Cat

The Cat in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland is split into two radically different figures: Dinah, the gentle, mouse-catching pet Alice remembers from home, and the Cheshire Cat, a grinning, vanishing creature of Wonderland who speaks in riddles and embodies the realm's logic of madness. Together, they mark the distance between the ordinary world Alice has left behind and the dreamscape's unsettling, rule-defying nature.

Identity and Background

Dinah is Alice's cat, a "dear quiet thing" who sits purring by the fire, licking her paws and washing her face. Alice describes her as "such a nice soft thing to nurse" and "such a capital one for catching mice." The Cheshire Cat, by contrast, is first encountered in the Duchess's kitchen, where it sits on the hearth grinning from ear to ear. The Duchess explains its expression simply: "It's a Cheshire cat, and that's why." When Alice expresses surprise that cats can grin, the Duchess insists, "They all can, and most of 'em do." The Cheshire Cat has very long claws and a great many teeth, and Alice feels it ought to be treated with respect.

Arc Through the Plot

Dinah appears only in Alice's memories and conversations. While falling down the rabbit-hole, Alice worries that Dinah will miss her and hopes the family will remember her saucer of milk at tea-time. She wishes Dinah were with her to catch bats, which she thinks are "very like a mouse." Later, when the Mouse is offended by talk of cats, Alice tries to soothe it by describing Dinah's gentle nature, but the Mouse bristles with fright and hatred. When the birds and animals flee after Alice mentions that Dinah eats little birds, Alice regrets having spoken of her and feels lonely. The Cheshire Cat first appears in the Duchess's kitchen, grinning silently. Later, Alice meets it sitting on a bough of a tree. It directs her toward the March Hare and the Hatter, declaring that they are both mad and that "we're all mad here. I'm mad. You're mad." It vanishes and reappears several times, finally disappearing slowly, beginning with the end of its tail and ending with the grin, which remains some time after the rest of it has gone. During the croquet game, the Cat's head appears in the air, and Alice talks to it about the game and the Queen. When the King objects to the Cat's presence, the Queen orders its head cut off, but the executioner cannot behead a head without a body. The Cat's head fades away entirely before the dispute is settled.

Relationships and Conflict

Alice's relationship with Dinah is one of affectionate ownership and nostalgia. She speaks of Dinah with pride and longing, but the creatures of Wonderland react with horror to the cat's predatory nature. The Mouse trembles at the mention of cats, and the birds scatter when Alice boasts that Dinah "will eat a little bird as soon as look at it." The Cheshire Cat, by contrast, engages Alice in philosophical conversation. It challenges her assumptions about direction, madness, and identity. When Alice asks which way to go, the Cat replies, "That depends a good deal on where you want to get to." When Alice says she doesn't much care where, the Cat answers, "Then it doesn't matter which way you go." The Cat also reveals that the Hatter and the March Hare are mad, and that Alice herself must be mad to have come to Wonderland. The King of Hearts finds the Cat's appearance unsettling and demands its removal, but the Queen's solution—beheading—proves impossible to execute.

Change and Ending

Dinah remains unchanged, a fixed point of the ordinary world that Alice cannot return to during her dream. The Cheshire Cat undergoes a series of vanishings and reappearances, each more startling than the last. It first vanishes suddenly, then reappears just as suddenly. Later, it vanishes slowly, leaving only its grin behind. In the croquet-ground, only its head appears, and it fades away entirely when the executioner is sent to fetch the Duchess. The Cat never reappears after that. In the final scene, when Alice wakes on the riverbank, her sister dreams of the Wonderland creatures, and among them is the "pig-baby sneezing on the Duchess's knee," but the Cheshire Cat is not mentioned in that vision.

Thematic Significance

The two cats embody the central opposition of the book: the safe, predictable world of home versus the anarchic, logic-defying realm of Wonderland. Dinah represents comfort, domesticity, and the rules of the surface world—rules that prove useless and even dangerous underground. The Cheshire Cat, with its ability to appear and disappear at will, its cryptic pronouncements, and its immunity to the Queen's threats, is the purest expression of Wonderland's fluid, untamed nature. Its famous declaration that "we're all mad here" is the closest the book comes to stating its own governing principle. The Cat's grin, which outlasts its body, suggests that meaning in Wonderland is not anchored to substance—a lesson Alice must learn if she is to navigate the dream.