Puss in Boots

Although the fairy-tale figure of Puss in Boots dates back to a 17th-century story by Charles Perrault, the cat most of the world pictures today is the swashbuckling ginger tom voiced by Antonio Banderas, who first strutted onto screens in DreamWorks' Shrek 2 in 2004. Introduced as a fearsome feline assassin hired to hunt down the ogre Shrek, Puss instantly stole the film by disarming his enemies with an irresistible weapon: enormous, watery, pleading kitten eyes.

That single gag — a deadly warrior collapsing into pure adorable helplessness — made Puss an immediate favourite, and DreamWorks spun him off into his own 2011 feature film and a further acclaimed sequel, Puss in Boots: The Last Wish, in 2022. Across the films he is a romantic, honour-bound adventurer, equal parts Zorro and house cat, whose bravado is forever undercut by very real feline instincts like chasing light and coughing up hairballs.

Puss in Boots endures because he captures something true about cats: the way a fierce little predator can turn, in a heartbeat, into a purring lap-seeker who knows exactly how cute it is. He has become one of animation's best-loved cats, and his giant-eyed pleading look has passed into pop culture as shorthand for irresistible, manipulative charm.