workers.
  • Every advert for cat-related products, such as cat litter (one UK advert involved a white kitten searching the house for the litter tray with a child-like voice over) and cat food. They also tend to appear on the packages of said products (especially for food that's specifically designed for kittens).
  • This advertisement for Sauza Tequila, in which a fireman (who has just rescued a kitten from a burning building) teaches you how to make a margarita. With the kitten's help.
  • Chessie, the mascot of the Chesapeake and Ohio Railway. She was introduced in 1933 to promote the railway's overnight trains, and soon took over C&O advertising. The railway added two kittens (Nip and Tuck) and a husband (Peake the tomcat). In 1972, when the C&O merged with the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad and the Western Maryland Railway, Chessie became the mascot for the entire Chessie System. You can still see her silhouette on boxcars.
  • This advert for Chocolate Digestive Biscuits.
  • This commercial for Pampers diapers may contain a lot of adorable animal babies, but the different feline cubs shown surely attract the most attention and adoration, and it's likely no accident it ends with a lion cub.
  • In Dear Kitten, a BuzzFeed viral ad campaign for Little Friskies brand cat food, an older cat explains the facts of life to a new kitten, combining Cute Kitten with Cats Are Snarkers.
  • This commercial for the Swedish air-travel website Flygresor.Se, featuring a whole group of kittens wearing little airplane costumes. It got popular enough to warrant several "sequel" ads with the same concept.
  • The Progressive commercial "A Pet Too Far" has lots of cute little animals, but Mittens the kitten is the most popular one.
    Jamie: She's a diva.

    Anime & Manga 
  • Osamu Tezuka
    • Atom Cat: In a world where Astro Boy is just a cartoon show, a bullied Astro Boy-obsessed kid is forced to take his little tomcat away from home. When a group of aliens disguised as humans accidentally run over him and his pet cat, they try to cover it up by healing both the boy and cat up and erasing their memories of the event. However, because they have never seen a cat before, they unwittingly give the near-death tomcat all the powers of Astro Boy based from their readings of the injured boy's memories. With the ability to speak, lift heavy objects and fly, Astro Cat spends the rest of the series saving his sweetheart, Mink, or his owner from danger, both mundane and supernatural. Subverted by one of Astro Cat's enemies, Mephisto, a devil-like feline with supernatural powers who's lived since Egyptian times, who attempted to make Mink his bride.
    • Kimba the White Lion. No points for guessing who the main character is. This even extends to his Love Interest and future wife Kitty/Laiya.
    • Yuusha Dan, a young Ainu native, Kotan, who's a Friend to All Living Things befriends a white tiger after it escapes from a train carrying him to the zoo. Together they fight off villains while searching for a fantastic treasure.
    • Unico: The 1981 movie and original manga has a cute kitten named Chao/Katy the Cat (renamed "Chloe" in Unico: Awakening). She's a black kitten that Unico first meets after accidentally falling into her basket. She reveals to Unico that she was abandonded by someone and dreams on becoming a "Cat Witch" due to reading a book about fairy tales. Chao/Katy later wishes to become a human after believing an old lady to be an actual witch (much to to confusion of Unico) which the titular unicorn temporarily grants the next morning. While Unico reveals to her that he granted he wish, Chao/Katy doesn't believe him until she suddenly turns back into a cat. After saving the old woman from drowning with Unico's help, she permanently becomes a human girl.
  • President Aria from ARIA.
  • Hetalia: Axis Powers:
    • Greece is shown as a diehard cat lover. And China has an obsession with Hello Kitty Shinatty-chan?
    • See also: The world CAT-ference, Nekotalia, and EVEN MORE nations as kittens.
    • Sometimes cats just show up in random scenes for no purpose other than to be adorable. A strip where Italy practices his training on a cat, for instance, or where Japan pets one while delivering some exposition.
  • Azumanga Daioh:
  • Would you believe this trope is used in Battle Royale? The island the students fight on seems to have a lot of kittens. Shuya and Noriko get a literal Cat Scare moment, a kitten is cruelly killed by a maddened student and there is a whole Flash Back sequence about one guy who took to his class a very young kitten. All those kittens are realistically drawn.
  • WHENEVER Sebastian from Black Butler finds a cat (cue Ciel calling him a neko-baka, cat-obsessed idiot. Even if it's true when he sees one). Yes, cats are cute enough even to make demons gush over them.
  • Yoruichi from Bleach has the ability to turn into a black cat, which for some reason makes her voice sound male. Rather amusingly though, one of Yoruichi's first appearances consists of Urahara perhaps succumbing to this trope, and tossing her up and down in the air in a playful manner, while saying something nonsensical.
    Urahara: Upsy daisy! Upsy daisy! [tossing Yoruichi up and down]
  • Keroberos and his "Evil Counterpart" Spinel Sun in Cardcaptor Sakura are pretty darn cute in their power-conserving size. Kero's Big Eater tendencies and love of sweets, and what happens to Spinel when he eats sugar, only add to the delight.
  • A Certain Magical Index:
  • Chi from Chi's Sweet Home is a cute, friendly kitten.
  • Chainsaw Man: Power's cat Meowy (Nyako) is a cute, friendly furball that also acted as her Morality Pet. Back when Power was a wild Fiend wandering the woods, she found Meowy as an emaciated cat and took it in. Initially merely intending to fatten up Meowy and eat it, Power ended up bonding with the kitty and becoming true companions with it.
  • Umibozu of City Hunter fame has a debilitating fear of cats, particularly if they're adorably cute kittens. This is mainly used for hilarity ensues purposes, but it also lead to a few serious scenes, such as, in one story, one of Umibozu's worst enemies knowing this weakness, and cornering him with it (but is ultimately saved by Ryo, who immediately after bursts into laughing at this scene).
  • The Student Council mascot Arthur in Code Geass. He enjoys biting Suzaku, his unofficial owner, but he's much nicer toward pretty much everyone else in the show. Word of God says that Arthur does like Suzaku. His bites are supposed to be his way to show his affection, which is Truth in Television, as cats may bite or otherwise nibble on the object of their affection.
  • Comic Girls has Kaoruko's cat Nyaos, which is adored by most of the cast (except Tsubasa), especially when she has that beret on her head.
  • Yune of Croisée in a Foreign Labyrinth has a knack for finding cats wherever she goes, and she just can't... help... petting... them— 'scuse me, gotta chase a cat! Even the ending theme and mid-episode transition cards feature her with cats.
  • Gatomon/Tailmon from Digimon Adventure and Digimon Adventure 02... which makes it even funnier when she kicks your ass.
  • He doesn't look much like one, but Doraemon is a robot cat. He had cat ears once upon a time, but they were chewed off by a mouse when he was sleeping. Poor guy is now terrified of them. His sister Dorami invokes this trope full force.
  • Bulma's father in Dragon Ball has a gigantic soft spot for animals, and takes in stray cats, dogs, and dinosaurs (yes, dinosaurs) and lets them have free roam of Capsule Corporation. His favorite is a small, black, seemingly never-aging cat that spends almost all of its time perched on his shoulder. The cat is named Tama in the Japanese version and Scratch in the American dub. One of the very few times it moves off his shoulder is to rest in Android 16's hand and nuzzle into it in Dragon Ball Z. And that's not even getting into Yamcha's best friend Pu'ar, a sentient, floating shapeshifting cat; well, more of a cat-like thing, but still...
  • In El-Hazard: The Magnificent World, there's Ura the armor cat. Why does El-Hazard have an armored vest that happens to be a talking cat? Because he's adorable.
  • In Fairy Tail, Natsu has Happy, Wendy has Carla, and Gajeel has Pantherlily. Sabertooth's Dragon Slayers Sting and Rogue have Lector and Frosch, respectively.
  • Fruits Basket:
    • Not only can Kyo turn into a cat when hugged by a girl, but he even attracts cats to him, like a pied piper of cute. He's just chilling in class, minding his own business, when BAM! a dozen cats are suddenly draped all over him.
    • Kisa turns into an adorable tiger cub. When Tohru first meets Kisa in her tiger form, she mistakes Kisa for a cat while proclaiming how cute she is.
  • Fullmetal Alchemist:
    • Cute kittens seem to be all over omakes. Al taking in a stray is probably part of the reason "Flame vs. Fullmetal" is a fan-favorite in Fullmetal Alchemist (2003) (bear in mind, Al is an animated suit of armor).
      Ed: Come on Al, don't run! Think of the kitten!
      Al: I know, I'm the only one who is! [Cut to the kitty holding on to Al for dear life]
    • In another omake even Scar loves them, then things got weird...
  • In GA: Geijutsuka Art Design Class, a misreading of the word for "sketching" inspires Kisaragi to draw cats in her croquis book and on a pasteboard where a cat who's "looking for a girlfriend" has been drawn; she later finds the same pasteboard with a bunch of kittens on it.
  • Hanamaru Kindergarten: Pa-pa-pa-pa Panda Neko! Hinagiku is also playing with a kitty in the eighth ending.
  • Tama & Shiranui of Hayate the Combat Butler invoke this trope when they show up. Isumi even comments on Shiranui being a cute kitten, before he starts his evil plan.
  • Inuyasha has Kirara the two tailed demon cat. In her 'rest' form, she is an adorable little kitten.
  • Jewelpet has Garnet, Sango, Alex, Tour, Kaiya, Lapis, Diana and Dian. Being a Sanrio franchise, it's to be expected.
  • Neko's cat form in K, especially when she's with Shiro, sitting on his shoulder, and they blink in unison, or she waves her tail at the same time as his hand (throughout the first episode).
  • Piro in Kanon. Despite being allergic to cats, Nayuki loves the little guy.
  • Komaneko the cat from the 2009 Japanese stop-motion series "Komaneko: The Curious Cat".
  • An episode of K-On! has Azusa taking care of a little bitty kitten that actually belongs to Jun. Azusa is uncertain due to her inexperience, but relaxes for a bit after the kitten climbs into her lap and lies down there.
  • No wonder why Lucky Star has a kitty mascot, who turns out to be Kagami Yoshimizu's Author Avatar. The character is sometimes referred to as Nyamo.
  • Lyrical Nanoha:
  • Episode 21 of Maison Ikkoku, in which Godai has to look after a cat called Kyoko.
  • A Man and His Cat: Fukumaru gets jealous when Kanda says that he saw cute kittens on the train to work. Then Kanda says that no cat is cuter than his.
  • Shamisen in The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya series, owned by Kyon's family after participating in the movie the SOS Brigade made. Unusually, it's a male calico. A talking, philosophical male calico.
  • My Bride is a Mermaid has an entire episode revolve around a kitten. Merfolk regard cats as their natural enemies, so when Nagasumi picks up a stray kitten, he finds out he can weaponize it and reduce hardened gangsters to gibbering wrecks. Everybody else at his school is just awed at the cuteness.
  • Mikoto Minagi from My-HiME has two pet cats that follow her around. Mikoto from My-Otome, on the other hand, is a cat. Well, one of the Mikotos is, anyway. The other one is a cat-themed god with the sleeping habits of a cat.
  • While not a kitten, Naruto gets help from an adorable cat named Ishi in completing the first step of the Rasengan.
  • Ridiculously Human Robot Chachamaru in Negima! Magister Negi Magi has an Animal Lover scene when she fed the kittens (she was supposed to be evil at the time). Yes, it was adorable. Then Chachamaru gets her artifact: a Kill Sat with a cute cat motif.
    • Meanwhile, the Alternate Continuity series Negima!? includes a kitty character in the form of Shichimi. While the cat may be annoying at times (although not as annoying as Motsu), Shichimi also has her share of cute moments (especially when said moments involve Nodoka in some way).
  • Even Neon Genesis Evangelion is cuter with kittens, until the manga version of Kaworu murders them with his bare hands.
    • The fourth Rebuild of Evangelion movie contains a scene where Rei is fascinated by a mother cat with kittens in the Fourth Impact survivors' camp.
  • Sakamoto-san from Nichijou. As a Talking Animal (thanks to a scarf invented by the professor), he demands respect and hates being treated as cute, and becomes embarrassed when he finds himself giving into stereotypical endearing cat behavior.
  • In Nyan Koi!, the main character Junpei, has been cursed to understand cats which he has an allergy to. To cure the curse (which will turn him into a cat over time), he has to grant 100 wishes to the cats he meets. Meanwhile, he's surrounded by a growing harem who likes cats.
  • The main characters from the anime and manga series Nyanpire: The Animation.
  • The Prince of Tennis: Ryoma's adorable cat Karupin exists to show that he's not a complete Jerkass. Said cat had a whole episode dedicated to him. It's a mix of funny and heartwarming from the start to the end.
  • A black cat named Amy in the opening of Puella Magi Madoka Magica. Other than a drama CD, she doesn't exist anywhere else. According to the PMMM wiki, Gen Urobuchi admits that he was not aware of any cat and that he was surprised when he saw it at the storyboard of the OP. Amy was never part of the original storyline as she was fabricated by SHAFT for the OP of the Anime to mislead viewers and fans with a Red Herring. However, SHAFT approached Urobuchi for the Drama CD and asked him to include the cat in it, so Urobuchi accepted and she was included in the drama CD. Amy is actually the reason why Madoka was a Magical Girl in the third timeline; her wish to Kyuubey was to save the kitty's life when she was seriously injured.
  • Shampoo from Ranma ½ is cursed to turn into a cute kitten with pale pink fur and violet socks and ears. One of the more adorable transformations, but unfortunately a trigger for Ranma's number one phobia.
  • Sailor Moon stars Luna, Artemis, and in later seasons, their Kitten From The Future Diana.
  • In the twelfth episode of Sgt. Frog, Giroro takes a liking to a white kitten he finds in the rain (the Funimation dub gives her a name — Miss Furbottom). She goes on to become a recurring character.
  • Sketchbook. Sora would love to take one of the strays as her own.
  • Blair in Soul Eater. True to the series form, she actually kicks a lot of ass as a magical kitten!
  • The cat-like fairy mascot from Suite Pretty Cure ♪, Hummy.
  • All five of Super Sonico's cats. There's even an episode that focuses on them!
  • This short anime made in 1947 called "Suteneko Tora-chan" (Abandoned Cat Little Tora) follows a family of anthropomorphic cats who adopts a homeless kitten.
  • Japanese electronics giant Sony owns a franchise called Tama & Friends, which features plenty of cute kitties. For example, an OVA based on the frachise features the title character walking up to his owner (with a close up of his face) and licking him - only to find out the human owner has transformed into a cat. This turns out to be All Just a Dream.
  • Ryo-Ohki from Tenchi Muyo!. Nyaa~. She's technically a cat, but close enough. She combines the cuteness of kittens with the cutness of bunnies, for a massive cuteness overload.
  • Tokyo Mew Mew: When the main heroine Ichigo Momomiya gets excited, the extreme result is turning into an adorable black kitten.
  • A "small black cat" appears, randomly and inexplicably, in each episode of Trigun. Her name is Kuroneko-sama and you will refer to her as such! note 
  • An Ushio and Tora OVA had an animated short called "Tora and the Kitten". It's just as adorable as it sounds.
  • Vampire Game has Duzell, a deadly vampire king reincarnated a century after his defeat to wreak brutal vengeance on his foe. In the form of a kitten. Specifically, an orphaned baby fantasy wildcat adopted by a Rebellious Princess. It’s not exactly the most dignified revenge narrative.
  • Windy Tales has massive amounts of cats. Everywhere. And they can fly.
  • Yu-Gi-Oh! GX: Okay, Pharaoh was pretty amusing at times, but in all its seriousness 5Ds manages to top him.
  • Early in YuYu Hakusho, Kuwabara is being blackmailed by a random thug who is holding his kitten hostage. That's right - the character who looks most like a normal street thug is a kitten lover.
  • Nya from Zatch Bell!. Sadly, this is a filler Mamodo.

