The Cat Came Back: Difference between revisions

The trope is named after the song and [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bETCusT5kNM cartoon] ''The Cat Came Back'', where a man desperately tries to get rid of a cat, but no matter what he does to get rid of the thing, the cat comes back "the very next day" (and brings massive misfortune to anyone who tried to take it away).

 

 

If you're dealing with an object of similar tenacity see [[Clingy MacGuffin]]. Compare [[The Thing That Would Not Leave]]. Not to be confused with ''[[The Cat Returns]]''.

== [[Anime]] and [[Manga]] ==

* Early in ''[[Love Hina]]'', Keitaro and Naru both go on a trip to the same place on the same train at the same time in an attempt to get away from each other.

 

== [[Comic Books]] ==

* In the [[Tintin]] comics, Captain Haddock can never escape opera singer Bianca Castafiore. If she doesn't show up in person to plague his life, a Tibetan porter or a Middle Eastern trader will be listening to her singing the Jewel Song on the radio at ear-splitting volume. Cue cursing from Haddock.

* The squid in ''[[De Cape et de Crocs]]''.

 

== [[Film]] ==

* In ''[[Up]]'', after Carl tries to get rid of Dug and Kevin, they each show up exactly where he and Russel were running to. Of course, they are an old man and a kid with a house tied to their backs versus a hyperactive dog and a very fast bird.

** [[Crowning Moment of Funny|WILL YOU JUST LEAVE ME ALONE!]]

** {{spoiler|Of course, this is subverted in the third movie, when they end up saving all of Andy's toys from the incinerator, and Mr. and Mrs. Potato Head repeat this line to them.}}

* Young Buddy does this for a little while to Mr. Incredible at the start of ''The Incredibles.'' A desperate attempt to be named sidekick and an interesting likeness to this trope. {{spoiler|He also sort of does it in appearing to him later as the older, improved supervillian.}}

* Played for horror in ''[[The Grudge]]''; in fact, most of the terror comes when you realize that the curse is inescapable. The final line of the film captures this quite nicely: {{spoiler|"We managed to save the house!"}}

 

== [[Literature]] ==

*** In ''[[Discworld/Going Postal|Going Postal]]'', an employer of an inquiring turn of mind stands in front of a bear trap and calls for his Igor. He hears the bear trap go off, then turns around to see an uninjured Igor holding the sprung trap. Igor tells him this isn't the first time, for him or for any Igor; one of his uncles was employed by a man who liked to stand with his back to a pit of spikes when he made the call. Then one day he forgot it was there. Talk about laugh.

** In ''[[Discworld/Going Postal|Going Postal]]'', [[Lovable Rogue|Moist von Lipwig]] finds that he is being relentlessly and cheerfully pursued by Mr. Pump, his parole officer. Mr. Pump, being a golem, has a definite advantage over Moist in that he [[Implacable Man|never needs to eat, rest, or even breathe]].

* Wednesday at the beginning of ''[[American Gods]]''.

* No matter how much the [[No Name Given|nameless protagonist]] of ''[[Green Eggs and Ham]]'' protests and runs, Sam-I-Am will ''always'' be just around the corner to attempt to get him to try the eponymous dish...

* "The cat that kept coming back" was an important plot point in the [[Jeeves and Wooster (novel)|Jeeves and Wooster]] novel ''Aunts Aren't Gentlemen''.

* In [[O. Henry]]'s "The Ransom of Red Chief", one of the kidnappers, Bill, gets so fed up with the titular kidnapee he tries to send the boy home. As he's reporting this to his partner Sam, the kid has unbeknownst to him snuck up behind him, and Sam gently points this out to Bill, after checking to see if there's any history of heart disease in his family.

 

== [[Live Action TV]] ==

* An episode of ''[[Hancock's Half Hour]]'' has Hancock trying to entertain a group of fellow passengers on a train, and predictably alienating them instead. To avoid meeting them on the return journey he takes the (slower) bus, only to find that they've all had the same idea.

