Western Animation / Kid vs. Kat

Millie: I've decided that I wanna call him Mr. Kat.

Coop: Well, don't get too comfortable, Mr. Kat.

Kid vs. Kat is a Canadian animated television series created by Vancouver-based animator Rob Boutillier. It was developed and distributed by Studio B Productions for Jetix Europe (later Disney XD) and YTV.

The feature revolves around a 10-year-old boy named Coop Burtonburger, whose idyllic suburban life is shattered when his little sister Millie adopts a stray Sphinx cat who is in fact an evil alien invader bent on taking over the world. Coop engages in a constant battle with the feline alien (named Mr. Kat by Millie) to foil its schemes of conquest. Being the only person aware of Mr. Kat's true identity (other than his best friend Dennis and love interest Fiona), Coop also tries to expose Millie's pet for what it really is, but in the end Kat ends up destroying the evidence leaving Coop to be deemed a fool.

A series preview was made available on iTunes on February 5, 2009 and the show premiered on YTV on October 25, 2008, and on Jetix Europe on April 4, 2009. The series came to an end on June 4, 2011 after a total of 52 episodes over 2 seasons.

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This show provides examples of:

• The Ace: Subverted. Coop could have easily been the smartest, most popular kid in town if he didn't have Kat to worry about.

• Adults Are Useless: Only three people know Kat is an alien and they're all kids; Coop, Dennis and Fiona. Technically, so do Coop's grandparents, but they choose not to say anything because they might get "put in the old-folk's home." They also travel a lot and visit only on occasions so pretty much it's up to the kids.
• Alien Animals: Kat and the rest of his race happen to look and act like Earth cats. Also done with Mr. Cheeks and his race, sentient talking hamsters who are also enemies of the cat folk.

• Anuscape Plan: In "When Bad Dogs Go Big", Kat, Coop and Dennis get eaten by Growler when the latter is made larger. When the dog begins shrinking, Kat and the kids both go separate ways to escape; notably, Dennis warns Coop not to follow Kat because "[they] definitelly don't want to go that way". Moments later, it's revealed Kat unwittingly went for the back exit when Growler farts him out, leaving Kat absolutely petrified.
• Artistic License – Physics: Parodied in "Turn the Other Cheeks" when Mr. Cheeks tries to throw Kat into a miniature black hole only for the opening to somehow be obstructed by an ordinary lawn chair that slingshots the latter back out, which Cheeks lampshades as "defying all known laws of theoretical physics". To put it simply, the only reason Kat got out of that one was because reality decided to give him a freebie.

• Back to the Early Installment: "Kat To The Future" revolves around Coop using Kat's time machine to go back to the first episode to stop Millie from finding and adopting Kat. He succeeds, but winds up causing a Bad Future where Kat's alien race has enslaved humanity with himself as ruler and Coop's friends, family, and neighbours becoming La Résistance. Coop then has to sneak into his house turned Kat's headquarters to retrieve the time machine to stop himself from causing this future to happen.
• Bad Boss: Kat Kommander won't hesitate to vaporize his minions for anything that displeases him, including not getting a nice enough birthday present. Kat is probably glad that he's several solar systems away.
• Bad Future: Technically an alternate present rather than the future, but in "Cat to the Future", Kat takes over the world after Coop alters the past so that he was never adopted by Millie.
• Balloonacy: "Birthday Bashed" has Coop, Fiona, Phoebe, Harvey, Lorne and Dennis carried off by about 100+ balloons which Phoebe tied around Coop's left wrist.
• Bedtime Brainwashing: In "I'm Okay, You're a Kat", Coop discovers a self-help tape in the House of Swap and uses it to make himself far more cheerful by playing it while he's sleeping. Kat gets annoyed by how Coop's optimism makes it much harder to annoy him and edits the tape to make Coop pessimistic, making him scared of his own shadow and literally cry over spilled milk. Afterwards, Kat uses another self-help tape on Burt to brainwash him into his servant. When Coop finds out, he decides to use a self-help tape to become a tough guy, which turns him into a thug and he almost drops his entire family in a pool of electric eels before he is snapped out of it.

• Bigger on the Inside: Kat's scratching post tower/portable lair. Even has a bottomless pit, for no apparent reason.
• Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: Millie, who is utterly spoiled by her father.
• Bizarre Alien Biology: And how! Acidic saliva, freakish reaction to cold germs, unexplainable weight gain from certain foods... And that's not even getting into what we've seen in the Shorts episodes.

• Brainwashed and Crazy: Kat does this to all the neighborhood cats in one episode. As well as all of Bootsville (except for Coop, Lorn, and Harley) in another.
• Butt-Monkey: Coop and Kat, definitely. Coop generally filling the "butt of every demeaning joke" side of things, and Kat with the "put through hell" plotline.
• Call-Back: "Kat to the Future" has Coop time-travel back to the first episode, where Kat was first adopted by the family.
• Cassandra Truth: No one will ever believe that Coop is not solely responsible for the destruction his feud with Kat causes. No one will ever believe that Kat is an alien until it's too late. Because in both instances, Kat destroys every trace of evidence and Coop is called a laughingstock. He eventually becomes Genre Savvy about being The Cassandra, keeping his efforts to stop Kat private. The only ones who do believe him are Dennis and later on, Fiona.