    Card Games 

    Comedy 
  • Averted by, of course, George Carlin:
    "You attack a baby, he cries. Attack a puppy, he cowers. Attack a kitten, he fights! One day old and he's lookin' for some shit!"
    • Anyone who has seen the milkbar fights at Tinykittens HQ or any of the other live cat rescue channels can attest to this, including with kittens one hour old.

    Comic Books 

    Eastern European Animation 

    Fan Works 
  • The Adventures of James Vega and Sergeant Whiskers, a Mass Effect story done as a takeoff of a forum meme postulating that Vega likely owns a cat.
  • Ann-Kathrin Kniggendorf is well-known in Galaxy Rangers fandom for her Dark Fic. The main exception to this? A series of vignettes where Gooseman adopts a kitten. (See "Possessor" under "Story Cycles")
  • Sarah Girl 1998's fanfic, "Cat Mario," has Mario wearing the Cat Suit. Once he shows it to Lumpy and SpongeBob, they just about fall in love with its cuteness. Apparently trying to ignore their affection, Mario offers them some Super Bells, which give them Cat Suits of their own, to their joy. When Meowth arrives and sees the characters wearing their Cat Suits, however, he finds them more ridiculous than cute, leaving Mario to decide not to let Lumpy and SpongeBob wear the Cat Suits anymore.
  • One look at a cute kitty in the distance in Gankona, Unnachgiebig, Unità, and Italy rushed toward it at full-speed. Poor Japan nearly died as he was on Italy's back while the latter was speeding. The cuteness of Pookie helped make things better though.
  • Game Theory has Vesta, an adorable eight-week-old kitten. Although after Nanoha makes her a Familiar, she's a Cat Girl or a Panthera Awesome much of the time.
  • Mall Rats sees Lincoln and Leni Loud from The Loud House renting a movie and wanting something cute so Lola would enjoy it. Frank picks out a movie with a cute little kitten called Archie.
  • In Mass Effect: End of Days, an Asari named Phaos gets a kitten as a present, and remarks it should be illegal for an animal to be that adorable.
  • The Nutdealer Expanded Universe: "Unrelated" cements its status as a Breather Episode by focusing on Nathan and Tommy petting stray cats in a park.
  • All Mixed Up!: Oscar's personal anagrammed form is a basket of kittens with orange stripes. He ends up turned into this form by Mariana Mag at the end of Chapter 9 before she even has a chance to land on the platform of the Language Room, showcasing her agility and high speed.
  • Forever And A Mile introduces the younger and more tame versions of spider-cats, known as spider-kittens. They reside in gaps in Precinct 13579's ball pit.

