#i really wish the gen 2 beta meowth baby form was real

[radramblog]

Rating Cat Pokémon

Some (a lot of) time ago, I looked at every Frog-émon that there is and ranked them by evolutionary line to make like a top five list. And as much as I love froggie lads, I’m a cat person at heart, so I kind of wanted to do the same but for kitties for a while now.

Art by AmirAlexander. Yes I linked their Smogon Forums page, I can’t find them anywhere else.

Slight problem: there are so many fucking cat Pokémon. And also, a lot of them are really fucking popular, and I’d frankly have a hard time actually rating them in a list of sorts. And I kind of don’t want to. I might do the same if I ever come back and do a different animal-Pokémon combo list (turtles mayhaps? snakes even? Reptiles are good) but for now I’m just gonna like…go through all the cats. All…27 of them, yeesh.

Before we begin, a quick note on Pokémon I’m not including on the list. Rather than comb through every single ‘mon in the Dex to make this post, I just looked up people’s lists of catmons, and there were some questionable choices. But also blame those lists if I miss anything.

I kept seeing Eeveelutions, but only one of them is really a cat. I honestly considered not including that one on principle, in some vague rebellion against people labelling these clear vulpines as felines but I relented when I checked Bulbapedia really quick.

The Legendary Beasts also came up, and they’re not really any one particular animal. I will admit that Raikou has a lot of sabretooth tiger elements in its design, but there’s so much going on that “cat” doesn’t feel like an appropriate descriptor.

Absol has a lot of influences, some of which are kinda feline, but to be honest it just doesn’t look like a cat at all to me so…

Zangoose is a mongoose and Sneasel is a weasel how is this hard for you people

Anyway, that’s enough preamble let’s get moving. I present to thee:

The kitties

Meowth and Persian

The original, and some would say the best. I’d probably disagree, to be honest, but I also don’t have the same attachment that people who constantly watched the anime growing up would have to Meowth. Like, I definitely watched a bunch of it, especially the movies, but I wasn’t a consistent watcher of the actual show.

With that said, Meowth’s design is undeniably classic. The maneki-neko is a really cool cultural icon (which I saw a lot growing up in Malaysia) and it honestly looks (outside of the coin) like it could just be a drawing of a cat. Persian is substantially less cool in my opinion, seeing as it just kinda looks like a noodle to me in a lot of sprites. It’s a little too smooth, I think. Gigantamax Meowth is similar, but at least in that case it’s clearly a joke (and it is pretty funny)

These two are also just kind of shite Pokémon for actual gameplay, outside of having Pay Day to grind cash. They’ve been thoroughly outclassed by the grind that is power creep. There’s very little reason to ever put on of these on your team, frankly.

Overall- I can’t slight them too hard. Meowth and Persian are the O.G., so you can’t really give them much grief.

 Alolan Meowth and Alolan Persian

I have no similar respect for their Hawaiian counterparts. While a lot of the Alolan forms were neat, a fair few were serious misses, and I think these are an ur-example of them.

Alolan Meowth looks like Meowth if you changed its colour and made it smugger. But like, not the kind of smug asshole cat you can’t help but love, more so the smug asshole cat who’s actually just a bastard idiot. And Alolan Persian…the Garfield memes were funny for a bit, but it just looks so fucking stupid. They made Persian grey, and they made it fat. But it still looks like a noodle, just a grey one. Why this.

Oh, and they still kinda suck complete ass. In summation, I have no love for these rude cats, and wish them the worst in their future endeavours. Except they don’t even learn that move.

 Galarian Meowth and Perrserker

We’re not quite done with Meowth yet, as it turns out! It was the only Pokémon to get both an Alolan and a Galarian form, and I’m still not sure why they did that when many other catmons exist. And when they added a Gigantamax form that Galarian Meowth cannot actually use.

Whereas Alolan Meowth is a smug prick, Galarian Meowth is a feral-looking, stinky bastard. So much so that it got enough metal bullshit in its fur to become an actual Steel type (or however they flavoured it). I honestly would be a lot higher on the thing if I hadn’t seen its backsprite and found out that its spiky body was in fact a weird…beard? What the fuck, man.

