Purr-fect Casting: Is Orangey the Most Important Movie Cat in Cinema History?
A new retrospective exhibition at New York City's Metrograph cinema is shining a spotlight on the remarkable career of Orangey, the only feline to have ever won the prestigious Patsy award twice. The Picture Animal Top Star of the Year award, presented by the American Humane Association until its discontinuation in 1986, recognised Orangey's outstanding performances in classic films.
The Unparalleled Achievement of a Feline Star
During Oscar season, when human actors campaign vigorously for Academy Awards, it's worth noting that multiple performers have secured multiple Oscars. Emma Stone, a current best actress nominee, has won twice in the past decade alone. However, in the animal acting world, only one cat has achieved the equivalent distinction of winning the top honour twice. That exceptional feline is Orangey, whose career spanned an impressive sixteen years and included roles across various genres.
Breakfast at Tiffany's: Orangey's Most Iconic Role
While many cinemas screen Breakfast at Tiffany's around Valentine's Day, the Metrograph retrospective delves deeper into Orangey's complete filmography. In the Audrey Hepburn classic, Orangey plays the simply named Cat, the pet of Holly Golightly who describes him as "a poor slob without a name." The feline features prominently in the film's emotional climax when Holly releases him into an alley before her planned departure, only for Paul, played by George Peppard, to retrieve him. This moment completes the narrative thread that Cat represents both Holly's wild independence and her potential for domestic stability.
Orangey's performance perfectly captures the feline nature - equally prone to draping himself affectionately over his owner and making energetic leaps around her apartment. This role earned Orangey his second Patsy award, cementing his status as Hollywood's premier feline actor.
Rhubarb: The Role That Started It All
Orangey's first Patsy award came a decade earlier for his starring role in Rhubarb, a 1950s screwball comedy about a cat who inherits ownership of an eccentric rich man's estate, including a Brooklyn baseball team. The premise sounds like a precursor to later animal-starring films, but Rhubarb was created with adult audiences in mind. Despite feeling somewhat padded at ninety-five minutes, Orangey steals numerous scenes with his energetic performance, leaping between furniture items and even perching atop a chandelier at one point. His memorable presence overshadows his agreeable human co-stars.
The Mystery of Multiple Orangeys
Human stars maintain one clear advantage over their animal counterparts: there is only one Audrey Hepburn, while evidence suggests there were between two and forty different cats playing Orangey throughout his credited career. At least two felines portrayed Cat in Breakfast at Tiffany's, and deeper research reveals conflicting reports about how many cats actually contributed to the Orangey persona.
Film-maker Dan Sallitt's research uncovered that Rhubarb's production involved recruiting approximately sixty similar-looking cats, with thirty-six particularly trainable animals selected to perform specific tricks, creating a composite performance. A contemporaneous New York Times article, however, cites only ten cats playing Rhubarb. Director Arthur Lubin described a "principal" cat who bit him, prompting the director to "retaliate with a shrewd kick" when the Humane Association representative wasn't looking - behaviour consistent with Rhubarb's initially disagreeable character.
Genre Versatility and Training Legacy
Watching Orangey's performances across different films supports the theory that Orangey represented a cat type provided by trainer Frank Inn rather than a single specific animal. The Metrograph retrospective showcases this versatility through two Jacques Tourneur-directed films: Stranger on Horseback, where Orangey lounges casually in a lawman's office like a relaxed bodega cat, and The Comedy of Terrors, where he zips around with remarkable energy despite being at least thirteen years old at the time of filming.
The latter film features Orangey alongside horror icons Vincent Price, Basil Rathbone, Boris Karloff, and Peter Lorre - arguably his most distinguished ensemble cast, with due respect to Audrey Hepburn. Tourneur's involvement adds another layer of feline connection, as he previously directed the 1942 classic Cat People.
The Enduring Appeal of Feline Performers
It's more entertaining to imagine Orangey as a singular feline embarking on a sixteen-year acting career rather than multiple cats appearing in random scenes. In this sense, his spiritual successor is the orange-ish cat from Inside Llewyn Davis, also played by several felines and described by director Joel Coen as "a pain in the ass." As Coen observed, dogs typically want to please people, while cats have little such interest - a quality that paradoxically draws greater audience attention.
Watching cats or babies in films creates an uncanny sensation: we're observing beings who cannot act in the traditional sense. For these performers, the scenes are real experiences, whether they involve absurd plots, murderous funeral directors, or fake socialites. Even the most intense human actors are pretending, while Orangey, in all his indeterminate forms, actually lived the movies he appeared in, creating a unique and enduring cinematic legacy that continues to fascinate film enthusiasts and animal lovers alike.