    Films — Animation 
  • The Secret of Kells has Pangur Ban, the white cat of Brother Aidan of Iona.
  • Home (2015) has Pig — a small, chubby cat who's put through some slapstick.
  • Lucky and Zorba has Yoyo, an adorable ginger kitten.
  • The Cat Returns exists solely because of this trope. It's about a girl who's taken to the magical world of cute, talking kitties and then herself begins to transform into a cute, talking kitty.
  • Cat Soup uses kittens as the "cute" half of Grotesque Cute.
  • Edmund from Rock-A-Doodle gets turned into a cat by the evil owl because he finds kittens "more digestable."
    "Jeepers, I'm all furry!"
  • Kung Fu Panda:
    • You really can't blame the Misaimed Fandom for thinking Tai Lung from the first film is awesome — after all, he's incredibly badass and cool and oddly sympathetic — but the real clincher comes when we see Shifu's flashbacks to raising him from a kitten. A rambunctious, big-eyed, fluffy-tailed, eager-to-please, kung-fu-lovin' kitten. The creators themselves admitted that they may have gone a bit too far in trying to avoid a one-note villain.
    • The same applies for Defrosting Ice Queen Tigress. While some found her behavior in the first movie grating, seeing her as a sad young kitten trying to earn the approval of a man incapable of giving it did astounding things for her popularity.
    • Goes even further in the spin-offs, in the Orphanage, the directors and other kids were terrified of her because she was so strong despite all she wanted to do was play and have friends. And it got to the point where every time she asked an innocent question like "Why is the sky blue?" or "Why is soup hot?", the directors would openly ridicule her for "being stupid", alienating herself further from others.
  • In Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, Flint uses LOLCats to distract Sam. It is amazingly effective.

    Films — Live-Action 
  • The Salesman: A cute kitten is a resident at the apartment complex, providing random moments of cuteness. This may be because the mood of the rest of the film is rather bleak.
  • In the French comedy The Closet the hero's quasi-mentor figure owns an adorable kitten. In fact, it was because the main character found the kitten on the terrace of his apartment that he ended up meeting his gay neighbor who helps him.
  • The Adventures of Milo and Otis has this in spades, doubled with Precious Puppies.
  • In universe example: Leo Spitz of Transformers: Revenge of The Fallen started off his conspiracy website by selling kitten calendars. Later, Sam uses them as his Madness Mantra.
  • Horribly, horribly subverted in The Brothers Grimm. The most infamous part in the movie is when a small, adorable white kitten is walking along the floor during an absurd scene where a woman is being threatened with a large, spinning blade. When the torturer sees the animal, he gets startled and (read at your own risk) kicks it in the air, where we see it hit the blade and get chopped up into pieces as its flesh flies everywhere.
    • Crosses the Line Twice: the evil General then takes the kitten's eye that's been splattered to his coat, and eats it like a rare delicacy — a Take That! at French food?
    • Similar horrible, horrible subversion in Pet Sematary Two: at one point the evil, reanimated dog is shown in a kennel at a vet's office, growling at another kennel with three adorable tabby kittens in it. The kittens hiss back. Cut to the next morning, where we see an excited little girl being led into the room by her mom who tells her that she can pick whichever kitten she wants, only to scream in horror at the sight of the dog's busted-open kennel and the kittens' busted-open kennel caked with blood and gray fur.
  • Hellboy's film counterpart likes kittens even more than his comicbook version, keeping entire litters of kittens in his room. In the first film's moment of awesome, he whups a baddie while simultaneously rescuing a basket of itty-bitty kitties.
  • Invoked in the DVD commentary of A Series of Unfortunate Events where Daniel Handler, assuming his Lemony Snicket persona, spends most of the movie trying to convince viewers to watch something else:
    You know what I really like? A basket of kittens. I think everyone watching this film should just go out and buy, or otherwise procure, a basket of kittens.
  • Several kittens appear in Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers. Strangely enough, Michael, who is known to kill dogs, completely ignores the kittens.
  • Jonesy in Alien. Not even the xenomorph can resist thinking the cat is cute.
  • The Spirit establishes that the main character likes cats, and The Octopus the villain pretends like cats and introduces us to a cute kitten, Muffin, "his favorite" who he then proceeds to... melt to death.
  • In Licence to Kill, the Hemingway House where James Bond meets up with M has some kittens wandering about (used for a Mythology Gag — the mysterious figure stroking one of them turns out to be Bond's boss, not a Blofeld-like character with a Right-Hand Cat).
  • When Bruce Lee fights Chuck Norris in the climactic battle in the Colosseum in Way of the Dragon, they are surrounded by adorable baby kittens.
  • Keanu, the feline star of the film of the same name, who is so adorable that a gang war is fought over him. Just look at the film's page image!
  • Thunder the cat from the 2013 French-Belgian film Thunder and the House of Magic.
  • Cats & Dogs The Revenge of Kitty Galore uses this to thoroughly stomp out the last remnants of the first film's Always Chaotic Evil stance on cats that Catherine (the heroic cat agent) haven't already removed — the kittens (Catherine's nieces) are cute and very friendly, being only excited and happy to hang around and play with a dog.
  • Upside-Down Magic: Most of Nory's animal hybrid forms have some part of a kitten, such as the body of a kitten with dragon wings (a Dritten), the head of a kitten on a badger's body and the feet of a kangaroo, and the head of a panda on the body of a penguin with kitten ears.
  • The Winter Guest has two roughcut adolescent boys who smoke, swear and talk crudely about sex, adult life and whether Growing Up Sucks. You know their hearts are good when they immediately take up the abandoned kittens they find and plan to adopt them, thus introducing themselves to mature responsibility. And cuteness.
  • A Kitten For Hitler is a short created by Ken Russell where a little Jewish boy travel to Germany to give Hitler one of these for Christmas hoping it will give him a change of heart. It almost works, until he notices the boy's Swastika shaped birthmark and Star of David necklace. Can you tell that the film was intentionally made to shock and appall?
  • The Electrical Life of Louis Wain: Invoked. Louis and Emily adopt an adorable kitten, and Louis's art based on said cat become incredibly popular. Though the notion of cats as pets had already existed, it became more popular after his art became widespread. In part thanks to Louis, people now see cats as cute housepets rather than as vermin-catchers.
  • French movie titled A Cat's Life (original title: Mon chat et moi, la grande aventure de Rroû) is about a kitten's adventures in the wild and his owner, a little girl named Clémence. Adapted from a novel named Rroû.

