Silver-Screen Familiar
Pyewacket
1958
The elegant Siamese familiar of a modern-day witch in the 1958 romantic comedy Bell, Book and Candle, and one of cinema's most famous fictional cats.
- Owner
- Gillian Holroyd (in the 1958 film Bell, Book and Candle)
- Years
- 1958
- Known for
- Silver-Screen Familiar
Pyewacket is the sleek Siamese cat who belongs to Gillian Holroyd, the witch played by Kim Novak in the 1958 film Bell, Book and Candle. In the story Gillian works her magic partly through Pyewacket, her familiar, cradling and stroking the cat as she casts a love spell over James Stewart's character — and the cat's cool, watchful presence became one of the film's most memorable images.
The name was not invented for the film. 'Pyewacket' was recorded in 1644 by the notorious English witch-finder Matthew Hopkins as the name of one of the 'imps' or familiar spirits he claimed a suspected witch kept — a piece of genuine witch-trial folklore that the film borrowed to lend its modern sorceress an old, uncanny lineage.
Pyewacket helped cement the enduring cultural link between cats — especially dark, poised, mysterious ones — and witchcraft, and the film's feline star was good enough to win a PATSY Award, the animal-actor equivalent of an Oscar. Decades on, Pyewacket remains a favourite reference point whenever a story wants to pair a witch with a knowing cat, and the name has been reused many times over for fictional and real cats alike.