Season 1 • Episode 26
Latest(intro narration) Night. A man is running away, he's being chased by 2 goons in a Rolls Royce. In the alley behind the Casa del Gato, the hoods (dressed as cops) get out of the car and shoot the man. Cat whales into the crooks, but they escape. Pepe asks Cat if he knows the murdered man; Cat doesn't, but the dead man had a note with Cat's name on it. Cat goes to meet Lisa, a beautiful woman around 30; she is on the 6th floor terrace of a swanky hotel. ""You got my message,"" Lisa says, as she offers Cat some champagne and they sip it together. Cat reminds his felonious friend, ""The last time you sent me a message, you cost me 50,000 pesetas."" (about $312) Cat tells her the man who delivered her message is dead; she says he was ""a dear friend"" yet seems remarkably unconcerned with his death. Cat quips her friends have a high mortality rate; and even as Lisa tells Cat of her latest $1.5-million larceny, she has drugged his champagne. When Cat wakes up, he is greeted by General Bu
T.H.E. Cat is an American action drama that aired during the 1966-1967 television season on NBC, co-sponsored by R.J. Reynolds and Lever Brothers. The series was created by Harry Julian Fink, the creator of Dirty Harry . Robert Loggia starred as the title character, Thomas Hewitt Edward Cat. T. H. E. Cat is a forerunner of television characters such as The Equalizer, who skirt the edges of the law and bring skills from earlier careers on behalf of those needing more help than the police can offer. The series preceded the 1968-1970 ABC television series It Takes a Thief, which was also about a cat burglar who used his skills for good.
Acting
Robert Loggia's smoldering intensity elevates every scene.
Production
San Francisco locations before they were cliché.
Costume
Slim black turtlenecks that defined 60s antihero style.
Creator
Harry Julian Fink
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
T.H.E. Cat arrived two years before It Takes a Thief and a full decade before The Equalizer, essentially prototyping the 'reformed criminal uses skills for good' trope that dominated 80s television.
Creator Harry Julian Fink later wrote Dirty Harry, and you can almost hear Callahan's philosophy forming in Cat's refusal to play by police rules — same city, different decades.
US