    Literature 
  • Cats vs. Robots has Stu and Scout, a pair of kitten siblings that Max brings home after saving them from the river in "This Is War". Obi recruits them to retrieve the Singularity Chip for him.
  • Discworld:
    • You (yes, that's her name), in the novel Wintersmith, even softens Granny Weatherwax. Slightly. Deny it though she may. Nanny Ogg's angelically challenged tomcat Greebo (he's a big softy, really), on the other hand, found an encounter with her somewhat disquieting, to say the least.
    • Greebo himself was apparently once a fluffy kitten. Now, he's an absolute menace feared across the Disc, and with good reason - he's known to have killed two vampires (he ate one) and at least one elf, and terrorises every normal animal in sight. He's seen cornering a full-grown bull and trying to play with it like a mouse, causes bears to climb trees in his presence, and brings in dead wolves the same way other cats bring in mice. The only things that consistently scare him are the Nac Mac Feegle, Legba (Mrs Gogol's decidedly uncanny cockerel), and You.
    • Death, who is normally dispassionate (though kind, in a detached sort of way), has a soft spot for cats and gets really upset when he has to collect a bunch of kittens at once because someone drowned a sack of them in a rain barrel.
      • In The Last Hero, he also had a few things to say about Schrödinger's famous thought experiment.
      • In Reaper Man he is buying chocolates as part of a venture into human courtship, and finds one box decorated with pictures of cute kittens. He asks in menacing tones, "Are they cat-flavoured?"
      • And then there's this exchange from Thief of Time, on a diorama of stuffed kittens.
        Susan: I wonder what happened when the man who did this met my grandfather.
        Lobsang: Would he have met your grandfather?
        Susan: Oh, yes. And my grandfather is rather fond of cats.
  • A Song of Ice and Fire:
    • One of the ways it's made clear that Tommen Baratheon isn't bad is that Tommen is given a trio of kittens, of whom he becomes very fond. This is in contrast to his older brother Joffrey, who was once told that a cat was pregnant with kittens, so he cut them out of her with a knife. And if you think that this series could never be cute, just listen to the names Tommen picks: Ser Pounce, Lady Whiskers and Boots. After four books full of endless grim tidings, betrayals and suffering, this is exactly what the audience needs.
    • It is mentioned that Princess Rhaenys also had a black kitten which she named Balerion after the ginormous historical dragon of that name, who was incidentally also called "the Black Dread". After her death, it is implied that little Bale grew up fending for itself to become a true Fire-and-Blood Targaryen; it is the toughest, meanest old cat currently in the Red Keep, and one well able to give Arya Stark the complete run-around in the maze of secret passageways. Martin has even basically confirmed this
  • In The Belgariad and The Malloreon series by David Eddings, Kal Zakath, the "evil" emperor of Mallorea, is foreshadowed as turning out to be a decent guy at heart by his affection for his striped tabby cat and her kittens. A Running Gag soon develops where 'Zakath is constantly trying to give the kittens away to people, as his cat keeps having so many of them.
  • Warrior Cats. They manage to even make Tigerstar and Scourge look adorable when they're written/drawn as kittens. And of course, fan artists will always fall back on this trope when it comes to drawing chibis.
  • In the The Cat Who... series of books by Lillian Jackson Brown. There is a cast of several Kitties, but the main stars are the Psychic cat Koko, and his partner Yum Yum.
  • In T.S. Elliot's "Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats" and the musical based off of it called Cats, there's a couple dozen, and a subversion: Grizabella, the Glamour Cat, is now quite old and ugly.
  • In Kafka on the Shore, Johnnie Walker murders cats and saws off their heads, cutting out their "cute little hearts" and EATING them.
  • Subverted by Umbridge in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. Just because she likes (moving!) pics of kittens and decorates her office with them, this doesn't mean she's one of the good ones.
  • Garrett, P.I.: In Whispering Nickel Idols, Garrett acquires a bucketful of kittens whose very presence seems to radiate feelings of happiness, contentment, and party-time good cheer. It turns out that they're disguised lesser avatars of a goddess of merriment and the night.
  • H. P. Lovecraft was a Kind Hearted Cat Lover. He only owned one cat in his lifetime, but fed and named every alley-cat he found. His Dreamland story "The Cats of Ulthar" explains the chilling reason why "In Ulthar, according to an ancient and significant law, no man may kill a cat". The Ulthar cats return in his longest work, The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath, where they respect and aid the hero because he loves little black kittens. HPL also wrote an essay on why cats are better than dogs. (Just don't ask what his cat's name is...)
  • In The Witch of Blackbird Pond, Hannah's cure for sad children is blueberry cake and a kitten. It never fails.
  • There is an entire subgenre of mystery books called the Cozy Mystery in which the protagonists very often have a pet cat, who may even help in solving the murder.
  • German philosopher Oswald Spengler wrote in The Decline of the West this: "A peacock is indubitably speaking when he spreads his tail, but a kitten playing with a cotton-reel also speaks to us, unconsciously, through the quaint charm of its movements." Even cultural pessimists think everything's cuter with kittens!
  • Letters Back to Ancient China has the narrator/protagonist often talking about his Shiao-shiao and how misses her.
  • Rainbow Magic:
    • Kirsty has a kitten named Pearl, whom she adopted during the second series and named after Pearl the Cloud Fairy.
    • Katie the Kitten Fairy owns a kitten named Shimmer, who can transform into a tiger when needed. Her magic protects all the kittens of the world.
  • Yoko the cat from Rosemary Wells's "Yoko" series from the late 90's. She's a sweet-natured and kindhearted anthropomorphic Japanese kitten who loves sushi and is very friendly with others. She is also one of the main characters in Timothy Goes to School. Another character that shows up in the Yoko series is a Spanish kitten named Juanita.
  • The Tale of Tom Kitten and The Tale of Samuel Whiskers by Beatrix Potter all have cute kittens.
  • The fire kittens from The Bad Unicorn Trilogy, especially Moki. Subverted with Loki, who, despite being a fire kitten as well, is pretty evil.
  • In Black Sunday the first published novel by Thomas Harris (who went on to write more books featuring one Hannibal Lecter) one way the main character is established as being a real monster is that he puts his wife's kitten down the garbage disposal when she makes him angry.
  • Huckle and his sister Sally from the Busytown series by Richard Scarry are cute kittens.
  • KeeKee the main protagonist from the book series "KeeKee's Big Adventures" which has her travel around the world.
  • My New Kitten: The white kitten seen in the story does the typical cute things you would see.
  • In Big Little Kitty by Jan Biggers, Karen Kay (who is four and a little bit more) is a farm girl with a beautiful orange Christmas kitten called Muffin, who in springtime jumps onto a train to see the outside world. She explores happily in the city, while Karen waits and prays. Months pass, until early winter brings Muffin back to Karen's farm — along with her own kittens.note 
  • Findus the cat from Swedish children's book series Pettson and Findus (Pettson och Findus in Swedish) is a friendly brown and white kitten who's able to talk to his owner Findus. He later gains green clothing and a green hat and is frequently seen walking on two legs and sometimes on all fours.
  • Stick Dog: In "Stick Dog Chases A Pizza", Stripes becomes distracted by the sight of a pair of paws inside the passenger seat of a delivery truck, which compels her to save the creature inside. Then they see that the paws belong to a kitten, which Stripes immediately becomes enamoured with. She decides she wants to make the kitten a part of their group, and wants to take it out of the truck. Then it's revealed that the kitten was actually adopted by a truck driver, and was excited to see him coming back. Stripes is disappointed to have to say goodbye.
  • The Polish book series Kicia Kocia (Kitty Kotty) is all about the misadventures of a cute white anthropomorphic kitten.
  • The Saga of Tuck: Tuck was pretty much the only one in his family not to be smitten by Cheddar Underfoot, mainly because cats are yet one more thing he's allergic to. Unfortunately for him, given just what was being done to the kitten when Brian saved its life in the first place, there wasn't any way that the cat was going to go.
  • Whateley Universe: in the Timeless stories, James has a pet kitten even though you're not supposed to bring pets to Superhero School Whateley Academy. It's so cute that even Eldritch Abomination Carmilla finds it adorable.
    Carmilla: "No hurting the cute kitty!"

