Beatrice Bright is for animal rights—
She's waiting for Animal Day to arrive.
And though you see her
In her new fox fur,
The fox that she wears is alive.
She's waiting for Animal Day to arrive.
And though you see her
In her new fox fur,
The fox that she wears is alive.
— "Warmhearted", Falling Up by Shel Silverstein
Basically when a character is wearing one or more fur-bearing animals like a fur garment.
This is usually done to show a close relationship between an owner and pet that the pet would do this, or as a joke where The Reveal is that the garment is of living animals.
This also nicely averts Fur and Loathing, unless the animals are enslaved to do this.
A Sub-Trope of Pretty in Mink, Improvised Clothes.
A Sister Trope to It's Fake Fur, It's Fine (in averting the implications of real fur), Feather Boa Constrictor (wearing a snake similarly), Garden Garment (wearing plants that avoid withering), Head Pet, Parrot Pet Position, and Right-Hand Cat.
Contrast Cruella to Animals, Sapient Fur Trade.
Examples
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Advertising
- In a fairly creepy Hanes ComfortBlend commercial, a man wears live kittens instead of a shirt.
- Similarly, this ad for cat treats
involves a man's two fuzzy cats attaching themselves to his ankles and being mistaken for boots.
- Inverted in an ad for Eos shave cream — apparently, this shave cream makes your skin so soft that the foxes will want to wear you. Margot is getting college credit for it. The boy the other fox is wearing is not.
Anime & Manga
- Sailor Moon:
- In an episode of the anime, Usagi uses the Disguise Pen to put herself in fancy clothes for sneaking into a posh reception... and she wears a disgruntled Luna around her neck as a fur stole.
- In the opening sequence for the S movie, Minako tries on several outfits in a retail shop. The last one is a super-revealing dress topped with a full-length fur coat, and she's also wearing a fastidiated Artemis as a stole.
Comic Books
- In Flashpoint Beyond, the coonskin hat Corky Baxter of the Time Masters wore in the original Rip Hunter book turns out to be a live raccoon named Crockett.
- Lumberjanes combines this with Head Pet: Molly's coonskin hat is actually a live raccoon named Bubbles who just sleeps on her head until she needs some help.
- In a one-page gag from The Smurfs' "Romeo and Smurfette", one of the Smurfs tries to give what Smurfette thinks is a fur stole, only that it turns out to be a hairy caterpillar.
Comic Strips
- In one early Bloom County strip, Limekiller's ex-wife has tracked him down to the eponymous backwater, and is commenting on the inhabitants, saying they are.. "Provincial". Her fur coatnote pops to life and snarls "PEASANTS!!"
- In Over the Hedge Verne once wore Hammy around his shoulders to keep warm.
Fan Works
- Pack Street: Charlie offers herself up (Or at least, is offered by Al and doesn't seem to mind) to be a scarf for Velvet in one gag comic, giving her a compliment as she does so.
Films — Animated
- A strange case in Arthur and the Invisibles, where the Minimoy King's royal apparel includes a (quite living) white ferret-like creature clinging to him to simulate a long beard.
- Guy from The Croods wears his pet sloth Belt as Exactly What It Says on the Tin. The sequel introduces another accessorized sloth (Sash), as well as that Gran's "hair" is actually a living, gliding creature, Wigasus.
- Frozen went through loads of character designs in its Development Hell, one even giving Elsa a coat of live ermines◊.
- Enkefru Stengelføhn-Glad of Pinchcliffe Grand Prix wears a fox around her neck which is obviously alive enough to bob its head in accord to the music.
- The Thief and the Cobbler has a scene where the Thief sneaks across a giant fur blanket to steal the princess's things. The blanket turns out to be made from live wolves, who aren't happy about the intruder.
Films — Live-Action
- Ghostbusters II has a freaky scene where the evil slime terrorizes New York, and one poor lady in a fur coat steps into the slime and has the coat reanimate, turning into a pack of pissed-off minks.
- Hellzapoppin': During the chaotic performance of Jeff's revue, Mrs. Rand notices her fur stole has fallen to the floor and asks her husband to pick it up for. He reaches down and picks a Pekingese that escaped from the stage and places it around her neck. She wears it for several seconds before noticing.
- Munster Go Home: The Munsters are traveling by ship to England to see a castle they inherited. Grandpa Munster accidentally turns into a wolf (having mistaken wolf pills for seasick pills) and is worn by Lily to get through customs when he hasn't changed back yet.
Literature
- Discworld: In Maskerade, Nanny Ogg takes her cat Greebo to the opera and wears him around her neck. Someone later comments that her fur stole is eating someone's food in another seat.
Nanny: I happen to believe in beauty without cruelty.
- In the poem "Warmhearted" from Falling Up (as quoted above), animal activist Beatrice Bright wears a fox around her neck, which the narrator says is actually a living fox and not a faux fur garment.
- Myth Adventures: In Myth-Quoted, one of the Tipp campaign managers wears a fur coat that's actually a bunch of living rodents. She insists they're loyal to her when M.Y.T.H. Inc. speculates that they might be the ones leaking candidates' dirty laundry to the press.
- Outbound Flight: In Survivor's Quest, the Geroons come aboard the Chaf Envoy wearing furs. When they reveal themselves as the planet-looting Vagaari, they remove stasis devices from the furs, which come to life as vicious animals that the Vagaari promptly sic on the Chiss delegation.