Perrserker is alright. It’s a very surprising evolution, from feral cat to fucking Viking, but we’re no strangers to odd pathways in this series. It also has some cool stuff going gameplaywise, what with its signature ability Steely Spirit and slightly more functional statline. I like its design overall, but I kinda don’t like it as a cat, if that makes sense.

And that’s kinda where I land on the pair as a whole. Solid mons, not good as cats. Someone give them a bath, please.

  Mewtwo

When I did frogs, I went in on Greninja for being wildly overrated. Am I going to do the same for Mewtwo?

Nahhhh. I mean don’t get me wrong, it is overrated by a lot of people. The meme of it being the “strongest Pokémon ever” still exists even though it’s been thoroughly overshadowed, though it’s still way too strong for a traditional format at least. And even though I saw the first movie when I was a kid, not only was it not really my favourite (2000 is the GOAT) but Mewtwo wasn’t the insanely rare and hard-to-find Pokémon for me when I started playing the games. That was Deoxys, and eventually Darkrai. So, I’m not attached to the guy as much now.

But like with O.G. Meowth, I’m not coming for Mewtwo’s head at all. It’s fucking Mewtwo, it’s iconic. But also like with Perrserker, I often forget that it’s supposed to be a cat, because that’s really not the idea of its design. It’s a clonemon first and foremost.

Also, I’m pretty sure if I tried to pet him, he’d annihilate every bone in my hand. On the other hand, he might yell at me in that kickass voice while he did…so…maybe worth it……

Mew

The first Mythical, and something that was never intended to be in the games but ended up kickstarting a tradition in the process. Every time this thing shows up in the franchise, to my knowledge, they go out of their way to emphasise how cute it is, and to be fair, it worked.

I mentioned earlier that 2000 was my favourite Pokémon movie, and it definitely was, but for a period I didn’t have access to watching it, and also was a bit older. The movies I watched the most after I actually had my hands on the games were The Rise of Darkrai and Lucario and the Mystery of Mew, and the latter is unironically great. And Mew being fucking kawaii as shit helps a lot.

Mew is also super interesting from a competitive gameplay perspective. In the first four generations, being able to learn basically any move made it broken enough to end up in the Ubers tier, but the massive power creep of Gen 5 has it flickering between OU and UU depending on just which moves the game will let it have. It’s completely unpredictable, which makes it very dangerous.

But more importantly it’s really fucking cute. It’s literally baby. How can you say not to that face?

 Espeon

The One Eeveelution permitted on this list, and only because Bulbapedia suggested its design inspiration as being the Nekomata…which makes sense, yeah. The combination of more feline features and the twin-tailed design kind of seals it.

All of the Eevees are insanely highly rated by fans. The family is so popular that it’s been a starter in all three non-main-series-but-kinda-close-enough games, with Espeon itself being a starter for one of them. Not to mention its appearance in the fifth movie, and all the merch, et cetera.

With that said, Espeon feels like it might be one of the less popular ones? Like, I don’t have solid numbers or anything, this is just a gut thing, but I think most people favour the original three, Sylveon, Umbreon, or Eevee itself. I feel like Espeon and the Gen 4s kinda get left behind a little.

I dunno. It’s not my favourite one. I do like nekomata as a design thing though, even if the only other character I can think of who’s inspired by them is one I don’t like very much. Chen is not a Touhou I like, you heard it here first.

 Skitty and Delcatty

Now see, these were the catmons from when I started playing. Hoenn was the region that I first got to explore, and Skitty was the cat I first faced off against. Not the first one I caught, though, because it was rare as fuck for some reason.

I think these two might be the most precious cats of the bunch. Like, they just look like such sweethearts. Even if some aspects of their design are fucking weird, like with Skitty’s tail, they’re just so utterly adorable that I’m willing to look past them.

