Cats in Literature Trivia Quiz

Answer: Black

Published in 1843, the short story called 'The Black Cat' is about an animal lover who becomes an alcoholic. When he mistreats his cat, named Pluto, the animal retaliates by scratching him, so the man blinds the cat in one eye. Not surprisingly, the cat becomes afraid of the man who becomes increasingly angry and violent and eventually hangs Pluto, killing him.

A replacement cat nearly suffers a similar fate but, when his wife tries to prevent this, the man murders her instead. He hides her body behind a wall but manages to put the cat there too and it's the cat's cries that uncover the crime.

The story is a study in misplaced confidence by a murderer and the dangers of overreliance on alcohol as a prop.

Answer: Nanny Ogg

Greebo makes his first appearance in 'Wyrd Sisters', the sixth of the 'Discworld' novels written by Terry Pratchett. It was first published in 1988. The 'sisters' are three witches, Granny Weatherwax, Magrat Garlick and Nanny Ogg, owner of Greebo who is described as the 'most evil cat in the world'. To Nanny Ogg, though, he is a gentle, sweet-natured kitten who wouldn't harm a soul.

Greebo appears in several books, killing off vampires and even becoming human in one of the stories. If you know Terry Pratchett, you will be aware that his stories are full of references to other works and cultural knowledge. Greebo has links to Shakespeare, Schrodinger and even the character of Cat from 'Red Dwarf'.

Answer: Lilian Jackson Braun

Braun wrote a series of twenty-nine novels, all of them having a title beginning 'The Cat Who'. The first was published in 1966 and was titled 'The Cat Who Could Read Backwards' while the final one, from 2007, was 'The Cat Who Had 60 Whiskers'. Braun died in 2011 with a planned book in the works.

All the books involve journalist Jim Quilleran. He isn't a cat owner when the series starts, with Koko, full name Kao K'o-Kung, being introduced in the first novel and Yum Yum in the second. From then on they are regular characters in the stories.

Answer: Pet Sematary

Seeing the name Stephen King should tell you that the cat is not one that you'd like to meet, even if he starts the novel as a normal, loving animal. Church, short for his full name of Winston Churchill, belongs to a family with two young children and is particularly the pet of their daughter. When the cat is killed on a busy road running past their home, the father is persuaded by a neighbour to bury it in a graveyard which belonged to a Native American tribe. The cat is resurrected but with an evil personality. The father doesn't learn from this and when his young son is also killed on the same road, he buries the boy in the same graveyard with dire consequences for the family.

The book was published in 1983 and was filmed in 1989 and 2019. The misspelling of cemetery is deliberate, referring to a sign created by children to mark the area where they had buried their dead pets.

Answer: Mrs Norris

Mrs Norris was extremely unpopular with the students at Hogwarts as she seemed to magically appear when anyone was doing something they shouldn't. She would immediately fetch her owner, Argus Filch, who took great delight in punishing any student he caught misbehaving. His cat was the only creature he had any affection for.

Crookshanks, while looking like a cat, was crossed with a kneazle, a creature which resembled a cat but with longer ears. Other cats and part kneazles in the series include Mr Tibbles and Snowy, owned by Arabella Figg.

Answer: Macbeth

If you know 'Macbeth', you probably aren't surprised to hear that cats are mentioned in one of the scenes involving the witches. The opening scene features the first witch responding to a call from her familiar, a cat named 'Graymalkin', which became 'Grimalkin' by the mid seventeenth century. The second witch refers to 'Paddock', her own familiar who is a toad.

The name 'Graymalkin' actually means 'grey cat' and was often used to mean an elderly female cat.

Answer: Pyewacket

The names may be more familiar to you from the musical 'Cats' which was adapted from the book, but Bombalurina, Growltiger and Macavity was all originally named by Eliot. The book, a collection of poems, was published in 1939 and was based on stories Eliot created for his godchildren - 'Old Possum' refers to the author himself. According to Eliot, cats have three names each so there are plenty to choose from.

Pyewacket is a name which originated in the days of witch hunts, with Matthew Hopkins, England's 'Witchfinder General', mentioning it in 1647 as referring to the familiar of one of the witches he had discovered. The name has been used in books and films, but not by T S Eliot.

Answer: Erin Hunter

The idea for the series came from Victoria Holmes, who came up with the storylines while delegating much of the actual writing to other people. The first book, 'Into the Wild', was published in 2003 with the name of Erin Hunter being created for the author to provide continuity. The writers all work for publisher Harper Collins and Holmes worked for them as an editor until she retired.

The series, which includes various sub-series, is still ongoing in the 2020s with the plots revolving around groups of feral cats. Names include Firestar, Brightheart and Ravenpaw but there are many, many others.

Answer: Tabitha Twitchit

Apart from being the mother of three mischievous kittens, Tabitha Twitchet is depicted as an astute businesswoman (businesscat?) who runs her own successful shop. The illustrations of the shop are based on a real shop in Hawkshead, near where Beatrix Potter lived.

Tabitha appears in 'The Tale of the Pie and the Patty-Pan' (1905), 'The Story of Miss Moppet' (1906), 'The Tale of Tom Kitten' (1907) and 'The Tale of Samuel Whiskers' (1908). She is also mentioned in 'The Tale of Ginger and Pickles' from 1909, held up as an example of how to run a business as Ginger the cat and Pickles the dog fail due to allowing their customers to buy on credit, which eventually means they run out of money to keep their shop open.

Mrs Tiggy-winkle is a hedgehog, Flopsy is a rabbit and Goody Tiptoes is a squirrel.- all of them created by Potter.

Answer: Canada

This heart warming story was written by Sheila Bumford and first published in 1961. Bumford based the three animals in her story on pets she had owned herself while living in Canada - she was Scottish herself.

The plot involves two dogs - a bull terrier named Bodger and a Labrador retriever called Luath - and Tao, the Siamese cat. When their family leaves on an extended trip to England, the three pets are left with a family friend who lives some distance from their home. When he, too, goes away the animals feel abandoned and decide to make their way home to their original family. The narrative describes the dangers and problems they face before eventually reaching their destination, some three hundred miles away, still together.

The book was adapted for the big screen in both 1963 and 1993, each time by Disney.