    Live-Action TV 
  • Comedians Hale & Pace can't resist playing with this trope. Enter Hale with some really, REALLY cute kitten on his shoulder. Cue to Pace revealing a big microwave...How will THAT end? After much talk and zig-zagging, they finally open the microwave to reveal an already microwaved cat. Plastic, of course. (Note: This gave them instant infamy to the point that even the Other Wiki mentions the sketch.)
  • German TV station hr3 used to play segments of this video during programme breaks. Probably the only case in history where you were annoyed at the break ending.
  • Mimsie, the adorable kitten in the MTM Enterprises Vanity Plate. And if the Tommy Westphall Snow Globe didn't piss off the audience in the final episode of St. Elsewhere, the end credits certainly did. Ironically, the poor kitty really did pass away the same year.
  • Even Keith Olbermann is not immune. The "sanity break" at the middle of his show often had one or more adorable kitten videos. Keith would occasionally interrupt himself to squee "Ooo, a kitty!" Unfortunately, he's allergic to cats. (He does have two adorable Maltese dogs, though. They're hypoallergenic.) To this day, he features adoptable kitties and puppies on his Twitter feed.
  • In The Big Bang Theory, the normally aloof Sheldon Cooper turns to the comfort of cats when distressed. And of course his lullaby in times of extreme distress, for which he usually conscripts any nearby female friend to play the role of Momma/Mee-Maw:
    Soft kitty, warm kitty, little ball of fur;
    Happy kitty, sleepy kitty, purr, purr, purr....
This song, whose real title is "Warm Kitty," was written by schoolteacher Edith Newlin in 1937. It was published by Willis, a company that produced song books for children. It also appears in the 1940s edition of Childcraft. The producers of Big Bang Theory had permission from Willis to use the song, but not from Newlin's heirs, who filed a lawsuit.
  • Brooklyn Nine-Nine: In "Terry's Kitties", we find out that Terry's old bullies back at the Six-Five send him a kitten every year to remind him of his screwup twenty years ago. (It Makes Sense in Context, but the short version is: Terry thought he'd cracked his first case, when it turned out he was wrong, he accused a cat of being an accomplice in desperation.) Terry understandably doesn't find it cute, and keeps insulting the kittens, but Jake adores them.
    Jake: (whispering to the kittens) Don't listen to him. You're a part of something much bigger than yourselves. (blows kisses)
  • Buffy the Vampire Slayer:
    • Willow and Tara decide to get themselves a kitten. Not as a familiar, but just so they can make it do cute things like playing with string.
      Willow: I keep thinking, okay, that's the cutest thing ever, and then she does something cuter and completely resets the whole scale.
    • Miss Kitty, incidentally, disappears after only a few appearances. We're never told exactly what happened to her; all we know is that a crossbow was somehow involved.
    • Spike takes Buffy out for a night of gambling with his demon buddies. In a Visual Pun the 'kitty' is filled with actual kittens ("They're delicious!") being used for currency. Eventually Buffy gets annoyed and upends the kitty, letting them escape.
  • The Chaser's War On Everything: The Hamster Wheel's "Australian Politics, as told through YouTube videos of cats" segments play on this.
  • The Closer provides a possibly deliberate example in introducing Joel, Brenda's new kitten, given that the case the episode revolves around is particularly draining emotionally.
  • The Colbert Report:
    • On March 5, 2009, Stephen Colbert discussed the imploding U.S. economy with CNBC analyst Jim Cramer while videos of kittens and puppies played in the background. Well, I sure feel better about the economy!
    • Also Black Comedy in the form of Colbert challenging a guest to debate him on the subject of throwing kittens in a wood chipper.
    • In the 21-February-2012 episode, he challenged a fake anti-Colbert TV ad's claim that he doesn't like kittens by holding a kitten in each hand. "I love these two little kittens," he said, "And I will continue to do so until the moment they become cats."
  • One infamous moment on Countdown had Jimmy Carr trying to distract the panel (from, appropriately enough, 8 Out of 10 Cats) with two baskets of kittens. This failed miserably... because the kittens promptly made a break for it, leaving him in the unenviable role of trying to keep them in line.
  • The Daily Show:
    • The healthcare debate had the great toss-up between healthcare and a video of kittens playing in an empty tissue box.
      Jon Stewart: Healthcare is today's hot-button issue, but... how did the kitten get in the box?
    • Stewart tried using pictures of cute kittens as a form of Brain Bleach on the segment about cover-ups of child molestation in the Catholic Church. They didn't take.
    • Not even Professor Butterscotch can keep John from losing it over the bank bailouts.
  • Doc Martin: Even the All Devouring Black Hole Loan Sharks love cute kittens, they keep one in their van.
  • Doctor Who: Not even the Doctor is immune to the power of kittens, as "Gridlock" shows.
  • House: Death Cat. How can something so cute be an omen of your doom? Based on a True Story of a cat in a nursing home that predicted the deaths of residents. See article about Oscar.
  • Extremely subverted in Hyperspace, where anyone who is sentenced to their equivalent of rehab gets put in a room where all they see is kittens, and a voice saying stuff like, "Look at the kitten. The kitten obeys authority. The kitten is happy. Be like the happy kitten. Obey authority and be like the kitten." Everyone who goes in comes out brainwashed, although it does appear to wear off, otherwise the entire show would be full of people wandering around singing silently.
  • Invoked in Jane the Virgin, where the narrator shows the audience footage of cute cats when confronted with heavy subject material on a few occasions.
  • This is the point of the Kitten Bowl, Hallmark Channel's equivalent of the Puppy Bowl. It's cute kittens playing around in an American football stadium play-area. There is also the spinoff Meow Madness, which is essentially the same thing but with basketball.
  • Late Night: In the episode before the 2018 Midterm elections, Amber Ruffin performed a song in her signature cheerful style with an adorable kitten named Liberty, telling the audience to vote or else the cat will meet a grisly demise.
  • The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson always ends with the feature "What did we learn on the show tonight, Craig?", which is introduced with an animated kitten.
  • In the Discovery Channel documentary Mega Predators, a kitten is shown when the narrator is introducing the felid relative Barbourofelis, interacting and jumping up on a skull of it. It doesn't really serve a purpose beyonf Rule of Cute.
  • In the "Charlie" episode of The Mighty Boosh, Naboo advises Howard to look at a picture of kittens in a barrel to soothe himself whenever he feels himself getting too angry. The kittens in a barrel reappear during the end credits of the episode, apparently entirely for the viewer's benefit.
  • In Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers season three, P.C. — short for Park Cat — who was actually Kat under Rita's spell to spy on the Rangers.
  • Mystery Science Theater 3000: Crow had a tendency to exclaim "Kitties!" with delight whenever a kitten showed up in a movie...or any kind of cat...or, well, pretty much any animal at all, especially if it happened to be deadly.
  • Operation Kitten Calendar on VH1 was an extreme example of this trope. It's basically a spot-on parody of The Apprentice except people are competing to make the best kitten calendar, not work for Donald Trump.
  • Odd Squad:
    • "Not OK Computer" has the "virus cat" that Olympia unintentionally infects her computer with, which manifests as a cat meowing rhythmically and dancing, and rapidly multiplying. Olympia originally opened it because she thought it was a file photo of a kitten sneezing.
    • In "Odd Squad in the Shadows", while the Van Computer drives the Mobile Unit van to Mr. Sides' restaurant, Opal, Orla and Oswald spend time looking through the many pictures of kittens in the workbooks that the latter has made and printed, and react accordingly.
  • Animal Planet uses footage of kittens at play as the "half-time show" for its annual Puppy Bowl.
  • Red Dwarf starts when Lister doesn't want to give up on his cat.
    • In an alternate universe, Kochanski discovered Lister's kitten when he smuggled it on board, and its Kitten Eyes convinced her not to disintegrate it.
  • In an episode of Scrubs, after the guest star psychiatrist told JD about "Takotsubo cardiomyopathy" (broken heart syndrome), where the heart muscle weakens due to emotional stress, JD wonders how he's supposed to treat emotions. Cue an Imagine Spot where he dumps a box of kittens over a patient having a heart attack ("Get me a box of kittens! Stat!") and then lists the possible side-effects of kittens. Namely, allergies, tiny scratches, and erectile dysfunction. Just to make you go "Awwww!", here's a link.
  • Data's cat, Spot, in Star Trek: The Next Generation. Possible subversion swinging back towards a straight play when Barclay's Protomorphosis Syndrome causes her to de-evolve into an iguana and then have a litter of perfectly normal kittens.
  • The Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien puts puppies and this trope together and gives us Puppies Dressed As Cats! (Note: link is from Hulu and may not work in all regions. Sorry.)
  • There's a show on Animal Planet called Too Cute! Kittens that looks at litters of various cat breeds from birth to a few months old.
  • An episode of Top Gear (UK) has Jeremy discussing the finer points of twin turbocharged engines, but before he launches into his explanation, he remarks that some people in the audience tend to find such explanations boring, "so here's some soft little kittens for you to look at." The screen splits halfway between Clarkson and a mound of cuddly little kittens.
  • VR Troopers had one episode where Ryan Steel and J.B Reese rescue a kitten from a tree. A very cute kitten.
  • Earlier on in their run, X-Play sometimes censored scenes of horribly gory, mangling violence with poorly cropped photos of kittens. In one instance when the censored violence escalated even further, said kitten's eyes bulged out with a startled yowl.

    Music 

    Podcasts 
  • In the Cool Kids Table Harry Potter-themed game Hogwarts: The New Class, Josh adopts a stray kitten in Diagon Alley that he names Geno. It ends up inhabiting his robes most of the time.

    Print Media 

    Tabletop Games 
  • Swords and Scorcery Creature Collection - Moon cats. Magical kitties that appear after moonrise. Those who encounter them get good luck afterwards. Although sought by mages believing them to hold access to powerful magical energy, there are no known instances of them being captured. The rare times a moon cat has been caught, it vanished by sunrise.
  • In Warhammer 40,000, The World Eaters, despite being blood knights in the service of Khorne, are quite fond of khittens.