What I can’t really look past is how utterly shit they are, though. Their stats are abysmal, and their moves don’t come close to making up for them. They also have a signature ability in Normalize that’s a downside, outside of some very funny competitive gimmicks. Not to mention, they take a Moon Stone to evolve, and in Ruby or Emerald (which I played), you only have access to one of those in the entire game unless you can trade with someone else. And that is not even a little bit worth it.

So basically: I would absolutely let these two curl up in my lap and I would scritch them until they fell asleep. But I wouldn’t put them on my team, ever.

 Shinx, Luxio, and Luxray

Another incredibly popular line of mons. It’s rare for early game Pokémon to get so iconic, because normally they’re derpy rodents and birds or mediocre bugs. Sinnoh somehow knocked it out of the park, though, between the infinitely memetic Bidoof and Kricketune, and the well-adored Luxray and Staraptor lines. Turns out you just have to give them Intimidate, who knew?

Yeah, I used Luxray as a kid. Who the hell didn’t? Electric is a very useful type throughout the game, and Intimidate is an insanely good ability, and it evolves quickly and gets solid moves relatively early. And while it’s definitely not good enough for competitive, and it really should be Dark type, it’s still solid enough to tear through any maingame it can be found in. I shudder to think of how much collective time has been spent waiting for Intimidate animations in Gen 4 alone, though.

Shinx is adorable, no question, fucking great kitty. Luxio, unfortunately, suffers a lot from “middle evolution syndrome”, because a design halfway through a cub and a big cat is pretty hard to make look good. Luxray, obviously, looks sick as hell, and I’m not even going to call it overrated. It’s the first real “big cat” the franchise had, and the sleek, dark design suits the moniker perfectly.

TL; DR, Shinx and Luxray good. And you only have to work with Luxio for like 15 levels, so.

 Glameow and Purugly

I feel a little bad for these two, considering how hard they’ve been overshadowed by their feline counterparts. Aside from being a little iconic in the form of Mars’s violently underlevelled bossfight that literally gives 666 EXP, Glameow has only been catchable in two routes as a version exclusive in Pearl, as a Funfest Mission only in White 2 (I don’t blame you for having to look up what that is), and in one Mirage Spot in ORAS. It has effectively been available in half of a Pokémon game. And nobody ever plays DP if Platinum is an option.

And because its rarity is kind of arbitrary and random, it doesn’t remotely have the stats to make up for the exclusivity. This thing honks, and only has the memetic status that it does because you have to face one super early. Did I mention it evolves at level thirty-fucking-eight, by the way? That’s obscenely late for such a meh Pokémon.

Also, Purugly lives up to its name. It’s a fat, ugly cat. Don’t really like it. I do kind of like Glameow’s design, if only because it looks like an absolute brat, but the whole is much less than the sum of that part.

But hey, BDSP is coming up, maybe it’ll get a buff or something. Maybe.

 Purrloin and Liepard

I have mixed feelings on Generation 5’s early game felines. Despite the games introducing the most new Pokémon ever, they just kept showing up on Team Plasma’s teams, even in B2W2 where the available mon list isn’t restricted as much. And they’re, like, memetically bad.

At the same time, I kinda really like them, both design-wise and gameplaywise? Purrloin has the vibes of Alolan Meowth but like, rather than being a “you absolute asshole” bastard cat it’s more of an “oh, you little rascal” bastard cat, which for reasons I cannot quite explain. And Liepard is just a really sleek-looking panther…leopard…thing. I like its tail. I will, however, never fucking forgive Game Freak for making Purrloin stand on its hind legs in every generation post 5, it looks so much unbelievably worse and accentuates how dorky its anatomy actually is.

As far as gameplay, yeah, they’re meme-bad, but like…I still kinda have a soft spot for them? Liepard has gotten to do some really funny things in VGC due to near-exclusive access to the combination of Prankster and Copycat (the only other thing that gets them is Riolu for some reason, and which is better kinda depends on the rest of your team) to set up Trick Room super quickly. And while it’s kind of unquestionably one of the worst mons in the game, I did bring a Liepard to the Hall of Fame in Black 2 in a Nuzlocke and it was a fucking delight.

