Crazy Cat Lady/Playing With

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


  • Basic Trope: A character (usually female) who hoards animals, usually cats.
  • Played Straight: No one wants to go near their weird neighbor Alice because she has several cats, but few human friends (and, of course, no significant other.)
  • Exaggerated: Alice has over 50 cats, and hasn't interacted with a human being in over a decade.
  • Justified: Alice is an fun but eccentric women who can get a guy but chases off every boyfriend she's had so she has a lot of cats to replace them because they won't leave her.
  • Inverted: Alice loves all living things especially cute little kittens as a Kindhearted Cat Lover.
  • Subverted:
    • Alice has some cats, but also an active social life with humans.
    • Alternatively: Alice barely even talks to other people when she's out in public, and refers to taking things home to her "darlings"... Which turn out to be dolls.
    • Alice isn't a Crazy Cat Lady (indeed, may not even have a pet), but she is a Christmas Cake, and her family and friends try to "motivate" her to find a man by saying that she'll turn into a CCL if she doesn't find one and settle down soon.
  • Double Subverted: The only humans she interacts with are her relatives, or members of the Feline Appreciation Society.
  • Parodied:
    • Alice doesn't even remember what humans look like, and she herself is a cat-ears-wearing Cloudcuckoolander with no grip on reality whatsoever. The health department or animal-rescue group comes and takes the cats away from Alice.
    • A cat hoards humans.
  • Deconstructed: Alice hoards cats because she feels alienated from other humans. She craves human interaction, but can't break out of her shell, and so she gets more cats. The loneliness builds up into actual craziness. And as she becomes more and more detached from reality, her house and her cats begin to suffer for it.
  • Reconstructed: Alice seeks help for her social anxiety. She brings the cats to the local animal welfare society, or adopts them out to loving homes herself (except maybe one or two). She eventually comes out of her shell and develops an active social life.
  • Zig Zagged: Sometimes Alice interacts with her pets, other times with actual human beings.
  • Averted: Alice does not have any pets, not even a betta fish.
  • Enforced: The writer is a Christmas Cake, and worries that this will be her fate.
  • Lampshaded: "How many cats does Alice have, again?"
  • Defied: Alice doesn't have much of a social life, but refuses to substitute animals for human affection. Instead, she resolves to get out and meet people and do things.
  • Conversed: "Poor Alice. She should really get out and meet people."
  • Discussed: "Cats are no substitute for human affection. And why cats anyway? Everyone knows Cats Are Mean. Can you say, Irony?"
  • Played For Laughs: Alice not only has a lot of cats, but she's a board-certified Cloudcuckoolander.
  • Played For Drama: Alice and the cats are suffering, but Alice is too far gone to realize it.

Go back to Crazy Cat Lady, unless you want to meet my pretties. They don't scratch...

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