* A ''[[Mr. Show]]'' sketch has two old friends/acquaintances say their heartfelt goodbyes after meeting each other for a goodbye drink... only to keep bumping into each other as they stop off to perform various errands on their way home, to their increasing irritation. {{spoiler|Things get really surreal when one of them expects the other to show up, is surprised when he doesn't, panics and begins to check the sites of their previous accidental encounters in increasing hysteria, only to learn the other one has died at some point during the night.}}

* Decidedly non-comedic example in ''[[The Twilight Zone]]'' episode "The Hitchhiker", in which a young woman is taking a road trip by herself across a couple state lines. Her first day out, she sees a hitchhiker standing by the side of the road, thumb out, and after she passes him ''she keeps seeing him'', state after state and night after night, until finally she panics, goes to a phone booth and calls her mother. Who thinks that she is {{spoiler|a prank caller, because her daughter died in a car crash two weeks ago}}. When the woman gets back in the car, {{spoiler|[[The Grim Reaper|the hitchhiker is in the back seat, staring at her in the rear-view mirror]] }}.

** A variant was done in the ''Twilight Zone'' revival. A woman continually sees a bus driven by a creepy guy no matter where she goes. {{spoiler|Eventually her dog jumps onto the bus, while she yells at the driver to "get out of [her] life!" The driver replies "It's not your life, it's the life you could have had," and we learn that the woman and the dog were both hit by a car at the beginning of the episode. The dog is brought back to life and, had the woman had the courage to board the bus as well, she could have been revived. Instead, she fades away.}}

* "You'll never get rid of the *boom-boom-boom* no matter what you do!"

** This song is ''The Thing'', by Phil Harris (the singer who voiced Baloo and Little John in Disney's ''[[The Jungle Book (Disney film)|The Jungle Book]]'' and ''[[Robin Hood (Disney film)|Robin Hood]]'')

* [[Alexander Rybak]]'s song [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o4sfh2u8cgU "OAH"] has Alexander stalking a girl everywhere, while singing "I love you o-aah". The fact that everyone else than the girl gleefully sings and dances along doesn't help her at all.

 

* In the ''[[Professor Layton]]'' games, Layton {{spoiler|adopts the orphaned Flora after the events of the first game. In all the subsequent games, he attempts to leave her at home rather than bring her along on dangerous investigations -- not that he doesn't want her around, but because he worries about her so much, as is made clear in his journal entries. She sneaks along anyway.}} It's somewhat [[Justified]] by an intense case of separation anxiety and [[Why Did It Have to Be Snakes?|monophobia]].

* In one chapter of the shareware game ''Spandex Force'', there's this creepy bearded guy in a Robin-type getup who keeps following the PC around, claiming that he's called "Wonder Boy" and that he wants to be his/her sidekick.

 

 

== [[Web Original]] ==

{{quote|'Most villains in RPGs possess some form of teleportation. They generally use it to materialize in front of the adventurers when they reach the Obligatory Legendary Relic Room and seize the goodies just before you can. The question "if the bad guy can teleport anywhere at any time, then why doesn't (s)he just zip in, grab the artifact, and leave before the adventurers have even finished the nerve-wracking puzzle on the third floor?" is never answered. '}}

* The short film [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pwRI39BID4E ''Perv: The Cat''], featuring a cat that consistently gets in the way of a couple about to make love, is essentially this trope.

* A [[Doug Walker]] [http://thatguywiththeglasses.com/videolinks/thatguywiththeglasses/sketches/32175-kyle-hebert-is-an-ahole skit] features him making the mistake of asking [[Kyle Hebert]] to demonstrate his narrating technique. The result is Hebert following Doug around for the rest of the day, refusing to ever shut up, and eventually he even climbs into bed with him, at which point Doug smothers him with a pillow.

