‘Cats,’ Reviewed By Actual Cats

Subject matter experts finally share their thoughts on the cinemeowtic disaster

Rae Paoletta
Published in
4 min readJan 4, 2020

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Photo: Rachel Heine

Cats is a beloved musical about a group of street felines who have to choose which of their friends gets to die.

It’s a two-hour-long barrage of the senses and a chilling reminder that none of us, in this Sisyphean effort called life, will ever truly ascend to the so-called heaviside layer. This is, according to Cats, because Dame Judy Dench does not deem us worthy.

Tom Hooper’s nightmare version of the Broadway hit musical has been panned as a “disaster of a movie,” a “confusing litter box of intentions,” and my personal favorite, “ a purr-fectly dreadful hairball of woe.” As someone who recently experienced the Cats movie, I’d like to add that every scene triggered my flight or fight response.

The only thing missing from the Cats discourse so far is the subject matter experts themselves: actual cats.

I chatted with 11 cats to get their perspectives on 2019’s most memorable movie:

Ghosty

El Gouna, Egypt

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Rae Paoletta
Tenderly

content strategist and writer; friend to bodega cats