Feline Friday is my chance to celebrate famous cats across the arts, whether their origins are in gaming, film, anime, literature or anywhere else.

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Katt Monroe

Star Fox 64 (1997)

In an unexpected treat, the Star Fox team has returned to delight Nintendo fans in the form of a new entry on the Switch 2. Well, a “new” entry isn’t entirely accurate, as it is actually a remake of Star Fox 64, effectively recycling the Lylat Wars narrative for a fifth go-round.

Considering how that game was far and away the N64’s finest example of cinematic mayhem, I’m certainly not going to protest by looking a gift horse in the mouth. Or more accurately, a gift cat. Or even more accurately, a gift Katt.

First introduced in the seminal 1997 edition, Katt Monroe has a long history with surly wingman Falco Lombardi, dating back to his days as a gang member. She initially arrives as part of the game’s hard route to assist the Star Fox team on their stealth mission on Zoness. Here, she instantly proves more helpful than Slippy by taking out several of the searchlights, ensuring the team aren’t detected by Venomian forces.

She’s sassy, she’s bright pink, and she flirts with Fox McCloud shamelessly. …It was the 90s, ok?

With the mission accomplished (or at least complete if you were a putz who got spotted by the fuzz), Katt takes her leave, but will return to the action in the following mission by either lending air support on Macbeth or stealing your kills fending off homing missiles in Sector Z.

Much like Fox’s old academy buddy Bill, Katt’s appearance was a nice change of pace to make you feel less isolated in the war against Andross. While she was absent in the next two games, she did have a significant role in the supplementary material, Farewell, Beloved Falco.

Taking place between the events of 64 and Adventures, this manga serves as an explanation as to why Falco peaced out from the team prior to their arrival on Dinosaur Planet. This time, she seeks aid from her feathered friend, enlisting him back into the gang as they investigate the shady dealings of the military officer, Captain Shears.

Falco ultimately decides to stay by her side for the foreseeable future, either because he got a kick out of reliving his renegade life as a gangster, or he’s trying to tap that on the down low.

Katt’s in-game return wouldn’t occur until 2006, with the very complicated DS game, Star Fox Command. On the surface, its gameplay mirrors the cancelled SNES sequel, Star Fox 2, but its narrative plays out more like a furry headcanon.

For her part, Katt was wholly redesigned to look less like a family pet who had been dipped in a coat of paint, and her personality shifted towards a much less sultry tone. In a Nintendo Dream World interview, Command’s producer Takaya Imamura — a long-time series contributor who had been involved in some capacity since the SNES original — attributed Katt’s tonal shift to her portrayal in Farewell, Beloved Falco.

Depending on which route you took, she could potentially end up joining a newly constructed team headed by Falco, or throwing a party for the lads alongside various other female characters because… well gosh, I don’t really want to opine on why the sole ending for the girl power team revolves around them being of servitude.

Yeah, Command’s storyline has some issues, dude.

When the franchise rebooted (again) with Star Fox Zero, a conundrum arose with Katt that highlighted what has perhaps been her biggest weakness to this point. Her characterisation had reverted back to how it had been in 64, complete with that pretty pink pelt and cute pet names for the protagonist like “foxy boy”.

On the one hand, it makes sense to reset her to her roots when you consider that we were taking things back to the starting point once again. Such was true of other characters whose personalities had diverged, like the creepy assassin, Leon Powalski.

On the other hand, however, it undermined the progress she had made from a dated girly trope to a compelling roughneck with a heart of gold. With the canon now in disarray, nobody could be entirely sure what version of Katt we would see when she next blessed our skies — if indeed, she would at all.

Thankfully, our concerns have now been put to rest with the 2026 remake. Sporting a new white colouration with pink highlights as a nice call-back, Katt now feels like the true culmination of her delinquent backstory. She’s a little brash, sure, but she can hold her own.

Katt’s future moving forward is, much like the Star Fox license itself, up in the air for the time being. The 2026 remake has received universal praise, and Fox McCloud’s surprising cameo in the recent Super Mario Galaxy has elevated the franchise’s profile to unprecedented levels.

The next logical step, then, would be to continue down the remake path with Star Fox Adventures, however Nintendo and Velan Studios could instead opt for an entirely new direction, finally unshackling the narrative from its three-decade loop.

While I can’t say with certainty which path they’ll walk down, I feel as though my beloved Star Fox is finally in safe hands after a tumultuous lineage of misfires. And yes, I do enjoy using the AR camera functionality to pretend I’m Katt and meow to my heart’s content.

I assure you it’s perfectly normal behaviour.