Cat Beast

The Cat Beast is a secondary antagonist in the 2009 animated feature 9 and is the sole main antagonist of the original Oscar nominated 2005 short of the same name.

In the aftermath of the machines' war against mankind, the Cat Beast is the last remaining machine, and its sole purpose is to find the Talisman and to reawaken the Fabrication Machine.

2005 film history
Nothing is known about the Cat Beast's origins, but in the post-apocalyptic ruins, it hunts the nine Stitchpunks to remove and collect their souls with its piece of the Talisman. The Cat Beast succeeds in hunting down and killing all of the first eight Stitchpunks (last of whom is 5), and as well as extracting and storing their souls in the Talisman, the Cat Beast also takes their skins to wear. The Cat Beast was finally killed while hunting 9, the last remaining Stitchpunk, when 9 lured it into a trap in a warehouse ruin, sending it falling from a significant height with it being impaled by the sharp wooden plank it was standing on.

Backstory
Very little is known about the Cat Beast's past, but it was presumably created by the Fabrication Machine at some point during or after the Machine's omnicide against humanity and all other life. After the B.R.A.I.N. and the other machines deactivated or perished in the aftermath of the war, the Cat Beast alone remained active. It ruled and scoured the wasteland, seeking the Talisman so that it could use it to reactivate the Fabrication Machine.

9
After 9 awoke and met up with 2, they were ambushed in the wasteland by the Cat Beast. 9 evaded and escaped the Beast, but 2 and the Talisman were both captured. With the Talisman now in its possession, the Cat Beast immediately headed, with the Talisman and a live 2, to the weapons factory where the Fabrication Machine lay dormant, to activate its slumbering master.

At the factory, just as the Cat Beast was about to insert the Talisman and reactivate the Fabrication Machine, 5 and 9 arrived to rescue 2. The Cat Beast viciously pursued and attacked the Stitchpunks, before 7 arrived and directly fought against the Beast. 7 managed to get an advantage over the Cat Beast by breaking its eye-socket light and lassoing its jaws shut, then destroyed the Beast by decapitation.

Appearance
The Cat Beast has a cat's skull for the head and has a series of long twisted metal wires for the body which are attached to the Cat Beast's metal limbs. The Cat Beast's body is also covered with metallic plates and has long sharp body spines protruding from the body. The Cat Beast has a red glowing eye and a lightbulb attached to one of its eye sockets, allowing the Cat Beast to see in the dark.

In the original 2005 short, the Cat Beast's eye is bright-green instead of red, and it wears a cloth consisting of the fabric skins of the first eight Stitchpunks over its thorax.

Trivia

 * The Cat Beast's appears appears to be rather thin, unprotected and delicate for one of the B.R.A.I.N.'s machines; as noted by 2, who commented on the Cat Beast's corpse, "Rusty, hacked-together, shoddy pile of scrap...!" This could be due to the Fabrication Machine rushing just before it deactivated to build a machine that could find the Talisman to reactivate it.