He seemed to have it all. Fame. Fortune. Accolades. The respect of his peers. Yes, from the outside, Orangey was a cat living on top of the world, but behind the scenes, something much darker–more feral–lurked, a secret that might make his entire world come crumbling down. Today on Catroverts United, we’re looking at a relatively rare combination: a cat high in conscientiousness but very (very) low in agreeableness.
If you’re a fan of classic Audrey Hepburn movies, you’re probably familiar with Orangey. He’s the cat who played Cat, the stray Hepburn takes in during the film. While you might assume he was just another run of the mill pet actor, Orangey actually had quite the name in the trained animal world. He played Rhubarb in Rhubarb, Mouschi in The Diary of Anne Frank, Giant Cat in Village of the Giants, Butch in the Incredible Shrinking Man, and had roles in five other films going from 1951-1965.
His fame spread to television, where he played a part in nine different series, including Batman, Mission Impossible, The Beverly Hillbillies, The Dick Van Dyke Show, and Alfred Hitchcock Presents.
Trained by Frank Inn, the same man who trained Benji and the first Lassie, Orangey was the go to feline for the screen for one huge reason. He was very good at staying where you told him to stay while the cameras were rolling, sometimes for hours at a time. If you know cats, you know they’re not an animal that typically lend themselves to being trained, so it’s no wonder Orangey won two PATSY awards, the animal actor equivalent of the Oscars.
This is typical of someone who has a high Big 5 score in conscientiousness. The average cat scores a 5.12, but with a track record like Orangey, he’d be closer to a perfect 7, showing he prioritized duty and dependability. A human with a perfect score would have their days planned out from beginning to end. We’d expect them to be neat, thorough, and highly efficient.
So with a score like that, it would be easy to assume Orangey was a joy to work with. Instead, he had a much different reputation when the cameras turned off. He would scratch and bite actors and run away from the set and hide. It got to the point that Inn would post guard dogs just to keep Orangey from fleeing. One studio executive called Orangey “the world’s meanest cat.”
This sort of behavior is typical of someone with a low score in agreeableness. The average cat scores a 5.22 in that trait, but with a demeanor like Orangey’s, the score would be rock bottom: a 1. With a score that low, you’d expect a human to be antisocial, narcissistic, and manipulative. True, dog lovers might well accuse all cats of being that way, but who listens to dog lovers?
What’s most interesting about Orangey is the strange combination of those two scores. In fact, in our studies, only 0.19% of cats had the same pattern. It’s no wonder Orangey became so memorable. But remember, just like people, cat personalities are a mixture of a whole range of influences, from genetics to upbring to life experiences. It could well be that all that attention and pressure–the stress of the demands of his career–drastically influenced the sort of cat Orangey might have been otherwise.
Regardless, raise a glass of milk today to one of the great cat actors of our time. To Orangey!