The Cat

The Cat is the Fox’s partner in a recurring confidence trick: the two present themselves as disabled, encourage Pinocchio to trust their apparent experience, and ultimately help steal the coins he has been persuaded to bury. His false blindness is exposed by a brief physical slip, while the ending returns to that same bodily detail in a changed, irreversible form: after pretending to be blind for years, he has actually lost his sight.

Identity and Introduction

The Cat first appears beside the Fox on the road after Pinocchio leaves the Marionette Theater. Their introduction is staged as a picture of mutual dependence. The Fox is lame and leans on the Cat; the Cat is blind and lets the Fox lead him. Their apparent disabilities make the pair seem vulnerable and reliant on one another, but the arrangement also lets them travel together while each performs a role that will support their deception.

The Fox greets Pinocchio by name, and the Cat repeats the greeting. When Pinocchio asks how they know him, their familiarity helps draw him into conversation. The Cat’s role is already complementary to the Fox’s: he echoes and reinforces the encounter rather than presenting a separate story of his own. The repeated performance makes their partnership appear easy and established, while concealing that the disabilities on which it rests are false.

The First Deception

The pair’s act falters when Pinocchio reveals the five gold pieces given to him by Fire Eater. At the cheerful sound of the coins, the Fox unconsciously holds out the paw supposedly made lame by his desire to study, and the Cat opens both eyes wide, making them look like live coals. He closes them quickly, and Pinocchio does not notice. This moment gives the reader evidence the puppet misses: the Cat can see, and the gold has interrupted his performance.

Pinocchio explains that he wants to buy a fine coat for his father and an A-B-C book for himself so that he can go to school. The Fox argues against studying by claiming it cost him a paw; the Cat supports the same appeal, saying that the same foolish pursuit cost him the sight of both eyes. His invented injury gives the Fox’s warning a second, seemingly independent witness. The Blackbird cautions Pinocchio not to listen to bad advice, but the Cat and the Fox’s performance has already dressed their self-interest as hard-earned experience.

The Cat’s small, involuntary glance is central to the contrast between appearance and conduct. In conversation, he presents blindness as the price of a past mistake; in the instant that money appears, his eyes open. The scene makes his claimed injury not merely doubtful but theatrically useful: he can turn it on and off to sustain the story that may win the pair a share of Pinocchio’s coins.

The Field of Wonders Swindle

The Cat appears again with the Fox in the wood near the Giant Oak Tree, where Pinocchio encounters them while on his way to meet Geppetto. Their warm greeting resumes the intimacy of their earlier meeting. The return matters because the pair’s renewed friendliness conceals a repeated attempt to exploit Pinocchio, now with a promise that his money can multiply if he buries it in the Field of Wonders.

While Pinocchio is away in the city, the Fox and the Cat return to the place where he buried four gold pieces, take them, and run off. The Parrot later tells Pinocchio what happened; digging furiously, he finds that every coin is gone. The Cat’s part in the theft is shared with the Fox, but it completes the pattern established by his false blindness: a display designed to win trust helps the pair get close enough to take what Pinocchio has.

Pinocchio reports the robbery to the magistrate, but the attempt to seek justice brings its own reversal: the Judge sends him to jail. The theft therefore costs him more than the four coins. In Pinocchio’s later account of his misfortunes, he recalls that the Fox and the Cat took the money and that his complaint led to imprisonment. The Cat remains one part of a larger chain of consequences, but the connection is clear: the pair profit from the confidence trick while Pinocchio bears its immediate financial and legal costs.

The Fox, the Cat, and the Ending

After Pinocchio and Geppetto escape from the Shark, they set out hoping to find a house or hut where someone will offer them bread and straw for the night. They encounter two rough-looking beggars: the Fox and the Cat, now so wretched that Pinocchio can hardly recognize them. The Cat has truly lost the sight of both eyes after pretending to be blind for so many years. The Fox is old, thin, and almost hairless, and has sold his tail for food. The pair who once used a performance of helplessness to mislead others now appear in genuine destitution.

The Cat’s contribution to this final encounter is reduced to two repeated words. When the Fox pleads that they are old, tired, and sick, the Cat echoes, “Sick!” When the Fox says that they are truly poor and starving, the Cat repeats, “Starving!” The echoes still bind them together, as their earlier repeated greetings and shared false story did, but they no longer help control the encounter. Pinocchio refuses their appeal, calls them false friends, and reminds them, “Stolen money never bears fruit.”

The Cat’s ending sharply reverses the first road scene. Then, he performs blindness as part of a scheme and briefly reveals sight when the coins appear; now, he is genuinely blind and begs for help. The narrative does not say that his blindness was caused by the pretense, so the force of the reversal lies in the parallel rather than a stated punishment. His story gives the Fox and the Cat’s deception a bodily echo: what began as a calculated sign of helplessness returns at the end as real deprivation. The Cat is defined less by an independent history than by this partnership, its repeated performance, and the final collapse of the appearance that once served it.