This is the second time cats are featured as the "hero" in a SK movie (the other is "Sleepwalkers."). Based on that, I was wondering if anyone knew if King is a cat owner and/or a cat lover? The ending of this movie was especially touching.
shareYes, he is. If you read his writing, you'll find cats cast an extremely favorable light every time. This can be quite frustrating for me, as I'm a dog person myself.
L.T.'s Theory of pets is a pretty good example of his sentiment. It's a short story in his collection "Everything's Eventual: 14 Dark Tales" about a man who's wife left him. She owned a dog, and he owned a cat. He drew some pretty nasty comparisons between the wife and the dog, and both were cast in terrible lights. He and the cat, however, come out flawlessly. The same thing happens in Cell. They talk about how the cats will turn ferral to survive, but how all the dogs will starve to death, waiting for their owners to come and feed them. Likewise, in Cujo the dog was the threat.
In most of his writing, protagonist characters will have cats. If dogs appear at all, they're either shown negatively or made fun of.
What about Church in Pet Semetary? That cat was straight up creepy.
"Hey bartender! Jobu needs a refill!"
Creepy, yes. But it was less antagonistic so much as it was used as a plot-device to show the effects of the Semetary. It turned what King had built up as an innocent and beloved creature into a vile demonic creature. It juxtaposes what the cat actually is, that adorable lovable thing, into what it is turned into. So you still have that very pro-feline touch in his writing.
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You gotta read 'the cat from hell' man! lol! That was one evil kitty!
shareReally? Did you read The Stand?
And what about that segment "Cat from Hell" from "Tales from the Darkside: The Movie". Stephen King penned the story and it doesn't offer a favourable view on cats.
share"Cat from Hell" was just creepy and gross
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As much as I love Stephen King, I am also an animal lover. And I wish he would stop abusing animals or negatively referring to them in his books....
Even 20 years later after reading "The Dead Zone", I am still totally upset with the first scene (thanks heavens it wasn't in the movie, LOL).
In any case, he is my favorite writer.
I never knew Stephen loves cats so much! Me too!
The cat in this film is just gorgeous! He looks like a tabby yet I am not sure. Oddly, the cat and Stephen are two of the main reasons I watch the film!
He is an incredible writer!
PCL
About Stepen King and animals in general:
It is true that the title dog in CUJO becomes the threat. (By the way I'm about to reveal spoilers about the book CUJO, those who haven't read the book yet but are thinking of doing so should stop reading now, and that includes if you've seen the film but haven't read the book.) Cujo does kill three people and in a somewhat inderect way cause the death of an innocent little boy. Still, that is because the dog has become rabid. It is a fact that for some reason dogs, no matter how well-behaved they were before, turn vicious and dangerous after contracting rabies, assuming they've never had any tetnis shots. In the book at the end King stresses that Cujo had always tried to be a good dog and never really wanted to hurt anyone, he was never really evil, he just became a threat as a result of the sickness that turned him into a killer.
As for cats, there is the short film "The Cat From Hell" which can be found in the horror anthology flick TALES FROM THE DARK SIDE: THE MOVIE, where a demonic cat terrorizes and ultimately kills a rich man and the professional he's hired to take the supernatural beastie out. However, the rich guy is said to have cruely experimented on and had killed about a hundred cats or so, and the man he's hired to do away with the unstoppable feline is a hitman, the sort of person who'll kill anyone he's been paid to off and feels no guilt because of it. So the cat in that story could perhaps be seen as a sort of justice enforcer, taking out bad people.
another thign about Cujo...
The dog was slightly meant to be a reimaginationing of Frank Dodd in a way...
But not necisarrily is cujo Dodd though...
Its just meant to be a comparision of what happens to Cujo once it becomes rabid...
Here is a little fun fact about Cujo: I read an interview with Stephen King recently and he claims to have been addicted to, I believe, cocaine at the time he was writing Cujo and doesn't remember writing most of it. How crazy is that? And now that he is clean his ideas keep getting more and more twisted. I love it.
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Too often cats are portrayed in movies as evil and spiteful. So, I appreciate any writer who portrays them positively.
Yes, I am the proud owner of three felines.
Of he is a catlover then why did he expose the cat to electricity? That part of the movie is disgusting and the reason I rate this movie 1 of 10.
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Sages, I hope you know the cat wasn't actually shocked. If it was that would mean James Woods' wife (in the film) was as well, but you didn't seem to care about that, did you?