The long and short of it is that I’m a Liepard apologist and I recommend trying it out! Maybe wait until the next VGC series though, since Dynamax is coming back then and that’s what you need for Copycat to work the way you want.

 Litleo and Pyroar

Oh yeah…these guys…not going to lie despite Gen 6 having not very many new Pokémon I actually find not super many of them that memorable. And Litleo and Pyroar are often one of the big ones, even though I recall using one for a while in my initial playthrough. And then dropping it for the event Mega Blaziken. That team had like three Megas, but you could only go one at a time, it wasn’t good.

Litleo strikes me as trying too hard. Like, they really wanted you to like this thing- it’s round, it’s cheery, and it has hella toe beans. But I just cannot bring myself to really appreciate it that much. It almost felt a little bearlike to me- I think it’s mostly the ears. And the mohawk looks dumb. Pyroar is an interesting idea, incorporating the real-world gender ratios of actual lion prides into the game, but it’s let down by the fact that the male one is goofy as all hell. The red-and-yellow works for the female one, it’s flowing locks that look like a candle’s trail in the wind, but Pyroar…look when people were shitting on Zamazenta for looking dumb, this is the only thing I could think of. I get what they were going for, but it does not work.

Oh, also they’re complete shite in the actual game etc. etc. Normal/Fire is a completely unique type combination, and it’s kind of a little wasted here. Most early game mons are bad, obviously, but it’s particularly egregious as an early game fire-type when your other options were Fennekin, the aforementioned event Torchic, oh and fucking Talonflame and Charmander. So yeah, nah. Just don’t care for this line, moving on.

 Espurr/Meowstic

(this is the only one I was completely unable to find an official art of with all three, and i couldn’t be bothered stitching an image together, so it’s two now.)

Yeah, Litleo wasn’t the cat that people were fixating on when X and Y came out. Between its adorable, scruffy appearance, and the lore that implies it could basically do some Akira shit if it doesn’t hold itself back, Espurr wound its way instantly into a lot of hearts. Having a major role in Super Mystery Dungeon might have helped if anyone played that game. I sure didn’t until this year. Gates to Infinity really burned a lot of people out, huh.

And Meowstic is also there. That’s kind of rude, the Pokémon is perfectly fine, they’re pretty cute looking. The female variant is fucking sassy as hell, and I like the dynamic they were trying out where the genders had completely different learnsets and abilities suiting totally different roles. It’s a shame that Game Freak utterly overshadowed them both with their own pre-evolution in design and then in function 2 generations later with Indeedee, which does basically the same thing but with the caveat of being really fucking good whereas Meowstic is just sort of mediocre.

And yet they’re still easily the best Generation 6 Cat Pokémon that has two very different looking evolutions and are fought as part of a major character’s team and only appear on one route in a game with a bajillion available mons so they get outshined by everything including other early game mons of the same type particularly Fennekin which statistically 1/3 of people will have. At least they’re super cute? Espurr is so utterly smol.

 Litten, Torracat, and Incineroar

Speaking of Fire-typed starters, we finally got a Cat starter in Gen 7! And yet somehow it wasn’t my favourite from the generation. I’m sorry, Popplio is too precious.

Litten is very good, managing to fill another Cat Niche- in this case, it’s clearly going for that very solitary sort of thing. Also, its face is the alchemical symbol for Sulphur (which is what Brimstone is, for those Binding of Isaac players in the audience), and that’s subtle and cool. Torracat is alright- it’s very middle-evolution-y, and honestly doesn’t really have much unique going for it- it is, however, kind of necessary for the transition the line was going for.

Remember when Sun and Moon were previewing, and people were memeing about gluing Torracat’s feet to the ground, so it didn’t stand up and become another Fire/Fighting-type? And then we got Incineroar, and it is unquestionably a fighter, but it’s a heel wrestler, and therefore the very cool Fire/Dark type. It’s based on a specific Japanese pro wrestler, I believe, and it’s flaring flair and flaming belt work super well for it.

