Starring: Towne
Directed by: Marielle Heller

This review contains an intense Kitty Carnage Warning!

Cat Out of the Bag Alert! This review contains some spoilers for this film!

Synopsis: Author Lee Israel (Melissa McCarthy) struggles after her old Hollywood biographies fall out of favor and turns to a new way of making money; forging personal letters by famous people.

Featured Feline: Lee shares her home with a tuxedo cat named Jersey. Lee often affectionately calls her Jersey Girl.

Lee is often anti-social, having a difficult time relating to other people, but she is devoted to her cat.

One night Lee offers Jersey a piece of shrimp, the cat’s favorite treat, but Jersey does not eat it.

Lee takes Jersey to the vet but is refused help because she owes money on a previous bill. She knows Jersey is both old and not doing well but cannot afford to pay. This is partly the reason why she turns to forging letters to make money.

Jersey is seen in several scenes, doing better once Lee is able to afford her medications.

Lee has to go out of town and leaves her friend Jack Hock (Richard E. Grant) to care for Jersey. Both Lee and Jersey seem a bit concerned about this.

Unfortunately Jack takes advantage of the empty apartment to entertain a young man he picks up on the street. The man speaks nicely to the cat but she is largely ignored.

Jack does seem to remember to give Jersey her medication in the morning. Whether or not he feeds the cat at any other time is unclear but considering what happens we can assume that Jersey was mostly being neglected.

Kitty Carnage Warning! Unfortunately when Lee comes home she finds Jersey dead beneath the couch. The scene in which Lee cradles her lost friend is absolutely gut-wrenching.

At the end of the movie, Lee has a new tuxedo kitten which is seen playing beneath her chair.

Jersey was played by a male cat named Towne (who unfortunately has since passed). Marielle Heller praised the talents of Towne in an article for Deadline, saying, ““I heard there are actually Academy Awards for pets. I can’t remember what they are called but I call them the Cat Oscars and this cat should win. His name was Towne. For this movie we had to have a cat actor, we had to cast for cat actors, so the trainer said ‘well this is our best performing cat’. So how good can this cat be? She’s a he by the way. His character Jersey is a girl. He does that very well too.” Melissa McCarthy then added, “The first time I take him, or her, whatever, to the vet, while we are at the counter he sneezed. And I look at him and literally thought ‘are you KIDDING me? Are you pretending to be sick?’ Then Marielle cuts and I looked to the camera and said to myself, ‘this cat is OUT-ACTING me’.”

Heller also commented to The New York Times, ““Towne had a very expressive face. There is a moment in the film where he gazes toward McCarthy sort of sympathetically, and also judgmentally, and you feel all of that.” For the dramatic death scene, Heller reportedly ordered a realistic stuffed cat that was the most expensive prop in the film.

Towne was trained by Kim Krafsky for Animal Actors International, who stated in an interview that of all the animals she has worked with in her long career none was more gifted than Towne. “Cats are harder to train than dogs because they are more independent and they prefer to be alone, as you could see in Towne’s brother Earl, who was not so obedient.” As his trainer Kim Krafsky tells The Ringer, he was “more like a dog than a cat.” And “was one of the greats.”

Final Mewsings: Some cat actors deserve honorary Oscars. Rest in Peace, Towne.

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