    Video Games 
  • 7th Dragon III: Code VFD has you get involved making a cat cafe at one point, the completion of which requires you to go into the Tokyo Underground and rescue some cats. Offering cat food to the cafe lets you rest there, restoring all parties' LF and MN and giving everyone some SP. For the rest of the game, you can occasionally find stray cats to recruit for the cafe.
  • Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia: There are cats hiding in some areas. Upon picking a cat up, it will go back to the village. Normally you can't do anything with them (aside from hitting them to make them freak out), but if you have a particular glyph, you can transform into a Cat Girl and talk to them to get some hints. Also, the cats are all named after various ingredients (like Soybean, Flour and Tofu), which makes them all the more cuter. Holding the stylus on the screen while one of the cats is present will cause a toy mouse to appear, allowing you to tease the cats with it and make them jump after it.
  • cat planet of course!
  • Cat Quest: As one could expect, almost its entire cast consists in Cute Kittens.
  • Chrono Trigger:
    • The main character has a cat, and he can win more kitties at the fair (as well as a supply of food!). Later on, we learn Magus used to have a cat named Alfador... and if you have Magus in your active party and go where the cat is, he'll follow his owner around the area!
    • When you fight Ozzie as part of Magus' sidequest, you hit a switch and fall down a pit. After heading back, everyone prepares for battle, then stops and they all watch as a cat randomly wanders in and presses the switch that kills Ozzie, then leaves.
  • Cookie Clicker: Kitten Helpers, Workers, Engineers, and Overseers are all upgrades you can purchase. Their effectiveness increases as you accumulate more milknote . Notable for being among the few things you can do that doesn't make the world a significantly worse place.
  • Dragon Age:
    • Subverted in Dragon Age: Origins "The Stone Prisoner" DLC. Kitties aren't nearly as cute when possessed by demons.
    • Played straight in Awakening. You can give Anders a cute little kitten that he will immediately gush over, naming it "Ser Pounce-a-lot". Anders' love of cats has a tragically hilarious backstory: the only fond memories he had of his time in the Circle Tower were the times he played with a cat that lived in the Tower named Mr. Wiggums. Sadly, Mr. Wiggums somehow became possessed by a Rage Demon and had to be put down — but not before Mr. Wiggums killed three Templars by himself. Also, sadly Anders had to give up Ser Pounce-A-Lot after he nearly gotten him killed during an expedition to the Deep Roads (though he still has a deep love for cats).
    • In Dragon Age: Origins Leliana and Sten have a conversation about Leliana catching the 'fierce Qunari warrior' playing with a kitten. Sten of course justifies it as 'training'. (As in, giving 'warrior training' to the cat. No one believes it for an instant.)
  • Dragon Quest V:
    • Talk to a cat while Madchen is in the party, and Party Chat with her afterward. Nine times out of ten, she'll be delighted.
    • Saber looked an absolutely adorable golden-and-red furball as a cub. People are shocked that Sabrecats can even be tamed.
  • Dwarf Fortress: Dwarves are susceptible to this trope, often adopting the fort's ludicrous supply of cats. This can be very bad for your framerate. The main developer, Toady One, has his own feline companion, Scamps, and the update log often includes lines such as "Scamps fell asleep on my shoulder like a very tired parrot today." Awwwwwwww...
  • Eiyuden Chronicle Hundred Heroes: The Kickstarter campaign has used the abundance of cats as a marketing point, and a golden one is available as backer-exclusive DLC. There was also a reward for premium backers to have their own cats appear in the game, but that sold out within just the first hour or so.
  • Epic Battle Fantasy: Cats are a frequent appearance, owing to its creator, Matt Roszak, being a big fan of them:
  • The Evil Within: "Save Cat" in the DLC mission The Assignment. When you save the game, a black cat with a red ribbon round its neck appears for Kidman to stroke.
  • Exoptable Money: The player can buy a cat that he is she can send out to collect money, with visible hearts pouring out of the kitten each time it comes back. Don't get too attached to it, as Madame Sinclair takes notice and skins it so you can make more money off its fur.
  • Fragile Dreams: Farewell Ruins of the Moon relies heavily on this. Not only can you feed and play with stray cats, but there are three mandatory quests that involve Seto following or befriending a cat. Part of Ren's motif is her strong friendship with the cats. Cats are arguably the one thing in the game that is happy, put there to cheer the player up.
  • The FreeSpace 2 Game Mod Blue Planet has a bit where the "Meditation Widget" in Noemi's computer displays an adorable animated kitten picture, after the mission where the GTVA attacks Earth.
  • Genshin Impact: Diona is a playable Catfolk who is of the small girl model, and thus comes across as a kitten and has the Tsundere attitude one expects from a cat. She works at Mondstadt's Cat's Tail Tavern, where patrons come to drink while in a bar full of cats; said patrons usually start off thinking Diona is just wearing something to fit the gimmick, but are surprised to find out she is indeed catfolk.
  • Ghost Trick: Sissel turns out to have been a stray kitten during the fateful day ten years before the game's present in Temsik Park. During the prime timeline, he grew up to be a Cool Cat as the Big Bad's quite literal Morality Pet, with Yomiel even naming him after his fiancee who killed herself to be Together in Death with him. And during the altered timeline created during the game's climax, he stayed a kitten as the Temsik Meteorite fragment was now lodged in his body instead of Yomiel's body.
  • Guild Wars 2: A number of heart areas have kittens about, notably at the Snow Leopard shrine in the norn starting area. You can progress these areas by killing enemies, helping the priests... or playing with the kittens.
  • Hidden City has Snowy, a fluffy orange cat with big eyes who somehow wanders into the City, prompting his human family to come looking for him. The game certainly milks his cute charms by featuring him as a bonus avatar in various events, and in the 2021 Halloween event, he is featured in a mini-game which the player can play every 12 hours in exchange for artifact assemblers and other rewards. The Detective describes him as "the City's favourite cat".
  • In Hundred Days, Satoshi has a pet cat named Baric at his bar. Emma squees and pets Baric the first time she visits the bar.
  • Jikkyou Oshaberi Parodius has Mike and Ran, flying cats that shoot balls of yarn. Mike's "force field" power is hiding under various furniture, and Ran's shield is a paper bag.
  • League of Legends: The 144th champion is Yuumi the Magical Cat, who is exactly what her title describes her as. While she speaks and has an arsenal of supporting magic as she rides around on a flying Spell Book, she otherwise possesses every cute cat stereotype in the books, making her one of the most utterly adorable members of the cast.
  • The Legend of Zelda:
    • The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess:
      • There are quite a few cats in the game, who always come up and greet Link (be he human or wolf) with a 'Mew!'. You can even cuddle them! In the Hidden Village you can even play a game where you have go talk to them all, and one of the responses you can get if you talk to cat which you've already talked to is "We're already friends, meow!". Awww. Telma's cat is a very plot important kitty.
      • There's also the minigame late in the game where you explore the Hidden Village as a wolf in order to find and talk to 20 cats, all of whom want to be friends!
    • The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword: Remlits look cute and innocent, but only during the day. At night...
  • Mega Man V for Game Boy introduced players to Tango, a cute, green robotic cat that meowed endearingly when summoned — and then sprouted spikes and rolled menacingly into enemies! Mushroom Kingdom Fusion brought him back as one of Roll's weapons.
  • In Miitopia, you Mii can be cute kittens, as it is a Class that focuses on dishing out damage with Wolverine Claws and restore MP to teammates by cuddling them.
  • Minecraft has kittens made of blocks and they are still adorable. They are also one of the game's only defenses against the kamikaze creepers which won't go within 16 metres of one.
  • Mitsumete Knight: Laury Callwell gets a few scenes where she finds three cute kittens abandoned, adopts them, and later lose them, leading to the protagonist helping her to search for them. The latter scene also draw to this trope the tough as nails Gene Petromolla and Sam Burston, revealing them as adorable Kindhearted Cat Lovers.
  • Monster Hunter: Your character can interact with the simply adorable Felyne, a race of cat people. Starting with Monster Hunter Freedom Unite, keeping one as a partner has beneficial effects such as decreasing damage taken, enhancing the benefits of food consumed, reducing field tool breakage, affecting the size of your bombs, improve cooking results, negating the intimidation effects of some monsters, and much more. But watch out for the Melynx; behind their cuddly appearance lies master thieves and pickpockets. In Monster Hunter Portable 3rd, two Felynes can accompany you on hunts as Palicoes, helping you fight monsters and gather items. Monster Hunter Generations lets you play as a Felyne hunter.
  • Mortal Kombat: While Kintaro would normally be classified as Panthera Awesome, if you manage to pull off a Babality on him in Mortal Kombat 9, you wind up turning him into a cute kitten version of himself, complete with kittenish mewling and purring and him drinking from a saucer of milk.
  • Neko Atsume: Kitty Collector, as its title implies, has you collecting kittens. More specifically, you use cat food and toys such as balls and scratching posts to attract cats to your yard. However, like real-life cats, the cats in this game are a bit shy and will only come to your yard while the game app is closed.
  • The Nintendo 3DS Nintendogs games are named "Nintendogs + Cats". They add kittens to the roster, though the main focus still goes to the puppies. The kittens aren't terribly active, can't learn tricks, and are hard to gain money from but at least they're cute.
  • No More Heroes:
    • First game:
      • Jeane the cat, the closest thing to family our homicidal hero Travis has in Santa Destroy. The player can interact and play with her by selecting the "Jeane" option in Travis' living room. There is absolutely nothing gained by doing this. Try to stop yourself doing it every time you're in the room.
      • One of the jobs in the first game has Travis wondering around picking up cute runaway cats.
    • No More Heroes 2: Desperate Struggle: Jeane the cat returns in this game, much chubbier. A major sidequest is to bring her back down to brainshattering cuteness, which also nets a nice extra.
    • No More Heroes III: Jeane gave birth to several adorable kittens prior to the events of the game, and Travis is asked by her to retrieve them all.
  • In No Umbrellas Allowed, Eggie visits your shop to show you her pet cat Guylian, who looks at you with adorable, big green eyes. She also tells you to give Guylian a warm smile whenever you see the latter after work, and doing so will eventually have her dropping by your shop to rest. Your customers fawn over how cute she is and give you donations or ask for simple item recommendations, to HUE's jealousy.
  • Ōkami also provides lots and lots of cats to feed in the game's strangely endearing "Animal Feeding" mini-quests. The game went as far as to reinstate the Cat as a Chinese Zodiac constellation, and this Brush God gets along quite well with Amaterasu despite the latter being a canine.
  • Persona:
    • There are plenty of stray cats to feed and befriend in Persona 3. One of Elizabeth's Requests is to feed one in particular. When you do feed it, it comes back looking larger and healthier.
    • Persona 4 has them too, including one you can spend time playing with to increase a social stat.
    • Persona 5 has Morgana, a Badass Adorable anthropomorphic cat (or cat-like creature, it's unclear) who tags along with the protagonists in their quest to help those who abuse their power reform.
  • Phantasy Star: The musk cats are cute kittens that talk! In the first game, one is even a playable character!
  • Pokémon:
    • There are several kitties in the series, many of them are sweet and loyal to the trainers, though getting into the evolutions may take too long for some. Meowth, Glameow, Purrloin, Espurr and especially Skitty are the proper kitten Mons (though, in Purrloin's case, it uses its natural cuteness to its advantage in order to get away with stealing things and to lower the guard of its opponents).
    • Pokémon Sun and Moon introduces a cat named Litten as the fire starter. Its fur is oily and highly flammable so it can attack with flaming hairballs.
    • The ninth generation starter is Sprigatito, a Grass-type kitten. Its Violet Pokedex entry states that it has a sweet scent that mesmerizes those around it. The scent grows stronger when its under the sun.
  • In Potion Permit, Zeke's pet black cat Kipps is a furry bundle of joy to everyone in Moonbury, ironic since she's supposedly believed to be a harbinger of misfortune.
  • The entire premise of Purr Pals, a Nintendogs clone for the DS and Wii.
  • The Puyo Puyo series has a pair of cute twin Siamese cats named Cait Sith.
  • Quilts & Cats of Calico is a cozy puzzle board game where you sew quilts to attract adorable cats. Some of them roam the board and can be petted, although you can make them go to sleep on one side.
  • RuneScape: During one quest, certain gruesome scenes (such as a brain transplant) are censored with animations of kittens performing adorable actions such as playing with yarn or wearing pirate outfits.
  • Shadow of Destiny: Doing an extra side quest can result in the library being filled with cute cats. You just go back into the past and give the little girl there a kitten. Back to the future, and bam. The place is filled with its descendants.
  • The Sims:
    • In MySims, the cat statue ground flair adds 3% to a building's cuteness.
    • In The Sims 3, a Sim who uses the "Awwww" interaction on a kitten will receive the +10 moodlet "Kittens!" for one Sim hour. A cat that had just given birth to a litter of kittens will give herself and her family the +80 moodlet "New Kittens" for one Sim day. All the same things work with Precious Puppies, too.
  • Something Else: Cat Beach has Luigi collecting 75 kittens for a cat before he allows Luigi to move onto the next level. The cat even does a cute smile at Luigi when Luigi completes this task.
  • Stray (2022) marketed itself on being able to play as an adorable orange moggie wandering through a cyberpunk-style world, complete with the ability to meow, jump, and solve puzzles by knocking stuff off ledges.
  • Subverted with Sukeban Shachou Rena for Wii, which, despite being based around a premise of cat love, ended up being the worst-selling Wii game at 100 copies sold.
  • Super Mario Bros.:
  • The Talos Principle: There's one on the cover art, and you can free one in level B7. If you do, it changes the "free will" ending slightly, with you character picking up and holding a kitten at the ending.
  • TinkerQuarry: Although he resembles an adult cat, Whiskers has a cheerful personality, and is quite the Nice Guy, invoking this.
  • Tokimeki Memorial 2: The resident Kindhearted Cat Lovers, Miyuki Kotobuki and Kaori Yae, have positively adorable scenes revolving around cats: you can see in Childhood Mode a young Miyuki with her kitten Mii-chan in the front pocket of her dungarees, playing with her; and Kaori has a post-She's Back scene where she finds and happily plays with a kitten. In addition, Kaori has a beautiful Image Song named "Tsukiyo no Koneko" ("Moonlight Kitten").
  • Tomodachi Life has the Rent-A-Cat Coupon level-up gift, which allows the Mii possessing it to play with a kitten, whether by themselves or with their friends.
  • Touhou Project: Chen is sometimes depicted in fanart as having cat subordinates. And her animal form, as part of her nekomata shtick, is a two-tailed cat. She canonically tries to have cat subordinates. They don't listen to her and only hang around because she feeds them.
  • True Love Junai Monogatari: In under certain circumstances the Player Character might find one during a rainy day. If he does, he can keep it hidden in his apartment or not. She's actually a Cat Girl... sort-of.
  • WarioWare: Smooth Moves has disco dancing kitties in Jimmy T's stage.
  • World of Warcraft: Even Kel'Thuzad has a cat. And he gets angry if it's killed (however, rumors about doing so making him harder to kill or altering the Random Drops have been proven false).
    • On the other hand, an undead questgiver has nothing better to do with her kitty than using it as a guinea pig for experiments with demonic substances.
    • With pet battles, now there are many different cats to collect as vanity pets, including Kel'Thuzad's cat, Mr. Bigglesworth, now a reward if you collect certain pets that drop from older raids. Unlike most cats in the game, he's classified as undead and has ice attacks.
  • You can easily buy kitten 'companions' (pets) in World of Warcraft, provided you have enough gold.
  • Xenoblade Chronicles series: Nia, Mio and Milton are all cute, young Cat Folk characters that show some kitten-like behaviors. Mio is even called a "kitten" by one of the antagonists.
  • Yo-kai Watch: Jibanyan is the series mascot and is a cute, talking cat.

