A is for the Aristocats #AtoZChallenge

For this year’s A to Z Challenge, I have chosen the theme of cats as characters. Whether they appear in film, TV, cartoons or literature, these felines may be the star of the show or just a supporting character.

 If you are here looking for my typical Thursday post on a writing or publishing topic, I will go back to my regular schedule in May. Until then, enjoy the A to Z Challenge…

A is for the cats in Disney’s Aristocats. Now my plan was not to list a whole bunch of characters together, but this animated movie from 1970 has so many great cat characters to feature. In fact, all the characters but 3 humans, 2 dogs, 3 geese, a horse and a mouse are cats. And even better, the cats can talk (at least to each other).

The main characters are Duchess and her kittens (Toulouse, Berlioz and Marie) and the streetwise alley cat Thomas O’Malley (full name: Abraham de Lacy Giuseppe Casey Thomas O’Malley). On their adventures, they team up with Scat Cat and his group of cat jazz-playing musicians – Shun Gon (the Chinese cat), Hit Cat (the English cat), Peppo (the Italian cat) and Billy Boss (the Russian cat).

It is a charming story (though recently Disney put a warning on the film for a stereotyping scene involving the Chinese cat). As with many older animated movies, I wouldn’t call the character development stellar, but as a cat lover, this is one of my favorite Disney films. I will leave you with the opening song, sung by French entertainer, Maurice Chevalier (who came out of retirement to record this track).