I kind of have mixed feelings about Incineroar, though. On account of its insane moveset, solid stats, and access to Intimidate, it’s by far the best Pokémon in all of competitive Doubles, to the point where even my hipster-ass has used it. But also, the memey set I ran was super fun and that team was easily the best I’ve ever performed in an event. It’s also really entertaining in Smash Bros, where it was made playable in Ultimate, and it gets to really show off its comedic potential, but it’s also not particularly good and yet simultaneously utterly infuriating to play against at lower tiers since people just spam their specials and command grab all the time. Which is terrible in 1v1, but frustrating when there’s another opponent to work around. I do like its design overall, but I’ve also regrettably encountered way too much R34 of it while browsing, and that ruins a lot for me.

So, I’m kinda mixed on Incin. Litten is a baby, though, so there’s that at least.

 Solgaleo

This is another one I wasn’t sure belonged, but it is a lion, so. At the same time, unlike the other lions on the list, it doesn’t have a pre-evolution to fawn over. Well, it does, but Cosmog isn’t a cat, so…

I, uh, have kinda no attachment to Solgaleo emotionally. I played Moon and Ultra Moon, so Nebby has always become Lunala for me. And frankly, design wise, the cloud of space dust evolving into a ghostly lunar bat makes way more sense than it evolving into a metal lion. Solgaleo is a very confusing design, honestly- I’m not sure what is supposed to be going on with its tail, and it also happens to be representative of the sun while also being weak to Fire. Which seems like such a miss.

Additionally, it is another mon completely overshadowed by its peers…but in a very odd way. In Ubers and Restricted VGC, it’s completely outclassed by…itself but fused with Necrozma. And even if you wanted to use it in Restricted VGC, you’re probably better off just running Metagross and a different Uber- while the stats are worse overall, it’s not a huge difference, and Metagross has a very good moveset to boot. They even have the same ability- technically Solgaleo’s is a signature ability with a different name, but they do the exact same thing, so.

Basically- I can’t really rate Solgaleo on cuteness because that isn’t what it’s going for, and I can’t recommend it for gameplay, and I just don’t care about it in general. It is the most bleh.

 Zeraora

Our final kitty is this…thing. The second Mythical on this list, the third Gen 7 mon (Gen 8 only introduced the one kitty and it was covered well earlier), and one of the least rare Shinies ever since everyone with Home got one last year. I think non-shiny Zeraora might literally be rarer than the shiny one.

It’s another Pokémon that barely registers as “cat” for me. It’s weird, aggressive, and bipedal. The design is ridiculously overcomplicated- just look at the difference between this and Mew as far as mythical felines go. It’s not cute, and honestly, it’s not particularly cool. I’m only just seeing its official art now, though- to be honest, the in-game model does it absolutely no justice. It looks better from the side than the front.

Zeraora genuinely looks like a stereotypical fursona or a fakemon. Like…it has pants. Why does it have pants? And yeah, that’s fur, but then is the black just its skin? Look, nothing against the furry community, but I do not understand what the appeal of this Pokémon is. Do furries even like this one? I have no clue.

It’s also fuckbusted. But you can’t use it in VGC because it’s Mythical. I believe the reason Mythicals aren’t allowed is largely due to their power and rarity, but as I said, just about everyone has a Zeraora. One day, I’ll get to add this thing to my Discharge team. One day.

And that’s kind of how the cat list ends. Not with a bang, but with an electrified whimper. Plasma Fists, man. I hope you’ve enjoyed this…over 4,000-word piece, it took much longer than I thought it would! And I hope you can appreciate A. my opinions, and B. that these are my opinions. It’s fine if you like Zeraora or Alolan Persian! I might judge you a little but that’s perfectly okay!

Anyway, next time I do one of these, I might not make it this long. Maybe a less common animal. And also, I might do it sooner than the many months gap between this and the Frogs one. Of the many things I’ve learned doing this blog, its that listing things and giving opinions on them is fun! And also not too hard and not that high-quality content but shhhhhhhhhh