Jellicle cats

Jellicle cats, or simply the Jellicles, are a type of feline mentioned in T. S. Eliot's book Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats, and in Cats, a stage musical written by Andrew Lloyd Webber and based on the book.

Introduced in Eliot's poem The Song of the Jellicles, they were originally depicted as commonly nocturnal black-and-white cats. Specifically, Eliot mentions that they like to gather at an event called the "Jellicle Ball".

In the musical, a sub-plot surrounds the disappearance of the Jellicle patriarch Old Deuteronomy. The names are taken from Eliot's poem The Naming of Cats and used for many of the ensemble characters in the musical. In contrast with the poem, Lloyd Webber's Jellicles possess many kinds of coat-patterns, diverse personalities and individual talents. Also detailed on this page are Chorus characters from the musical Cats whose names are from other works by T. S. Eliot, or not directly derived from the poems.

The name jellicle comes from a previously unpublished poem by Eliot entitled "Pollicle Dogs and Jellicle Cats", where jellicle cats is a corruption of dear little cats and pollicle dogs of poor little dogs.