Meowth

Meowth is an antagonist and a member of The Villains.

## **BIOGRAPHY**

Before joining Team Rocket, he was just a normal Meowth living on the streets of Hollywood (AKA "*Tinseltown*"). He had been abandoned as a kitten and was left to provide for himself, often violently rejected by people for trying to steal food.

He joined a gang of street Meowth led by a Persian. They annoyed the people of Tinseltown in a typical alley cat fashion, such as stealing food and rummaging through trash cans. Eventually, he met a female Meowth named Meowzie, who he fell in love with. However, she rejected him in favor of the attention of her rich mistress. Desiring to impress her, Meowth committed to becoming more like a human. With a great amount of time and effort, Meowth learned how to speak in human language (with a New York accent) and how to walk upright. However, all his efforts backfired, as he was again rejected by Meowzie, who now sees him as a freak Meowth. With his heartbroken, he decided to join Team Rocket (mainly due to the fact that the word "*Rocket*" was the first word he learned to say and comprehend).

According to Meowth, he claims to have been Boss Giovanni's personal pet (or "Top Cat"). However, as a result of his incompetence, he was later replaced by a more majestic Persian, the evolved form of Meowth. In truth though, Giovanni's Persian have been with him since the start. Meowth started in Team Rocket as an intruder, and began serving Giovanni. It was by chance that Meowth became a Team Rocket agent, as his initial purpose was said to be to disrupt Jessie and James's training and cause the two troubled trainees to leave.

Outside of Kanto, he is also a member of the villains.

## **APPEARANCE**

Meowth is a small, bipedal, feline Pokémon. He has two cream whiskers on each side of his oval-shaped face and two hairs sticking up on either side of the coin-like gem on his forehead. Meowth also has a curled tail. Meowth's tail and feet are cream-colored like the rest of him, but they are brown at the end. He has small paw pads on the undersides of his heels and toes. He is much like a Maneki Neko, a toy of Japanese descent known for bobbing its arm and hand up and down.

## **PERSONALITY**

Meowth fits in perfectly with his human comrades of Team Rocket as he is conniving, prideful, greedy, and mischievous. His ability to speak like a normal human only makes him equally outspoken. He sometimes views himself as the boss and the leader of the trio, reason being, that he builds all the contraptions and thinks of all the plans, though he is rarely taken seriously (and like James, Meowth can be rather submissive to the domineering Jessie). For all his faults, however, he is loyal to Jessie and James, and never lets a few fights get in his way of being friends with them. He thinks highly of their boss Giovanni and dwells on becoming his "top cat" (having a disdain for his Persian as a result).

Meowth is superb at lying, as he often tricks Ash and his friends to believe he is on their side. Pikachu is the only one who doubts Meowth's loyalty due to remembering his countless double-crosses. Despite their rivalry, Meowth has arguably the most sociable moments with Pikachu, especially since they are often forced to team up for real. In some cases, he laments that they can easily be friends. As often as he likes to consider himself a dastardly villain, he is also often shown to be rather jaded and even philosophical at times. He often looks at the moon and laments his direction in life. Among the trio, Meowth tends to be the one who stands most on the facts rather than belief.

## **TRIVIA**

* Meowth, Gastly, and Slowking are currently the only Pokémon that can talk without using telepathy.
	+ Meowth is currently the only self-taught talking Pokemon.
* Because Meowth used up so much energy into learning how to speak human language and walk on his hind legs, he is unable to learn his species' signature move Pay Day.
* Team Rocket's Meowth represented his species in both of their "Who's That Pokemon?" appearances in the US dub. Curiously it took until *Capacia Island UFO!*, the *790th* episode in the series for them to appear in the US segment.
* Meowth is among the few characters in the anime to repeatedly break the fourth wall, a tendency that is shared with Jessie and James.
* It has been revealed that Meowth is still a wild Pokémon as Pokéballs are able to grab him, however he has broken free from all trainers' attempts to catch him.
	+ In one of the early episodes, Meowth referred to an "owner who wasn't around" but this seems to be an early-episode mistake.
* Throughout his entire run in the series, Meowth has won only six battles he's participated in alone.
* The first time that he said Ash's name was in *Hoenn Alone!* when he was translating Pikachu.