5 Best Cat Movies Of All Time, Ranked

There are dozens of movies aimed directly at dog lovers, but in comparison, films made for cat people are few and far between. But as it turns out, cat movies have a far higher batting average than dog movies; the following five films are all critically acclaimed titles, with some even netting major awards. 

More impressively, many beloved movies centered on our feline friends missed out on spots here, with animation ranging from "Oliver and Company" to "A Cat in Paris," cult horror like "Cat People," and adorable, inspirational movies like "A Street Cat Named Bob" all missing the cut. We were worried that we'd have to resort to including "Cats" and the Bill Murray "Garfield," but there are more excellent films in this wide-ranging category than you might have realized.

To determine the ultimate top five, we consulted this Letterboxd list of more than 400 cat movies from user @CuteCatCoco24. We filtered the list based on the average rating and excised any short films or TV specials to determine the five highest rated feature-length entries within that selection. Additionally, we left out movies not explicitly about domestic cats –- we love "The Lion King," but including a film about big cats felt like cheating. We then ranked the five top rated movies based on our personal preferences to answer which is the greatest cat movie ever made.

There was an 11-year gap between the two "Puss in Boots" movies that spun off from the Shrek movies. Before "Puss in Boots: The Last Wish" arrived, many assumed it would be a sequel that was way too late that'd coast on nothing but fan service to previous movies, with nothing to entice new generations. Instead, it easily bettered its 2011 predecessor and rejuvenated its parent franchise after more than a decade lying dormant, largely thanks to a "Spider-Verse" inspired animation style that better captured a storybook fairytale feel.

Like the best classic fairy tales, "Puss in Boots: The Last Wish" embraces a darkness that toes the line of what might be considered too scary for children, with the feline hero (Antonio Banderas) facing up to his own mortality after losing eight of his nine lives. There's plenty of joy to be had –- the opening action set piece offers the best showcase for its new visual sensibility -– and it's easily the most mature entry in a franchise that usually parodies fairy tales via fart gags and quickly dated pop culture references. However, it does become the standard fairy tale quest we expect from the Shrek franchise once Puss's journey for nine more lives starts rolling, never becoming the full breath of air that it appears to be.

The most successful Latvian film in history, as well as the country's first to be both nominated for and win an Oscar (for best animated feature), this silent dystopian tale was a triumph that couldn't have arrived at a better moment. We're living through a time when tech companies are insufferably trying to sell the idea that AI will democratize the filmmaking procress and help anybody become an animator. Here was a movie made via a talented animation team, produced entirety on the easily downloadable program Blender, proving that even if you're lacking the funds, creative people should never rely on generative AI to bring their wildest ideas to life.

It's the rare CG animation to have a charmingly janky, homemade feel. Produced without storyboards, it instead places its animal characters into pre-designed backdrops, manually exploring the visual possibilities from there. Director Gints Zilbalodis was inspired to make the movie after his earlier short "Aqua" explored a cat's fear of the ocean, here going one step further by stranding his unnamed feline protagonist in a wilderness long abandoned by humans, having it navigate an almost biblical flood with a ragtag group of animal sidekicks. 

It's a simple story which manages to feel apocalyptically expansive despite its clear budgetary restraints. More importantly for animal lovers, as much as it places its characters in unimaginable peril as they navigate this climate-ravaged world, it's a surprisingly delightful crowd pleaser at its core.

The most surreal and least seen of the five acclaimed titles on this list, this 1963 Czech film smuggles a scathing political critique of authoritarianism beneath an offbeat family friendly fantasy. Set in a small Czech village, "When the Cat Comes" charts the fallout when a mythical, sunglasses wearing cat that exposes people's true colors arrives with a circus troupe and causes chaos when revealing who is pure of heart and who isn't. 

Director Vojtěch Jasný forgoes a realistic approach, opening with a fourth-wall breaking narrator introducing all the characters, and frequently pausing the story to chart a blossoming romance between two red villagers through the art of interpretive dance. For fans of old-school special effects, the circus performance is also pretty incredible considering the low-budget, using traditional visual trickery to pull off ideas like an invisible man coming to life.

Even among cinephiles, "When the Cat Comes" hasn't built much of a following, but has nevertheless been highly rated by those who discovered it. The simple political allegory about hypocrisy is approached in a consistently inventive fashion, with the overall playfulness stopping it from ever feeling like medicine. It probably will go over the heads of its intended young audience, but for more adventurous film fans (and cat lovers), this is a modern fable as bonkers as it is oddly captivating.

It's estimated that Istanbul is home to approximately 200,000 cats, the vast majority being strays that the pet-loving residents of Türkiye's largest city treat as their communal responsibility to look after. The city streets are lined with makeshift cat homes for them to sleep in, and when an ill feline needs to be taken to the vet, locals will chip in to pay for their treatment. If that doesn't make you want to book a flight there, then director Ceyda Torun's 2016 documentary will, observing the lives of seven cats from a street-level view and speaking to the many people whose lives are enriched by them.

Without ever over-intellectualizing or becoming a history lesson, "Kedi" explores how these strays have shaped the culture of Istanbul since the days of the Ottoman Empire, and the city dwellers' significant emotional growth while caring for them. Torun refuses to anthropomorphize her four-legged protagonists, instead effectively capturing how the cats have made the streets their natural habitat, sauntering around side streets and into people's apartments to explore this unique relationship. It's as much a reminder of why we love cats as it is the best movie the Istanbul tourism board could have ever asked for.

One of the best movies by Studio Ghibli, and the only one directed by the late Yoshifumi Kondō, this cute coming-of-age romance expertly outlines how important our relationships with animals are when developing friendships and even falling in love. 14-year-old Shizuku (Yōko Honna/Brittany Snow) first meets Seiji (Issey Takahashi/David Gallagher) after he teases her for rewriting John Denver's "Country Roads" to make a new song about their suburb in Tokyo's outskirts. 

She quickly forgets this when encountering a stray cat on the train, which she follows to an antiques store she later discovers is run by Seiji's grandfather, where she becomes fascinated with a giant cat statue in the window she nicknames "the Baron." Through this, she not only finds herself becoming friends with Seiji, but begins to follow her own dream of creative writing, penning her own elaborate fantasy tale that's an origin story for the Baron and the cat she encountered on the train. 

Here, the movie expertly balances the two extremes of Ghibli; the heightened supernatural fairytale and the slice-of-life character drama, making for an irresistibly charming movie tailor made for the inner romantic in all of us. Although underrated in the western world, it was popular enough in Japan to get a 2002 spin-off  "The Cat Returns," a more straightforward feline fantasy set in the Baron's kingdom. It's a cute, slight movie, but "Whisper of the Heart" is in another league altogether.