• Cats Are Mean: Pretty much the series premise. Apparently Kat's homeworld is an Evil Empire. They take over a planet and consume the natural resources. It inevitably ends up becoming a huge mess and at that point, they move on to a new world. When they are called out on this, the basic answer is "well, we're just cats." This is less malicious and more a lack of effort to clean up after themselves.
• Comedic Underwear Exposure: Happens to Coop in one story/flashback in "Suddenly Last Slammer" after Kat's monster truck blows his outfit off, and then the same thing happens to Dennis in another story/flashback in the same episode.
• Convection, Schmonvection: In "Mind Games", Coop gets suspended a few inches above the molten magma inside an active volcano with no ill effects.
• Crapsack World: Parodied. Most of the people are pretty much unsympathetic, because of their really weird psyche. Overall the city seems to be very unfriendly towards each other.
• Crazy Cat Lady: In "Pet Peeved" Kat is found and taken in by one after he runs away.
• Creepy Hairless Animal: The titular Kat is this, which along with his black sclera and white pupils indicate he is no ordinary cat in the pilot episode. His whole race is this too, being a race of advanced cat-like aliens who desire to conquer and enslave Earth. Many characters frequently comment how ugly Kat looks, with one person even somehow mistaking him for an iguana.

• Destroy the Evidence: Every episode usually ends with Kat removing all traces of evidence of being evil, resulting in Coop becoming a laughingstock.
• Devil in Plain Sight: Kat. You'd think someone would have noticed the pet cat was chuckling evilly all the time.
• Disproportionate Retribution - Kat is very, very guilty of this. Especially in the earlier episodes, where he would try to kill Coop for the slightest insult, like splashing him with water, with creating a whole forest of murderous, meat-eating plants to get revenge.
• The Dog Is an Alien: Kat, naturally.

• Friendly Rivalry: Coop and Dennis' fathers are constantly competing to see who is best at everything. Aside from that they don't seem to hate each-other, in fact they seem to love trying to outdo the other.
• Formally-Named Pet: Mr. Kat, Mr. Kitten, Mr. Cheeks
• Four-Fingered Hands: Lampshaded in "Kat to the Future". After Coop abused the time machine Kat created, Dennis points out that time travel can create a bunch of anomalies. At that moment, he notices he has a fifth finger on his left hand. This episode points out a few times they also have 4-toed feet as well.
• Generation Xerox: Coop and Dennis' lives are awfully similar to their fathers' childhoods.
  • Lorne bullies Coop and Lorne's mother used to bully Coop's father, although she was actually masking a childhood crush.
• Groin Attack: Happens to Coop's father in Me-Oh-Me-Oh Meow and to one of Coop's classmates in Bend It Like Burtonburger. And a case of Share the Male Pain in Tickled Pink.

• Hero on Hiatus: Coop went through this in an episode due to the teasing (or lack of acknowledgment) he receives while he saves the town all the time.
• Hero with Bad Publicity: Coop is teased and ridiculed by other kids, as well as sometimes his father, even if he does manage to save everyone from a blatantly unnatural situation (such as shutting off his static electricity science experiment that was sabotaged, only to receive an F).

• Kafka Komedy: No matter how much good faith Coop has, he is always doomed to either fail or tarnish his own reputation.

• Laser-Guided Amnesia:
  • Once Millie, Lorne and Haley learned the truth about Kat, this was inevitable. More interestingly, Fiona also became a victim of this at the same time.
  • Coop suffers from this in one Christmas episode. Then, somehow, Mr. Burtonburger inherits them. It's fixed by the end, though.
• Left Hanging: The series ends on a Downer Ending with Coop's friends having their knowledge of Kat being an alien getting erased. The plan was to continue the show with Coop once again being the only kid who knew Kat's secret.
• Magical Security Cam: In "Night of the Zombie Kat", Lorn and Harley filmed Coop's panic attack, and the video was just an extract from said scene, to the point that even the bush where they were hiding while filming was in the video.
• The Men in Black: One episode has the family being investigated by some really incompetent ones. They end up arresting everyone except Kat for being aliens.
  Dennis: Those knuckleheads!

• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: If Coop hadn't thrown Kat off the spaceship in "Kat Went Back", Kat wouldn't have tried to attack him and the Kat Commander wouldn't have noticed and given Kat his job back.
• Older Than They Look: Old Lady Munson was an old lady back when Burt was a kid and Fiona is her great great great great great grand niece.
• Only Sane Man: The only ones other than Coop who knows of Kat's alien identity are his friend Dennis and his love interest Fiona.
• Own Goal: Coop does this in "Kat To The Future Part 1" after getting disoriented from getting tackled by the other team after showboating too much and kicks the ball into the wrong goal, with everyone in town, including his past self, calling him out on how badly he screwed up. Luckily, he manages to fix this mistake using Kat's time machine when he tells his past self about it.

