bring me your magical cats

December 28, 2016 5:16 PM

What are books, movies, TV shows, or other media that contain time-travelling or dimension-hopping cats? Cats that can talk or perform magic but do not have the referenced abilities need not apply.
posted by bq to Media & Arts (26 answers total)

Best answer: The Cat Returns is the only one I can think of. It's a gorgeous animated movie.
posted by buttonedup at 5:22 PM on December 28, 2016

Best answer: Time Cat: The Remarkable Journeys of Jason and Gareth by Lloyd Alexander. "Jason learns that his cat, Gareth, is able to talk and has the power to travel to nine different points in world history (his "nine lives")."
posted by MonkeyToes at 5:22 PM on December 28, 2016 [4 favorites]

Best answer: The Cheshire Cat, now Unitary Authority of Warrington Cat, from the Thursday Next books, definitely has some "intertextual" abilities.
posted by threetwentytwo at 5:42 PM on December 28, 2016 [1 favorite]

Best answer: Heinlein's The Cat Who Walks Through Walls comes to mind, though he's quite a small element of the novel.
posted by 4th number at 5:48 PM on December 28, 2016

Best answer: Coraline

Obscure but there's a mission in The Witcher 3 called Scenes from a Marrige with a dimension traveling cat and dog. I'm sure you could fine video of the cutscenes.
posted by Crystalinne at 5:50 PM on December 28, 2016

Best answer: Throgmorton in The Lives of Christopher Chant travels from one world to another.
posted by tan_coul at 5:55 PM on December 28, 2016 [4 favorites]

Best answer: The Time-Travelling Cat and the Great Victorian Stink, by Julia Jarmon, "is one in a series of eight books about a boy named Topher who lives in London with his time-traveling pet cat, Ka."
posted by MonkeyToes at 5:56 PM on December 28, 2016

Best answer: The cats of Ulthar in Lovecraft's "Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath" can "jump" to the dream world's Moon.
posted by The otter lady at 5:57 PM on December 28, 2016 [1 favorite]

Are you willing to count "Red Dwarf"'s Cat as a cat? Red Dwarf crew to head back to 1950s as new series explores "big issues"
posted by MonkeyToes at 6:05 PM on December 28, 2016 [2 favorites]

"A film featuring Japan’s iconic robotic feline Doraemon has taken Chinese box offices by storm. It’s been so successful that it’s even led some to credit the movie with helping to speed the thawing of recent Sino-Japanese diplomatic animosities. ...For the uninitiated, Doraemon is a time-travelling, blue robotic cat from the 22nd century, who was dreamt up by the manga writing team Fujiko Fujio in the late 1960s. Doraemon is sent back in time to be a guardian angel to dorky pre-teen schoolboy Nobita Noi."
posted by MonkeyToes at 6:09 PM on December 28, 2016 [1 favorite]

Diane Duane's cat wizards monitor and care for interdimensional gates that they and other wizards hop through. She has two books about them specifically and I think they make appearances in her other Young Wizard books. The books are "The Book of Night With Moon" and "To Visit the Queen." I think she may have indie published the third, "The Big Meow."
posted by PussKillian at 6:19 PM on December 28, 2016

Catlantis
posted by brookeb at 6:46 PM on December 28, 2016

The pilot episode of this TV adaptation of Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency centres around a time-travelling cat.
posted by heatherlogan at 7:01 PM on December 28, 2016 [1 favorite]

Alanna's cat Faithful in Tamora Puerce's Song of the Lioness Quartet is also a constellation who is a companion of the Great Mother Goddess. He also appears several hundred years earlier as Beka Cooper's cat Pounce in a Pierce trilogy; in that one he is more open about being a constellation and having other duties to attend to among the stars.
posted by epj at 7:17 PM on December 28, 2016 [1 favorite]

It's a little complicated to explain but there's Bulgakov's *The Master and the Margarita.*

I'll let Wikipedia try:

Бегемот (meaning "hippopotamus" in Russian) [is] An enormous demonic black cat (said to be as large as a hog) who speaks, walks on two legs, and can even transform to human shape for brief periods. He has a penchant for chess, vodka, pistols, and obnoxious sarcasm. He is evidently the least-respected member of Woland's team — even Margarita boldly takes to slapping Behemoth on the head after one of his many ill-timed jokes, without fear of retribution. In the last chapters it appears that Behemoth is a demon pageboy, the best clown in the world, who paid off his debt by serving Satan in his Moscow journey.
posted by spitbull at 8:48 PM on December 28, 2016 [2 favorites]

Also The Cat in the Hat.
posted by spitbull at 8:51 PM on December 28, 2016 [1 favorite]

IIRC, one of Clan Korval's cats came to Anthora's aid when she was captured by the Department of the Interior. Unfortunately, I don't remember which book that was in.
posted by Bruce H. at 9:52 PM on December 28, 2016

Maybe the travels of the cats in Cat Soup will work for you.
posted by BrunoLatourFanclub at 10:58 PM on December 28, 2016 [1 favorite]

Check out Bee and Puppycat, a surreal, charming animated series. Here is the first episode.
posted by esoterrica at 10:58 PM on December 28, 2016 [1 favorite]

Assignment: Earth from the original Star Trek.
posted by DrAstroZoom at 6:51 AM on December 29, 2016

Different versions of Sabrina the Teenage Witch's cat, Salem, could teleport.
posted by galvanized unicorn at 7:06 AM on December 29, 2016

Fritz Leiber's Spacetime for Springers. It's unclear whether Gummitch can actually teleport or only thinks he can teleport - it's sort of an unreliable-narrator kind of story, but what do you really expect from a story told by a kitten. You should check out this short story, if only because it's fantastic and short, and will only take 15 minutes of your time.
posted by aimedwander at 9:40 AM on December 29, 2016 [1 favorite]

I am going to say that Moggot, a free magic creature bound to a cat body in the Old Kingdom (Abhorsen) series counts. Ish.
posted by Duffington at 3:52 PM on December 29, 2016 [1 favorite]

Early Edition! A cat brings a dude a newspaper from the future and he has to solve its problems. It is a tv show from the nineties.
posted by donut_princess at 4:11 PM on December 29, 2016

As galvanized unicorn mentions, Salem from Sabrina the Teenage Witch applies. He could time travel, as noted in that wiki.
posted by freezer cake at 9:06 AM on December 30, 2016

Not sure if Ghost Cat would count, but it does have the bonus joy of teenage Ellen Page.
posted by dizziest at 6:44 AM on January 2, 2017