- Vorkosigan Saga: In Brothers in Arms, there's a live, genetically engineered fur blanket that "feeds" on light, so it doesn't even have a head, and appears nonliving until it's touched. Knowing that it's alive ends up being a plot point.
- In West of Eden, the Yilanè use a fur-bearing animal as a cloak. One spin-off, set during a particularly bad cold snap, has one lament "We can't breed our cloaks fast enough!"
Live-Action TV
- Not seen but joked about in an episode of The Golden Girls. The ladies decide to start up a business where they breed minks for fur. Dorothy mentions some surprise that Friend to All Living Things Rose was OK with it. When Rose asks if the minks really have to be killed, Sophia quickly snaps, "No, Rose, many women like wearing coats that urinate!"
Puppet Shows
- Dinosaurs: In "Slave to Fashion", the teenage girl Charlene gets a coat which is a real mink-like creature. The coat is very snooty and starts telling her which friends are not high-class enough to be friends of "theirs". In the end Charlene decides some fashions just aren't worth it.
- Mongrels: In one episode Nelson's dead girlfriend gets turned into a fox fur stole and while trying to steal her back Nelson winds up taking the stole's place for a while.
Tabletop Games
- GURPS Bio-Tech has the "skullcat" as an example of a bio-gadget. It's a feline genetically engineered into a hat. Its body temperature keeps your head warm, and it purrs soothingly.
- Pathfinder: The goddess Kazutal is usually depicted wearing a live jaguar like a shawl.
Theatre
- A number of trainers show such costumes made of ferrets, often with a fox collar. Just search for "ferret coat" on YouTube.
Theme Parks
- Disney Theme Parks: In one scene from Country Bear Jamboree, Henry wears a coonskin cap that's actually a live raccoon named Sammy.
Video Games
- Brawl Stars: Lola owns a sentient fox scarf. In her other skins, it can become a Hover Board, an alien snake, a coyote and an Asian Fox Spirit.
- In Elite Beat Agents, when the Carrington sisters are shipwrecked, one of the things they get the animals to do are wrap around their shoulders to keep them warm.
- Papa Louie Arcade: Crystal has a pet mink named Cannoli around her neck.
Visual Novels
- Prison warden Patricia Roland from Ace Attorney Investigations 2 wears a live silver fox around her neck which acts as an Expressive Accessory. Ends up Exaggerated when her Villainous Breakdown reveals that her large "fur coat" is also composed entirely of live foxes, who all simultaneously decide to jump off her body at once.
Webcomics
- In Kevin & Kell:
- Bruno was introduced as a wolf wearing what looked like a sheepskin draped over his back. It later turned out the "skin" was a live sheep, his girlfriend Corrie.
- Kell's mother, Elanor, tries day trading, and makes enough to actually pay minks to be a coat for her. She later buys a bad stock and trades it for a Bankruptcy Barrel.
- In Legend of Bill, the inept Barbarian Hero comes up with this arrangement while stuck in the high mountains without a blanket. Unfortunately, the animals mutiny as they are offended by the smell.
- In Something*Positive, after Choo-Choo Bear peed on Davan's scarf, he still finds a wearable pink scarf, one with a face.
- In a set of TwoKinds spinoff comics, a half-dragon girl wears her half-brother as living clothes.
Western Animation
- 101 Dalmatians: The Series: Cruella sometimes wears her ferret, Scorch, around her neck like a boa.
- In Catwoman's first appearance in Batman: The Animated Series, she is carrying her cat, Isis, around her neck, to help in one of her thefts.
- In an older Donald Duck cartoon, a bear trying to escape hunters disguises himself as the bearskin rug in a hunter (Donald, natch)'s cabin. After Donald finally leaves, it turns out the original rug, which the bear had stuffed in a trunk, was another bear who had the idea first.
- In the Looney Tunes short "The Unbearable Bear", a bear cop presents his wife a live fox (who'd been trying to rob their house) around her neck, in order to cheer her up after he'd woken her up trying to catch the robber. When the fox starts to come to, the cop hits him on the head to knock him out again.
- In the Merrie Melodies cartoon "Fox Pop" (1942), a fox overhears a radio announcement that fox furs are fashionable that season. The fox immediately imagines a woman wearing him, wrapped (alive) around her neck.
- OK K.O.! Let's Be Heroes: One of the minor characters, Ted Viking, wears a talking fox scarf named Foxy around his neck.
- In the Phineas and Ferb episode "Run Run Away", Candace imagines herself being a model, and we see a shot of her in Fashion Magazines, including one where she is wearing a white cat around her neck.
- In one The Pink Panther cartoon, the Panther, having blow-dried his fur fluffy, crashes a banquet by letting himself be worn as a stole.
- The Simpsons has a "Treehouse of Horror" segment that parodies The Island of Doctor Moreau, where Dr. Hibbert transforms several characters into animals. One scene has him wearing a fox around his neck, which is actually a transformed Mr. Burns.
- In The Smurfs episode "Gargamel's Sweetheart", Evelyn the witch wears her pet weasel around her neck like a stole.
- Tiny Toon Adventures:
- In the episode, "Prom-ise Her Anything", Elmyra wears Furrball as a sash as part of her prom outfit.
- In the short, "Fur-Gone Conclusion" from the episode, "Rainy Daze", Babs, as Buffy Vanderbunny, wears a Baby Seal as a sash in order to save him from being skinned alive by Gotcha Grabmore. She even tells her that wearing live animals is the latest fashion.
Real Life
- Apparently Ragdoll cats are so docile, they make fine scarves.