Anyway it was a rig built to blow air upward which would cause the cat to jump, there was no actual electricity involved.
Learn to Swim.
get over it PETA.
shareIf you are an animal lover then you might as well ask him that no harm comes to a human in his books because humasn are animals too you know.
Or, or, i got an idea. how about we dont hold cats above humans. how that sounds?
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Applied Science? All science is applied. Eventually.
Actually Cat From Hell is a superhero of cats. He was picked by cats to be their hitman to off a guy who was butchering cats for profit. So cat from hell is a great example of pro-feline writing that Stephen King does well.
shareYes, he is. If you read his writing, you'll find cats cast an extremely favorable light every time. This can be quite frustrating for me, as I'm a dog person myself.
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Dogs and Dog lovers DESERVE to be shown the way Stephen King showed and shows them.
If you'd see/witness a dog killing a cat... butchering it with unspoken cruelty... (and I have seen this)... you'd have to admit;
that dogs are CRUEL MURDERERS.
Outside of dogs, I cant think of another animal which KILLS 'just for the kill'...
Every single other animal in nature-- except dogs-- kills in order to eat it's 'kill'.
Dogs have killed cats just because they 'can', the (dog) maniacs!
THE ONLY REASON DOG IS MAN'S BEST FRIEND... I so believe...
IS BECAUSE B-O-T-H; MAN AND DOG, ARE CRUEL, EGO-FILLED NARCISSISTIC MURDERERS.
Cat's don't 'bow' down to such murderers, man or dog,
and for that alone, cats have MY full respect and admiration.
Wow. You need help, edmondoster. Seek counseling immediately.
You're the type of person that ends up dying alone, with nobody but cats around to witness it. The weird cat lady, or man, that nobody wants to visit because their house smells of cat urine.
Cats and dogs have more similarities than some people care to admit. And yes, cats DO kill for pleasure, not just for food. Cats toy with their rodent victims as well before killing them, at least dogs don't torture before they kill. I like cats and dogs and have owned both during my life, though I do tend to have a closer bond with my dogs. They are both great in different ways.
"Johnny, you're about to jump out of a perfectly good airplane. How do you feel about that?"
Can`t be sure, but I think in the introduction of PPet Semetary," or somewhere, Stephen King wrote that at one time, he and his family lived near a busy highway where pets were always being run over and there was a place where the pets were buried. Either his children`s beloved cat was hit or he began wondering how he`d be able to break the news to his children if it happened. That`s the origins of the book anyway. It`s been a while since I`ve read the book, but I could swear that I read something like that. Anyone else?
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thurber67,
You're correct. Stephen King's daughter Naomi had a cat named Smucky when she was a child. Smucky was hit by a car and killed, and after King broke the news to his daughter, he later found her angrily stomping around the house, crying, "Let God get his own cat!"
Smucky, of course, was memorialized in the novel "Pet Sematary." He shall be sorely missed; after all, he was obedient.
To the person who gave this movie a 1 because of that one scene:
SK probably wrote this scene to show how crazy the business guy was and also to disturb people. This movie isnt a full out comedy it has to have something scary happen in it.
BTW im also a cat lover.
C.B.
Also, his kid was almost run over by a truck as well. Apparently King just caught him by inches and he kept thinking what if I had missed, and this was the reason he wrote the book. He also said he believed Pet Semetary was the scariest book he had written and was horrified after he had finished it because it was so close to his life.
shareDon't forget that in "The Dark Tower", you have Oy, a favorable character who though is not a dog, is rather dog-like.
shareThat's kind of sick, dude.
Sea urchin ceviche gets very angry when not digested properly.
'Course he is.
He married a Tabby.
Everyone knows cats rule & dogs drool, even Stephen King :) I love both cats & dogs but am partial to cats & it makes me happy knowing that the great Stephen King is a cat lover, too.
sharehaha, nice one.
shareI'm also an animal lover who's partial to cats (and bears - King should have a bear in a novel, preferably a polar bear).
To the poster that finds King's love of cats frustrating: try reading Dean Koontz, he goes psychotically overboard in his love for dogs, they're pretty much saints and angels. At least King's cats are normal cats.
...just sayin'...
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As much as I think Steve is a good guy, I've always gotten the impression that he was not a cat fan. He seems to kill them off an awful lot in his stories.
(BTW, in Sleepwalkers, those dead cats you see hanging around--they're real cats. So, not really a point in favor.)
(BTW, in Sleepwalkers, those dead cats you see hanging around--they're real cats. So, not really a point in favor.)