The Courtyard (1995)

Directed by: Fred Walton

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

Synopsis: A New York architect named Jonathan (Andrew McCarthy) moves into an apartment building in Los Angeles and almost immediately gets caught up in a murder mystery.

Cat Burglar (Scene Stealer): Jonathan owns an orange tom cat named John Wayne who comes to Los Angeles with him (after the landlord tags on an extra fifty dollars a month to the rent).

The Courtyard - ginger tabby cat John Wayne

John Wayne may have been Jonathan’s sole companion for the last seven years, but in this film he is only seen very rarely.

The Courtyard - ginger tabby cat John Wayne with Jonathan Andrew McCarthy

The Courtyard - ginger tabby cat John Wayne on counter as Jonathan Andrew McCarthy enters apartment

The cat becomes even more scarce when Jonathan hooks up with Lauren (Mädchen Amick), the sister of the murdered neighbor. She moves in with him and during her time there John Wayne is hardly seen. There is one priceless moment, though, when Jonathan thinks someone is breaking into his apartment and he grabs a plastic coat hanger to protect himself. When it turns out to be Lauren, he absent-mindedly throws the hanger behind him. The sound engineer managed to insert a cat cry in the soundtrack, inferring that the hanger hit John Wayne!

The Courtyard - Lauren Mädchen Amick entering apartment and Jonathan Andrew McCarthy throwing hanger that hits cat off screen animated gif

It isn’t until later in the film when Jonathan tries to put the murder investigation aside and focus on the new designs he needs to turn in that we see John Wayne on his drawing board, now wearing a kind of harness.

The Courtyard - ginger tabby cat John Wayne on drawing table with Jonathan Andrew McCarthy

We also see the cat very briefly when Jonathan jumps down from the murderer’s apartment, leaving a bloody footprint.

The Courtyard - ginger tabby cat John Wayne tail on balcony below

In order to escape, Jonathan starts a fire. Lauren is escaping from the building and is looking for John Wayne (which is odd considering we never saw her interact with the cat at all before. In fact it was hard to tell if she knew Jonathan even owned a cat!) She finds him in a corridor and scoops him up.

The Courtyard - ginger tabby cat John Wayne being picked up

Lauren then unwittingly follows one of the killers downstairs. John Wayne is smart enough to run out of the room and fortunately Lauren also survives.