• Pun-Based Title: A lot of the episode titles are this, such as "Menace the Dennis" and "The Three Aarghs."
• Punctuated! For! Emphasis!: BUR! TON! BUR! GEEEEEEEEEER!
• Quivering Lip: Millie the Spoiled Brat often wobbles her lip before wailing and screaming if she can't get what she wants.
• Repetitive Name: Burt Burtonburger.
• Robotic Reveal: Mr. Kat turns out to be a cyborg when his X-rays are exposed in the episode called "Nip/Duck".
• Rock Beats Laser: More often than not, Coop and Dennis' clever use of common Earth technology or simply whatever is at hand can outmatch Kat's superior alien technology.
• Rushmore Refacement: This is seen to have happened in the future after the kat invasion in "Kat to the Future", with the heads of the presidents having been replaced by those alien kats.
• Sadist Show: No character is likeable (except maybe Dennis), and most of them will likely get hurt at least once.
• The Scapegoat: Whenever something goes wrong, Old Lady Munson will always blame it on Coop, even if it's something not humanly possible.
• Sealed Army in a Can: One episode ("The Curse of Tutankitty") sees Cooper and Dennis fighting to stop Kat from unleashing a legion of his brethren who were sealed inside an interdimensional sarcophagus in Ancient Egypt.
• Second Episode Introduction: Dennis, Lorne, and Harley first appeared in the second episode Night of the Zombie Kat, Phoebe first appeared in the fifth episode Do Not Fort Sake Me, and Fiona first appeared in Season 2 episode 1, Something About Fiona.
• See the Invisible: In "You Kat See Me", Kat creates an invisibility formula which he uses on himself to torture Coop. However, Coop and Fiona are able to spot him by covering him in paint.

• Serious Business: Hot dogs are really, really, really serious business in Bootsville. Spoil a drop of the boiling Weiner Water, and you're banished from the city for life.

• Share the Male Pain: When the head of a robot the Kats sent to destory Millie accidentally lands on its crotch area, it cuts to Coop, Kat and Kat Commander wincing.
• Set Wrong What Was Once Made Right: In the two part episode "Kat To The Future", Coop travels back in time using Kat's time machine to stop Millie from finding and adopting him. He succeeds, but upon returning to the present, Coop finds the human race has been enslaved by Kat's alien race, including himself, his friends, family and neighbours have become La Résistance , and Kat rules the Earth with Coop's house as his HQ. Luckily, Coop manages to restore the timeline to it's mostly original state by stopping himself from causing this future to happen.
• Shout-Out: Lorne and Harley probably remind people of another fat and skinny duo.
  • This exchange between Coop and Dennis, when Kat uses catnip to turn Bootsville into a forest:
    Coop: Sounds like we're in the Amazon.
    Dennis: We should have taken a left turn at Albequerque.
    • Then there's the episode titled "Menace The Dennis".

• Smelly Skunk: In the episode "Happy Campers", Coop and Dennis find footprints that lead to a skunk in the bush that sprays Kat.

• Spoiled Brat: Millie. She screams like a banshee when she doesn't get her way, and her father caves in every time.

• Stock Animal Diet:
  • Kat's weakness for Fishy Frisky Bits.
  • One of Kat's evil plots was turning the entire town's water supply into milk.
• Teens Are Monsters: Todd Kronklin. Played straight AND lampshaded.

  Harley: He's a teenager! They're evil!

• The Talk:
  • When Coop asks his father to teach him how to knit, at first he says that he needs to ask him something that's "kind of embarrassing" and the latter interprets it as this at first.
  • There was also the time in "Beware the Were-Coop" where Coop's father gives him one at the end when he sees Coop in the stuff Kat used to make him look like a werecat.

• Toilet Teleportation: Kat flushes himself down the toilet in search of his latest invention in "Down The Drains".
• Tomboy and Girly Girl: Fiona is a tomboy. Phoebe is a girly girl.
• Transformation Discretion Shot: In the episode "Me Coop, You Kat", when Kat turns Coop into a caveman using the game controller, it transitions to the next day, with him appearing transformed.

• Voices Are Mental: In "Board Kat" when Coop and Kat switch bodies. Millie and Burt notice Coop's voice coming out of Kat, but think it's just Coop using ventriloquism. Dennis notices this too, but he thinks it's just Kat tricking him with Coop's voice.

• Weld the Lock: Kat does this several times to the Kat Kommander's rebellious son in "Rebel with a Claw"; once to seal him in a room to get him out of the way, and later to seal him in his transport module before they launch him back into space.

• You Can't Go Home Again: Kat was trying to do this, originally, and trying desperately to do so during the Christmas special. Naturally, he failed.
• You Have to Believe Me!: Coop, all the time.
• Zombie Apocalypse/Our Zombies Are Different: "Flea Brained" has Kat controlling everyone with robotic fleas in their ears.

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