The Purrfect 10: Fun Facts About Cats the Musical

We love reading and researching anything and everything about cats, and wanted to find a fun and unique way to share the interesting facts we learn with you! Since top 10 lists are very popular in the blogosphere, we created The Purrfect 10 as a way to present 10 educational or fascinating tidbits about a wide variety of cat-related topics, everything from health issues to cat breeds to famous felines.

I've been fortunate to see the musical Cats twice so far in my lifetime, in Montreal back in 1993 and right here in my hometown a few years later. Both times I was completely captivated by the entire spectacle, particularly the costumes and the music. In honor of the new theatrical release of Cats (which I look forward to seeing in spite of critical reviews), our first Purrfect 10 of 2020 features some fun facts about the beloved musical masterpiece...

1) Cats is a musical composed by Andrew Lloyd Webber based on the 1939 poetry collection Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats by T. S. Eliot. The story is set in a larger-than-life junkyard playground as a tribe of cats called the Jellicles come together at the annual Jellicle Ball to decide which one of them will ascend to the Heaviside Layer (their version of Heaven) and be reborn into a new life. The bulk of the musical consists of the different contenders introducing themselves to the audience by explaining how they got their unusual names (Grizabella, Old Deuteronomy, Rum Tum Tugger, Macavity, Mr. Mistoffelees). The story is told completely through music with no dialogue in between the songs.

2) Cats premiered in the West End at the New London Theatre on May 11, 1981, playing a total of 8,949 performances before closing on its 21st anniversary, May 11, 2002. The final performance was broadcast live on a large outdoor screen in Covent Garden for fans who couldn't get a ticket. It debuted on Broadway on October 7, 1982 at the Winter Garden Theatre with a record-breaking $6.2 million in ticket pre-sales, closing on September 10, 2000 after a total of 15 previews and 7,485 performances, making it the fourth longest running musical both on Broadway and the West End. It has been revived in the West End twice and Broadway once, translated into over 15 languages and produced professionally in more than 30 countries.

Photo: Cats the Musical on Facebook

3) Cats has received numerous international awards and nominations. The original London production was nominated for six Laurence Olivier Awards in 1981, winning two awards including Best New Musical. In 1983 the original Broadway production won seven Tony Awards out of 11 nominations, including Best Musical and a posthumous award to T. S. Eliot for Best Book of a Musical. The Broadway cast recording won a Grammy for Best Musical Theater Album in the same year.

4) Cats' most famous song "Memory" is regarded by many as the most successful song ever from a musical. It has been recorded by more than 150 artists including Barbra Streisand, Barry Manilow, Liberace and Johnny Mathis.

5) Cats became the first musical to capitalize on mass merchandising, with stalls set up in theater lobbies selling a wide variety of souvenirs emblazoned with the famous cat's-eyes logo. The official Cats t-shirt became the second-best-selling shirt in the world in the 1980s, second only to the Hard Rock Cafe t-shirt.

6) The wigs used onstage for Cats are made from yak hair, take 40 hours to make and cost around $2,300. They are not recycled after a recast; each actor's head is measured so the wig fits perfectly and can accommodate the amount of skipping and jumping they do as cats. Over its 18-year run, the first Broadway production used 3,247 pounds of yak hair. By comparison, wild yaks can reach weights of up to 2,200 pounds.

7) A Cats postage stamp was issued by the United States Postal Service in 2000 as part of its Celebrate the Century series. The musical was chosen as one of fifteen "outstanding artifacts, events and activities" from the 1980s to be commemorated with its own stamp design.

8) Madame Tussauds New York features wax figures of several characters from the musical, including one of Grizabella that sings "Memory" through the use of projection mapping technology. A wax figure of Rumpleteazer is displayed at the Panoptikum wax museum in Hamburg, Germany.

9) Beginning in March 2019, the Rinkai Line in Tokyo, Japan, uses two songs from the musical, "Memory" and "Skimbleshanks: The Railway Cat," for its train departure melodies at the Ōimachi Station.

Photo: Cats the Musical on Facebook

10) On September 30, 2016 the late Grumpy Cat jumped into the Jellicle Ball, joining the Broadway cast for one night only at the Neil Simon Theatre. Not surprisingly, she hated becoming an Honorary Jellicle Cat.

Have you ever seen Cats the Musical? 

Tell us about your experience!