    Web Animation 

    Webcomics 

    Web Original 
  • "Every time you masturbate, God kills a kitten!"
  • The Hey! Answerman column on Anime News Network has a "Flake of the Week" section where Answerman responds to a stupid e-mail sent to him with a cute baby animal picture. This used to be of kittens only, but now is more varied.
  • Probably one of the reasons LOLCats is so popular. We haz our own bible nao.
  • Subverted by the fan encyclopedic wiki of Warhammer and Warhammer 40,000, Lexicanum — the mentions of the species of cats existing in Warhammer 40,000 in its article is promptly followed up with the mentions of a pet cat of an astropath, who was apparently killed by the Exterminatus of the planet it was on. Grimdark.
  • Several pictures on Cute Overload are this. To say nothing of kitten-only websites such as The Daily Kitten, The Daily Kitten, Kittenwar, and Itty Bitty Kitty Committee.
  • SCP Foundation:
    • The pufferkittens, classified as Euclid owing to their ability to generate enough d'awww to disrupt normal staff activities.
    • Josie the Half-Cat is a cat without her back half. Other than that, she is a normal kitty, and she is free to roam around the facility.
    • Subverted by SCP-2559-J which is a gigantic oncoming mass of kittens who crushed a researcher and her assistants when they tried to open a portal to an alternate Nazi universe, but instead ripped open another dimension known as the "Plane of Infinite Kittens" which is apparently where all kittens come from. The mass of kittens, or kitten pile as it's commonly called, are proven to be invulnerable to conventional weapons and can exist without harm from extreme temperatures and pressures.
    • Also subverted by SCP-247, whose codename is (rather aptly) "A Harmless Kitten." It looks like an adorable orange kitten with black stripes and exudes a psychic effect that makes humans want to pet it. Actually, it is a fully grown tiger that can make itself look like a kitten so it can lure humans in and eat them.
  • Ume: Neko Moe Assassin is a series of videos of a little kitten doing what he does best, which is... well, being cute. Being very very cute.
  • On /b/, every Saturday is "Caturday" and there will be at least one thread involving pictures of cats. In fact, cats serve as /b/'s Morality Pets. They absolutely hate those who abuse kittens, as seen by their efforts to bring Kenny Glenn and Cheyenne Cherry, who did just that For the Evulz, to justice.
  • Here are another forty cats that think they are hats.
  • Cute Boys With Cats and Cute Girls With Cats.
  • There's even Punx With Kittens!
  • Pusheen the Cat is a pastel-colored series of Iyashikei webcomics, web videos and other paraphernalia about the life of titular chubby Pusheen and her family and Ridiculously Cute Critter friends.
  • "Foster Dad John" takes in cats that are about to have their litters and raises them and their kittens in front of a live-streaming webcam for all the world to see, before adopting them out after they are old enough to be neutered.
  • In Canada, the Langley Animal Protection Society runs a similar livestream known simply as TinyKittens.com. You will never get anything done again.
  • The LAL Cat Archive may have been the oldest known online repository of cat pictures, being active in 1995.

