Gale (Housepets!)

**Gale** is an antagonist in the long-running webcomic *Housepets!* by Rick Griffin, first appearing as the main antagonist of the arc "Call o' th' Wild".

She is a wild mountain lion, the mother of the cub Pueblo and a former friend of the wolf Miles and his pack before having an harsh falling out with him because he had started a family, even though Miles and Gale had agreed the forest they lived in couldn't sustain more predators and, because of this agreement, Gale had given up on her dream of being a mother for years.

Still vengeful when, years after they had left the forest, Miles and his family returned so as to teach Miles' sons a lesson, Gale attempted and mostly succeeded to take down the Wolf Pack and kill Miles before realizing that she and Pueblo actually had the option to join civilization all along.

Now a protegee of the Equal Chance Program and a successful day trader, Gale is currently trying to patch up her friendship with the wolves, especially Miles.

## What Makes Her Magnificent!

* She is a very competent predator and is always able to provide meat for herself and Pueblo.
* She cares greatly for her son, Pueblo, to the point where she's willing to swallow her pride as an apex predator and leave him in the custody of the domestic dog and cat Peanut and Grape while she's at work.
* Despite being a wild animal with very likely no formal education, she's a skilled medic, being able to stitch up both her and a young Poncho's wounds. Now that she's a businesswoman, her long-term goal is to one day be able to afford nursery school and likely make medicine her full-time job.
* Even if racism between felines and canines is pretty common in the universe of *Housepets!*, the mountain lion Gale has always been friends with the wolf Miles and his pack, only becoming hostile towards the pack once Miles unintentionally wronged her rather than for some xenophobic reason (and it didn't help that "Four Finger Discount" Jack from the same pack had partly contributed to an unspecified accident Gale was hurt by).
* She used to be a very good friend to the Wolf Pack, even nurturing a wounded, young Poncho.
* Although not as strong as Miles, she is still very brawny, agile and a formidable fighter. She's also very resilient to pain, as she held in a cry of pain when Lucretia bit her and stitched up the wound on her face herself.
* The huge scar across her face, along with her burly phisique make her look very threatening and badass. When becoming a businesswoman, she starts donning an equally badass red and black outfit.
* She has a pretty sympathetic reason behind her vendetta against Miles, as, due to agreeing that the forest wouldn't have been able to sustain more predators than her, Miles and his mate Lucretia, Gale passed many opportunities to mate and start a family of her own even though she really wanted to. When Lucretia lost some family members and Miles decided to cheer her up by getting her pregnant, Gale was deeply hurt by what she interpreted as Miles being selfish. When Miles and Lucretia left the forest, thinking Gale fully hated them then, Gale was further hurt that her former friend hadn't said goodbye.
* When Miles and his family returned years later, Gale, who interpreted it as an affront to her territory, decided she'd take them down. In spite of the naive Pueblo's advice to take on them all at once, Gale, who isn't arrogant, knew that she could never take on all of them and pragmatically opted to target and capture them one by one:
	+ She hid in the trees and ambushed the two uncle Daryls. While she tied up the fit Daryl after taking him to the pit in her cave, she left the fat Daryl untied as she assured he wouldn't leave by promising him dinner.
	+ When Rockstar Hawk and Darth Vader Sanchez, two of Miles and Lucretia's sons, split up to hunt down a rabbit, she beat up and captured DV as soon as he got away from RH and she then sent Pueblo to loudly give away RH's hunting attempt so that when the wolf angrily chased him, Pueblo would lure him to Gale, who beat up and captured RH as well.
		- Although completely unwittingly on her behalf, Gale indirectly saved the life of the bunny Zach Arbelt, a major protagonist in the comic, by sabotaging DV and RH's hunt.
	+ She confronted "Four Finger Discount" Jack, whose right arm is missing, and stayed on his right side while fighting him so he wouldn't be able to fight back.
	+ She used a trowel to dig up fake elk track and lure North Star and Poncho. While NS was almost deceived, the more experienced Poncho saw through the ruse. Later, Gale herself fell for a trap as she attacked a straw dummy of Poncho and got tied up in a net, all of which had been built by NS and Poncho in five minutes. Gale still made it out of the situation by seducing Poncho (who had a crush on her after she had nurtured his woind when he was young) while Pueblo freed her from the net and, soon as she got out, she beat up NS and Poncho as well.
		- Although she fell for Poncho and NS' trap, she immediately made it out of her predicament with quick-thinking, manipulation and Pueblo's help, plus it was reasonable of her to not expect the two to have built an elaborate trap, as they had done it in just five minutes and Miles' cubs had shown themselves to not be the best predators beforehand.
	+ She wrestled Lucretia and held in a cry of pain when Lucretia bit her hand so that Miles wouldn't hear her.
	+ In the end, outside of Miles himself, only King Milton, Bailey Lindberg and their three pups, Ace, Olive and Rook, weren't sucessfully kidnapped and imprisoned by Gale, as Bailey scared her away by threatening to mutilate her if she hurt her pups.
		- Like with her fear for Uncle Deadeye, who is implied to be almost supernaturally strong, her startlement with Bailey's sudden, gruesome threat and her surprising strength is very much reasonable and Gale is not a coward for it.
* She told a corcerned Miles to meet her in her cave, where she ambushed him and the two wrestled for long.
* When it was clear Miles was holding back, an offended Gale told him to go all out in their battle.
* When Miles threatened to throw her in the pit to be at his family's mercy, Gale saw right through Miles' bluff and shifted her weight towards the pit so that Miles would lose his balance trying to save her. She then pinned him down and started strangling him.
* Miles only survived the fight because Gale let him and his family go when she was told that joining civilization was an option for her and Pueblo.
* After being taken in by the Equal Chance Program, she became a very successful day trader in just six months thanks to her cunning and intimidation tactics (while Pueblo stays in the office with her to tell her when she's going too far with the agression) and currently owns 60% of a company's stocks
	+ Her success is even more impressive since animals and especially wild ones like Gale are a very oppressed demographic in the world of *Housepets!*. To put things in perspective, Marion Ward, who is a human morphed into squirrel and not even a full-on animal, was rejected by every college he applied for because of his condition.
* She has been trying to patch up her strained friendship with Miles and the other wolves and wishes for things to go back to how they were before their falling out. So far, their attempts at making up have had positive results.
* While vengeful, she at least was homicidally vengeful only towards Miles, the one who had directly hurt her, so she's not petty.
* While portrayed as more competent and serious than most antagonists in the comic, she still has plenty of comedic moments (mostly deadpan snark) which make her more enjoyable to watch than, for example, the Forgotten, the Stranger and Mr. Hartford, who are all completely humorless Knights of Cerebus, and an outright Hate Sink in Hartford's case.

## What Makes Her a Baddie?

* She has killed multiple animals, as indicated by all the skeletons in her lair. However, since those were prey she needed to kill to feed herself and Pueblo, it's a minor fault.
* Although she had good reasons to feel hurt by him, she went too far by trying to kill Miles, despite him being completely apologetic and her having succeeded at starting a family by that point.
* While she at least apparently didn't want to kill them, he still beat up the other wolves, three of them being children, and tried to abduct the defenseless family of dogs that was camping with the pack, three of them, again, being pups.
* According to North Star, she launched into the Poncho dummy with "the velocity of 'spine-shatter'", implying she tried to kill Poncho.
* On at least one occasion, she has stolen from human campers, possibly attacking them to do so.

## Trivia

* She's the only *Housepets!* character to be a Magnificent Baddie.

## External Links

* Gale at the *Housepets!* wiki
* Gale at the Villains wiki