Pet of SPECTRE chief Ernst Stavro Blofeld throughout the James Bond series. Introduced in From Russia with Love, the animal sits on the lap of Blofeld, whose face we never see. (Anthony Dawson was the actor; Eric Pohlmann provided the voice.) After explaining to Colonel Rosa Klebb (Lotte Lenya) the analogy of the Siamese fighting fish, Blofeld hands one of the dead fish to the cat, who chews it gratefully. The cat returns in Thunderball, once again sitting on the lap of the man whose face we never see. (Eric Pohlmann provided the voice again.)
When Donald Pleasence becomes the first on-screen Blofeld in You Only Live Twice, he had his cat, as did Telly Savalas in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service. In Diamonds Are Forever, since plastic surgery has created multiple Blofelds (all played by Charles Gray), Bond (Sean Connery) attempts to use the cat to identify the real one. He frightens the creature into fleeing toward its master, then kills that Blofeld—only to discover that there are multiple white cats as well. “Right idea,” the real Blofeld says, to which Bond responds, “But wrong pussy.”
After a legal dispute with Thunderball producer Kevin McClory forced Albert R. Broccoli to remove Blofeld from the Eon Productions 007 series, the white cat disappeared as well—only to make one more appearance in For Your Eyes Only to help viewers identify a familiar-looking villain who carefully goes unnamed. After Bond (Roger Moore) dumps the Blofeld lookalike into a smokestack, it fell to McClory and his new producing partner Jack Schwartzman to bring back the white cat in their renegade Bond production Never Say Never Again. In that film, the cat sits on the lap of Max von Sydow, the last actor to portray the head of SPECTRE in the twentieth century. Three decades later, with the legal dispute finally resolved, Christoph Waltz took on the role of Blofeld in Spectre—and acquired the appropriate white cat.
Keep current! Join Our Email List
Keep up to date with our latest and greatest spy movie finds.
"*" indicates required fields