Catalina Gutierrez

**Catalina Gutierrez** is a red-furred cat who works as a hero-for-hire within the World Heroes’ Society. Leader of the famed Feline Paladins, which consists of female cats like herself, her achievements and honors have been recognized worldwide, though to Cat, these are mere stepping stones to her real mission, which is to find her family, as she had been abandoned at a young age. To this end, she ends up crossing paths with Touché Turtle and his sidekick, Dum-Dum, with the latter in particular on her list due to his affiliation with Clan Dugan. Though relations between the three were rocky at first, their adventures would lead to them developing a healthy respect and rapport for each other—and, in Cat’s case, a romance with an unlikely partner.

Debuting in the *Redux* storyline, Catalina is featured as a guest star in several episodes in season 3, before taking on a larger role in seasons 4 through 6. Similar to her partners, she would also have a few roles in the companion series, *Blazin’ Trails Alter*.

## Personality

"*Don’t worry about it, Dum. Cat’s like a crab—hard on outside, but inside she’s actually a softie. You’ve just got to get her out of her shell.*"

―Einar Gutierrez to Dum-Dum about Cat, Blazin’ Trails Redux, season 6, episode 12

If Touché Turtle is the D'Artagnan of the Heroes Society, then Catalina is the Athos: she is coolheaded, taciturn and strict, rather aloof and tends to take on missions by herself, but will be a team player when she needs to be. Unlike Touché and Edith, who are willing to make friends with outsiders, she tends to keep others at bay and never lets anybody get too close, namely due to the stings of abandonment and betrayal that she faced at the hands of her former best friend and lover. As such, her default reaction is to make caustic, sarcastic quips about people that can give others a bad impression of her. Though coolheaded in most situations, she can have some impulsive moments and a hot temper that takes a minute to cool down. She's notorious for her brutal honesty, and won't hesitate to speak her mind about the situation and doesn’t normally have a filter, especially when she's angry. When truly angry, she remains rather silent, but if the offending party has hurt her loved ones, she’ll demonstrate a startling brutality that her friends get rather terrified of. In a way, she resembles her half-brother, Punkin’ Puss, in this regard, as the latter’s fury when truly brought about is extremely brutal and violent. Her brother, Einar, likens her to a crab in that she built a tough shell around herself to keep her from getting hurt.

Over time, as she integrates with the other members of the Society and steps outside of the bubble she encased around herself, Catalina opens up more and more, although occasionally elements of her solitude life—as well as her pride and aloofness—will crop up with her interactions. When she starts to emerge from her shell, people get to see a mature yet compassionate and warm person who cherishes her friends and family. Another reason that she wanted to become a hero-for-hire was to help out children, as her mentor and father figure for much of her life, Agito, took in animals and human children who had been abandoned by their parents; when her mentor died and his school was shut down, forcing his charges to live on their own, Cat made a personal vow to become a famous heroine in order to finish what her mentor started. Among her squadron, she has a “big sister instinct” to many of her younger members, namely Emilia, who she cares for like a daughter, and Augustin, the son of Touché’s rival, Jean-Claude, whom she recognizes as separate from the actions of his father. She does have a sillier side that she normally expresses around Dum, Touché and her brother, Einar, where she takes on the role as a mischievous sibling. She has a sibling-like relationship with Touché, a mother-daughter relationship with Edith and Nadia, and develops a natural brother-sister relationship with Einar and Punkin’ Puss, the latter of whom eventually moves in with her parents after the feud simmers.

Catalina has two other passions outside of hero work: music and swimming. In regards to music, she likes to play the guitar and piano, and she mentions that if she hadn’t become a hero-for-hire, she would have pursued a music career. She also enjoys swimming, using it as an outlet to relax, which is unusual for a cat. When she first came to the Ozarks after so many years away, Dum-Dum had to pull her out of the water because she spent a long time in the water. She bonds with her niece, Nadia, over this, and the two are thick as thieves whenever they get up to going on adventures.

## Trivia

* Catalina is one of several characters lifted from iheartgod175’s *For Love and Glory* series, and debuts specifically in the remake, *For Love and Glory Relance* (although her debut is a few sequels into the series). There, she retains her personality and ambitions, with the added element that she is hunting down Dum-Dum specifically so she can use the Dugan Crown (one of his heirlooms) to find her family. She is one of several characters from that series who make their debut in Redux, with others including her father, her brother, Touché’s father, sister and grandmother.
* Similar to Edith and Denise, aspects of her character and design were changed over time:
	+ Her very first design featured her being shorter than Touché, and in a later picture of her official design, Iheartgod175 likened her to Ruff from The Ruff and Reddy show. Her first colored design does make her taller, about a head taller than Touché, but still shorter than Edith and Dum-Dum. Her retooled design would give her a similar figure to Denise Falconeri—tall and slender—and kept the “taller than Touché, but shorter than Edith and Dum-Dum” angle.
	+ Her costume was also given more changes over time. The first design, done in black and white, wasn’t specific with the color scheme, but it was going to be darker. In her first design in color, the author started to go for a sea green costume, before changing it to a dark blue with a sea green feather in her hat; the costume was also more simplified. In her official redesign, elements of her original theme color can be seen in other parts of the costume, namely the frills and the plume of her hat.
		- Her costume is actually inspired by Revue Starlight Re LIVE’s Musketeer set—specifically, Hikari Kagura’s Athos card, with some elements of Karen Aijo’s D’Artagnan card. While the first two designs were based off of the author’s memory, her final design used these two cards as a reference. In her notes following the design, Iheartgod175 mentions that she almost made the costume more elaborate before she remembered that she had to draw it over and over again.
	+ In an interesting case, another Hanna-Barbera character was used for a basis for her design—in this case, Brain from Top Cat, with a few references from Benny the Ball from the same show (in reference to her height).
	+ Unlike Edith, who had a lot of her family history and some aspects of her personality written out, Cat’s personality and family weren’t defined early on. This was done on purpose, as the author wanted to create a “mysterious air” around Catalina. When she started working on her design and history as well as interactions with Dum-Dum, she decided to refine her history and personality, especially after Einar was introduced.
	+ Cat’s history with Punkin’s family was an inclusion added by Iheartgod175’s best friend, Vulaan Kulaas, who said that she could see Cat as Nadia’s aunt. This would lead to revisions on her history, where iheartgod175 wrote down in a notebook that Dixie had met a Spaniard, with whom she had Cat, but had been separated from and never met again. Said Spaniard would become Don Gutierrez a year later.
* In a series of pictures that Iheartgod175 made of her and Vulaan Kulaas’ characters as the characters of Muse from Love Live, iheartgod175 explains that Cat is somewhat like Maki Nishikino of that series, “minus the rich girl aspect and is a bit grumpier”.