 

== [[Web Comics]] ==

* Done in [http://girlyyy.com/go/558 this] strip from ''[[Girly]]''.

* You can't get rid of [http://nedroid.com/2009/05/party-cat-full-series/ Party Cat], even when you get rid of Party Cat.

* Igor in ''[[Nodwick]]'' is able to confront the title character a number of times when he's fleeing from the Henchmen's Guild, only to be fast-talked into going back empty-handed.

 

== [[Western Animation]] ==

** This also happened to Ralph Wolf, when he proved unable to evade Sam the Sheepdog. {{spoiler|Like the "Tortoise Beats Hare" example listed above, it turned out that there were multiple Sams.}}

* ''Droopy'' is an undisputed ''master'' of this trope.

** The short ''[[Northwest Hounded Police]]'' is pretty much nothing but this trope.

* The Warner siblings on ''[[Animaniacs]]'' are fond of doing this as well. Apparently, they can even bi-locate (stand in two positions at the same time in the same room).

* Happened in an episode of ''[[The Simpsons]]''—Bart and Lisa escape from Mr Burns through a laundry chute, only to find him waiting for them when they hit the ground. [[Lampshade Hanging|Lampshaded]] when Bart incredulously points out that it's physically impossible for Burns to have arrived first.

** Mr. Burns gets another example when he uses the trapdoor in his office and the victims fall out of the ceiling in the same office, despite this being physically impossible. Burns simply responds exasperatedly "Oh, it's doing that ''thing'' again..."

* A [[Running Gag]] in ''[[Garfield and Friends]]'', where Garfield will often send the annoyingly-cute Nermal off to Abu Dhabi, but he will find his way back into Garfield's house just seconds later.

** Also in the newspaper comics as well.

* The robin in ''[[wikipedia:Krypto the Superdog|Krypto the Superdog]]'', whose desire to be Bat-Hound's partner drives the normally implacable Caped Canine to hide in Krypto's spaceship with the lights out.

* In an episode of ''[[Recess]]'', a kid follows the Recess gang around, causing them bad luck. They do everything they can to lose him, but he always seems to catch up somehow, invariably greeted with sheer disbelief by the troupe. In one of their more extreme plans to get rid of him, Vince boots a ball all the way to China and tells the kid to retrieve it. The gang are momentarily relieved that he's finally gone, until he inexplicably returns from China ''a few seconds later'', complete with a hat and a bowl of Chinese food.

* An episode of ''[[Jimmy Two-Shoes]]'' had Heloise, who just wanted to read her book, being pestered by Jimmy and Beezy, who were having a contest to see who could make the most annoying sound.

* Happens to Rainbow Dash at the start of the ''[[My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic|My Little Pony Friendship Is Magic]]'' episode "Griffon the Brush-Off", where Rainbow tries to avoid Pinkie Pie, only for Pinkie to follow her all across Ponyville.

** In one case, Pinkie is happily bouncing along at a casual pace, as she usually does. In the other, she's wildly chasing Dash and matching her (considerable) speed. ''Both methods are equally effective.''

*** Taken [[Up to Eleven]] (like most everything Pinkie Pie does) when Rainbow Dash hides inside the bell of the town bell-tower. As she's clinging to the dark inside of the bell, [[By the Lights of Their Eyes|the bell's clapper opens its eyes.]] Turns out, Pinkie somehow replaced the bell clapper and then pretended to be it! (How she hangs there despite not having any fingers or hands is never explained.)

* [[The Three Caballeros|The Aracuan Bird]] in many of his appearances, especially if [[Donald Duck]] is trying to get away from him.

* ''[[WITCH (animation)|WITCH]]'' has this with Irma, who is constantly hounded by a boy, Marvin, who has a massive crush on her (which she pretends not to appreciate as time wears on).

 

== [[Real Life]] ==

[[Category:Alice and Bob]]

[[Category:Rule of Funny]]

[[Category:Example as a Thesis]]

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