    Web Videos 

    Western Animation 
  • Abby Hatcher: Mo and Bo are cat-like Fuzzlies. There's also Melvin's pet cat Elvin.
  • Adventure Time runs with this trope in the episode "Box Prince", about a kingdom of kittens living in cardboard boxes.
  • The Amazing World of Gumball: The titular character can be cute when he wants to be. "The Origins" shows that when he was age four, he was absolutely adorable.
  • Archer: The episode "El Secuestro" has Archer finding out that Cheryl, the ISIS secretary, is secretly a heiress with a pet ocelot... and the notably Jerkass secret agent is instantly smitten with the exotic cat. "Oh my God, you guys! Look at his little spots! And his tufted ears!"
  • Battle Kitty: The titular character is both a badass and a cute kitty.
  • Blue's Clues: Orange Kitten and Periwinkle are of the Talking Animal variety.
  • Chip 'n Dale: Rescue Rangers has Spunky ("Catteries Not Included") and Boots ("Gorilla My Dreams").
  • Classic Disney Shorts: This has been featured in "More Kittens", "Three Orphan Kittens", "Lend a Paw", and several others. In "Three Orphan Kittens", the very cute kittens manage to wreck a kitchen in a very cute way. In "Lend a Paw", Pluto rescues a cute kitten from drowning in a stream.
  • Clifford's Puppy Days: Flo and Zo.
  • Daniel Tiger's Neighborhood:
    • Katerina Kittycat, Henrietta Pussycat's daughter. Yes, she's really that sweet.
    • Daniel Tiger since he's a cute and friendly young tiger.
  • Dan Vs.: Mr. Mumbles. Her cuteness is the reason Dan won't get mad at her.
  • Garfield and Friends (and its TV successors): Capitalizing on the comic strips, Nermal declaring himself as the "world's cutest kitten" is often taken to absurd extremes, frustrating Garfield to no end.
  • Gargoyles: Elisa's cat Cagney.
  • The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy:
    • Inverted in the episode "Anger Mismanagement". The counselor asks Grim, Mandy, and Skarr to imagine their happy place. Grim's is a cemetery, Skarr's is beating a man erecting a giant Skarr statue, (Mandy's only shows white noise). The counselor then asks them to think of "fuzzy cute kittens". Grim imagines a pet cemetery and Skarr has the kitten raising his statue instead.
    • Billy's pink cat, Milkshakes.
  • Looney Tunes:
    • In one short, Sylvester is an alley cat who gets out of the cold when Elmer takes him in — then finds his position in jeopardy when an alley kitten gets taken in too. "I can't keep you both... hahaha, baby kittens are so cute!"
    • Sylvester himself is actually portrayed as this in Baby Looney Tunes.
    • Chuck Jones did a very effective series of cartoons where an adorable kitten brings out the protective, loving side of a big tough bulldog.
  • My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic: In the episode "May the Best Pet Win", one of the pets involved is an adorable little "putty tat". She makes her glorious return in "Read it and Weep" as part of a group of large predators trying to maul the hero of the Show Within a Show.
  • Pip Ahoy! has Alba, who looks, sounds and behaves the part.
  • Pound Puppies: Spoons and Teensy in the episode "Hello Kitten".
  • The Powerpuff Girls (1998):
    • In the episode "Catastrophe", the Powerpuff Girls have to find one of the kittens for a giant monster in order to help him leave Townsville alone.
    • There was also "Sweet 'n' Sour", where a group of cute animals, including a cat, started robbing Townsville, using their cuteness. They were so cute that the townspeople hated the girls for trying to stop them.
  • Ruby Gloom: Doom Kitty.
  • The Ruff & Reddy Show: Ruff is the brains side of Hanna-Barbera's do-gooding duo.
  • Sagwa, the Chinese Siamese Cat has Sagwa and her siblings.
  • Sheriff Callie's Wild West: The title character.
  • Star Trek: Prodigy makes the absolute maximum emotional hay out of establishing that Gwyn Would Not Hurt A Child and the Diviner and Drednok would by making the child in question a tiny Caitian, sold into slavery in the mines of Tars Lamora.
  • Strawberry Shortcake has a pink kitten named Custard.
  • Super Robot Monkey Team Hyper Force Go: Subverted where the team wipes an invading time-traveling insectoid species from existence, causing an alternate species of "space kittens" that transform into vicious monsters to take their place in the timeline.
  • Teen Titans:
    • In a first-season episode, a botched practical joke leaves Starfire angry at Beast Boy — who tries to cheer her up by turning into a kitten. It doesn't work the first time, but the second...
    • There are metric tons of fanart where BB is in kitten form — and being stroked, petted, or otherwise admired by Raven or Terra. Try to guess the obvious Double Entendre.
  • ThunderCats (2011): Young Catfolk Wilykat and Kit are cute Cheerful Children, but also experienced Artful Dodgers who very deliberately invoke this trope when searching for marks to pickpocket. When they try to convince The Hero Lion-O to let them tag along with his team of Thundercats, they Cat Smile, Faux Paw and employ kittenish mewling to play on their sympathies.
  • The Tick: When the Tick was trying to masquerade as a villain to track down another villain, he was asked to prove it by, well, eating a kitten. Naturally, he beat all the bad guys and saved the kitten, instead.
  • Tiny Toon Adventures: Furrball is portrayed as both this trope and the prime example of The Woobie.
  • Tom and Jerry:
    • Averted in the cartoon "Triplet Trouble" when Mammy Two Shoes adopted three kittens who turned out to be complete brats that terrorized Tom and later went after Jerry. It was one of the few times Tom and Jerry teamed up against a greater foe.
    • "The Unshrinkable Jerry Mouse" has another interesting variation: Jerry protecting a new kitten from the jealous rage of Tom. In other words, a mouse is protecting a kitten from a cat, never mind that kittens eventually turn into cats.
  • There are several Van Beuren Studios cartoons that featured cute kittens as the protagonists, a trio of which were minor recurring characters in their Rainbow Parade shorts, including the kits in "Rough on Rats", "Merry Kittens", "Rag Dog" and "Scottie Finds A Home". Felix the Cat also counts in his three shorts produced by the studio.
  • Wander over Yonder: Little Bits is this, as well as both Cats Are Mean and Cute Is Evil since she uses her cuteness to hypnotize victims by appearing to be innocent, when in fact she's an evil bounty hunter.
  • Buurpoes the kitten from the Dutch children's series Woezel & Pip is a very cute kitten. She's close friends with the titural puppy characters, and mostly purrs out her sentences and words.
  • Xiaolin Showdown: The cat wearing Catwoman wannabe Katnappe uses genetically altered super-kittens as weapons against the Xiaolin.

    Real Life 
  • When the (extremely popular) Sheffield branch of Virgin Megastore finally closed, they left a sign in the window reading "Thank you and goodbye. We love you all. P.S. HMV kills kittens for profit."
  • There's a Japanese train station which never got any service or tourism — so Tama, a cat, was made station master. The station's now raking in the tourism money, which, according to Stephen Colbert, goes to "repairing the horrific accidents that result from having a cat as station master." She was so popular that the moment she passed away, the company officials and the cat's fans decided to elevate her as a goddess during her funeral.
  • This is closely related to the idea of killing/eating kittens as a definite sign of evilness, as in this rather elaborate insult hurled at a Canadian politician.
  • Life subverts itself in that even adorable little kittens are proficient killers and learn to hunt as early as three or four weeks of age. It's creepy-cute to see a kitten carrying around a (nearly) dead mouse that looks to be nearly the size of its wee head.
  • Islam in general tends to consider cats as clean and playful animals, and the Prophet Muhammad, a Kindhearted Cat Lover, took care of cats and kittens with respect. Also, as they are ritually clean in addition to being adorable and playful, they are allowed to be kept as pets and enter mosques and homes.
  • Some studies have indicated that having a cat "may" have limited beneficial effects on the health and well-being of people, especially older adults. Also, medical researchers have demonstrated that stroking a purring cat can lower human blood pressure and pulse rate, as well as increase feelings of peace and well-being. That said, pregnant women are advised to not handle cat litter, since it contains germs that, while harmless to adults, can pose a real danger to the fetus.
  • Just search for most popular YouTube videos for "Pets And Animals" and see how many you get featuring cats.
  • Likewise, search for "kitten cam" on YouTube. Tiny Kittens HQ, Kitten Academy, Kitten Cuddle Room, Alley to Attic, The Critter Room, Frank Einstein's... Many are the offspring of feral mamas who are spayed after giving birth and then everybody is put up for adoption. (Partly thanks to environmental experiments at Tiny Kittens HQ, we now know that many adult feral cats can be socialized and adopted like any other.)
  • Taylor Swift has designed several greeting cards featuring kittens. She's on record as saying "I feel like kitten cards make everything better, pretty much." Here. And of course she then went and adopted one (two, now).
  • Cat cafés are cafés featuring a number of cats that can be interacted with by customers. They started in Korea in about 1997, are rather popular in Japan, and have spread to the U.S., Canada and Australia. The cats frequently come from a shelter and can be adopted.
  • In the spring of 2018, filmmaker Paris Zarcilla discovered an unknown cat with four newborn kittens under his bed. She had apparently slipped through his open back door. Overwhelmed with protective emotions, Zarcilla decided he was now a "cat dad" and gave himself completely to their care. The crowning moment was taking the little mother to the vet and discovering that she had no chip, so he was able to keep the whole family.
    This is too much. I'm approaching nirvana. I legitimately suffer from anxiety attacks and depression and my capacity to deal with it recently has been waning. The Cat Gods have smiled upon me with benevolence and turned the monsters under my bed into kittens.
  • Some NYC bodegas keep cats to control rodents, and those cats are popular amongst locals who shop at the stores. For many, seeing a cat in a bodega brightens their day.note  In fact, when someone complained about a bodega cat on yelp, New Yorkers were outraged and quickly rushed to the cats' defense.
  • Managed colonies of feral cats are used in some cities to get rid of rats and vermin naturally. Because the cats are spayed and neutered, they cannot breed out of control.


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Alternative Title(s): Everythings Cuter With Kittens

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Censor Chaplin

When reviewing the South Park movie, Chaplin is used to censor anything that might get the review blocked. <br><br><br><br>At least until the end....

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