10 Coolest Cats In Live-Action Movies

It’s time to face the truth. Cats have taken over the very fabric of our society and now run the show. They’re in charge of our governments, they control the media, and they continue to let humans believe that we are actually in charge. The reality? We’re simply their employees.

Obviously, cats are bound to capture our attention in movies, as well. The following is a list of the 10 coolest cats ever to have graced the silver screen. Hand and CGI-animated cats will be omitted from this list, as the focus will be specifically on real live felines captured on film.

10 DON CORLEONE’S CAT

Mob boss Vito Corleone seemed to love his pet cat, which may have been a metaphor for his dangerous persona hidden underneath his gentleman’s facade. Nevertheless, the cat was one of the signature accessories that made the character of Corleone.

According to Hollywood legend, Francis Ford Coppola added the cat at the last minute after finding a stray wandering around the Paramount lot. Brando quickly adapted, and his scenes with the cat were done on the fly. It’s also reported that the cat purred so loud that it ruined Brando’s takes, forcing them to do a redub.

9 GENERAL (Cat’s Eye)

This cat is the boss! After narrowly escaping two sticky situations in the 1985 film Cat’s Eye, the feline is adopted by a little girl who falls in love with him. She names him General, and the two become inseparable.

Unbeknownst to the family, a vicious little troll has his sights set on the little girl and orchestrates a series of events meant to frame General for the death of the family parrot. The two battle it out before the troll can steal the little girl’s breath, with our feline hero emerging victorious.

8 BUTCH (The Incredible Shrinking Man)

This amazing 1950s sci-fi classic boasted some of the most believable effects of its time, and they still hold up today. As the titular character Scott continues to shrink in size, he becomes the target of both a hungry tarantula and the family cat Butch.

During a scene where Scott makes his home in a small dollhouse to accommodate his size, Butch mistakes him for prey and tries to kill him. The cat bursts through the dollhouse and drives Scott out, leading to a terrifying game of cat and mouse, errr…man, on the living room carpet, before Scott escapes into the basement.

7 KEANU

Although the plot of Keanu focuses more on the main characters and their involvement with various gangs, the end goal is the same – to rescue this adorable kitten!

Keanu is all kinds of cute, and it’s tripled when he’s finally revealed to be decked out in a hoodie and gold chains to cement his gangsta’ status! Even the toughest of the tough would have a hard time resisting this little fellow.

6 FLOYD (Ghost)

Floyd is one cool cat, due in part to the fact that he can detect the presence of spirits. When the character of Sam dies in the movie 1990 hit Ghost, he learns that Floyd can detect his presence and see him, whereas human beings cannot. Unnerved by Sam’s presence, Floyd never quite feels comfortable around him.

When Sam’s killer returns home to prey on Molly, Sam improvises by staring Floyd right in the face and screaming at him in order to scare him, and subsequently the killer as well.

5 MR. BIGGLESWORTH (Austin Powers)

Dr. Evil’s comedic cat is actually a parody based on the 007 villain Blofeld, though he doesn’t remain as chic as his source material counterpart. Mr. Bigglesworth started out as a fancy Persian before a glitch in cryo freezing technology rendered him hairless.

Ironically, Mr. Bigglesworth may now be more iconic than Blofeld’s cat, making him one of the coolest felines in cinema, even if he doesn’t quite rock the sphynx look as well as he could.

4 CHURCH (Pet Semetary)

Zoinks! This is one cat nobody wants to bump into, especially in the dead of night. This poor critter met an untimely end before he was buried on ancient Indian ground containing vast spiritual powers.

Like all dead things buried in Pet Semetary, they always come back to life wrong. Church is no exception. Thanks to some clever camera angles and lighting, those reflective eyes and a spine-tingling hiss make Church look far more demonic and evil than his real-life counterpart actually is.

3 DÉJÀ VU (The Matrix)

If anything was going to disrupt the technological marvel that is the Matrix, it would obviously be a cat. Neo would first learn about the concept of déjà vu, and how it relates to glitches in the Matrix when he comes across a black cat in the lobby of an old hotel.

It’s the first sign that something was off, and enough to prepare the team to battle a group of Agents who had set a trap in order to capture them. The black cat would also make a return at the end of Matrix Revolutions when the Matrix itself had been reloaded into its sixth incarnation.

2 JONESY (Alien)

Few cats have had as traumatic of a time in space as Ellen Ripley’s cat Jonesy. This fluffy furball was forced to contend with the presence of a terrifying alien creature which proceeded to slaughter the crew one by one.

In the end, only Ripley was left alive. She set the ship’s auto-destruct sequence before seeking out Jonesy so the two could escape and destroy the alien creature. The battle finally ended in the cockpit of an escape shuttle when Ripley dispatched the alien, then went into hyper-sleep. When she was abruptly woken 57 years later, she spared Jonesy another terrifying experience by leaving him at home while she went bug-hunting for a second time.

1 LEO (The MGM Lion)

Yes, Leo deserves top honors. Not only has he appeared in more movies than any of the other cats, but he’s a living icon unto himself. The MGM lion has been played by several cats over the last near-hundred years, including George, Tanner, and Jackie, but the one audiences remember most is Leo, who began his run in 1957.

To date, Leo remains the face of MGM, and his appearance was enhanced in 2012 with CGI elements that put a lot more flash and style into his trademark delivery.

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