Clan of the Cats
is an adventure Webcomic created by Jamie Robertson and edited by Alex Byrne and Miranda Prince, written since 1999.
The story begins with Chelsea Chattan, a perfectly ordinary young woman and a practicing Wiccan living in New York when she goes to visit her family in her hometown of Haven for her stepsister Cynthia's wedding. The stress of having to deal with her stepfather and the overly conservative Ben Monroe causes Chelsea to jump out of a second story window, whereupon she suddenly transforms into a panther, almost kills Ben, and ruins the wedding.
Turns out that Chelsea's suffering from a Hereditary Curse running in her father's family, making werecats out of every female member. To balance this out, there's also a strain of magick running in her family. These revelations were in the September 1999 comics.
The comic is notable for having had several Crossovers with other webcomics, most notably having Raven from LCD as a recurring character.
At the current the series is going through a bit of a retcon with Jamie trying to find the best way to continue the strip. Though due to illness it's very slow going (At the current her last updates were January and August of 2018), but she seems adamant in continuing the comic all the same.
And no, it has no relation to the Warrior Cats novels.
Provides examples of:
- Aborted Arc: The Dracula story never reached a resolution as Jamie decided to just scrap things and start from scratch.
- Back from the Dead: Several characters including Chelsea herself.
- Boring, but Practical: Portal sorcerers. All they can do is portal things to places, right?
- Cannot Spit It Out: Chelsea and Jubal. This line was written in 2014 and the comic started in 1999.
- Changing Clothes Is a Free Action: Justified, since Chelsea just casts a glamour of clothes.
- Chekhov's Gun: The urn of Dracula and the vampires trying to revive him are both shown in the Council of Three arc.
- Cursed with Awesome: The Chattan curse, what with the super-powered werecat forms.
- Dracula: A whole story arc dedicated to him that has lasted seven years.
- Dual Wielding: Dracula while busting out of Hell.
- Fanservice: Chelsea's clothing doesn't change along with her.
- Flat-Earth Atheist: Paul, despite having witnessed a miracle, doesn't believe Chelsea is a werecat even after seeing her change. It's also revealed that he would have grown up to be an atheist if he hadn't witnessed the miracle. However, he's still religious in a dull sort of way.
- Fur Against Fang: The Council of Three's reason for existence is to prevent fighting between vampires and werebeasts.
- Hurl It into the Sun: The alternate method to kill Dracula permanently.
- Immune to Bullets: A pureblood can only be killed by another pureblood, so of course bullets won't work.
- Involuntary Shapeshifting: Of the Hulking Out variety.
- Jerkass: Lilith does things for the heck of it. She's unreasonable and has probably some of the worst mood swings you'll ever see.
- Madness-Induced Omnivore: One of the signs of Chelsea's werecat nature breaking through is ordering a steak in a diner, then remembering when it hits her stomach that she's a vegetarian. When she gets home, she proceeds to try to tear her roommate's turkey dogs open with her bare hands.
- Mundane Solution: Dracula can only be vanquished by a Christian staking him with the true cross. Chelsea and Corrine decide to skip that and just portal his ashes into the sun, instead.
- Mugging the Monster: The first symptoms of Chelsea's curse manifest like this.
- Never Mess with Granny: Ruth, in addition to her magick, has a shotgun to defend her home from uninvited supernaturals.
- Noble Wolf: Werewolves have a dimension of their own to rule, and have a proud warrior society going on.
- Our Monsters Are Different
- Our Werebeasts Are Different: The universe contains werecreatures of every flavor, including weresquids and werespiders.
- Our Vampires Are Different: Somewhat, it the "drink each others blood" variety. Their eyes turn completely red when they go on the attack. Killing the master won't change them back and we find that after they die, they're completely destroyed, soul and all. Which becomes a problem when Chelsea's mother is turned by Dracula. Also the curse can be used on werewolves as well.
-
Schedule Slip: The series has had many hiatus' due to Jamie's illness (diabetes from the sound of it), rendering her unable to draw the comic.
- Voluntary Shapeshifting: Chelsea learns to control her transformations.
- Why Did It Have to Be Snakes?: Chelsea's mortally afraid of spiders and at one point she's scanned by a werespider telepath.
