

One striking thing about the Cats movie, among several striking things, is its concept of scale. The cats in the movie are small. The furniture is very big. Are cats that much tinier than furniture?*
To begin, we’re dealing with a movie in which human actors portray felines. An animal that usually appears horizontally is being rendered upright here, and that’s tough. Sure, cats can be vertical, but most of the time they don’t go about life that way. I’m sure this presented an issue for the makers of Cats.
But I’m not the only one who noticed the tiny size of the cats in the Cats trailer. Vanity Fair wondered, “Why are the film’s performers… being rendered in motion capture as actual cats, rather than human performers in cat makeup?… Why were they filmed on giant sets filled with giant furniture?” It’s strange.
The problem is this: Humans are larger and taller than cats.
What I want to know for this post is whether cats are as tiny as they appear in Cats in comparison to furniture. I can’t deny my curiosity here. These are the things I like to interrogate as a reporter to give the world real meaning.
The first thing I need is a cat. The second thing is the furniture. Luckily, I have both.
Let’s begin by examining some stills from the trailer.

Here’s a shot of Judi Dench. That chair seems so big, and Judi Dench seems so small. This confusing sense of proportion is among many things about the Cats movie that feels off. (Another is that the cat-humans have breasts, as well as hands instead of paws.)

Here’s Rebel Wilson dancing on top of a kitchen counter while Jason Derulo stares at her. Both of them seem smaller in scale to me than a cat would be in this setting. I was certain that if my cat were in this kitchen, she’d be taking up a lot of space.