Francis

Francis is the main protagonist of the Felidae book series, comic and film.

He is a domestic cat living with his human Gustav.

Due to his exceptional intelligence and deductive mind, he is often involved in solving murder cases in the animal community: by his own admission, such activity is due to personal morality and instinctive curiosity.

During the investigations Francis often faces the damage committed by humans on nature, animals, and other humans.

This often leads to Francis`s own moral and philosophical interpretations of the horror he witnesses.

By the time of Das Duel, he is already an aged cat, while in Schandtat, he is said to be 17 years old.

Appearance:[]

In the movie, Francis is portrayed as a black and white cat with bluish tinge, while in the books, he was never clearly described, due the fact that the books are written in the first person point of view.

It can be guessed that Francis possesses a black and white coloration, since in the books Junior, who is described as being almost identical to Francis (in Cave Canem) and to Francis`s father (in Schandtat), is said to have black and white fur. (From movie depiction).

Many fans also speculate that he could be orange pelted because of the original cover of the first book, Felidae.

However, the cover possibly features Claudandus due to "human-like" eyes that Claudandus was mentioned to have at one point.

It is also worth noting that in European literature book covers are sometimes only loosely based on book descriptions.

However, an alternate appearance is presented in the Felidae comic.

In this adaption Francis indeed has an orange/cream pelt, retaining the facial marks of the movie.

Personality:[]

Francis possesses a pessimist mentality with great tenacity and morality, condemning the actions of many of the killers he had to face.

This makes him a very complex character.

Francis also has a complex view of right and wrong.

During investigations he often attempts to understand the mentality of the murderers and despite condemning their actions, Francis often pities when a creature is turned into a monster by human actions or the harshness of fate.

Francis is a very smart and cultured cat, very different from many other cats.

He`s involved in many adventures, because of his uncontrollable curiosity and desire to solve cases of murder that affect the cat community.

Francis exhibits an exceptional intuition and intelligence that enables him to solve complicated cases to reveal the killer or killers.

He often shows witty moments of hilarity even when facing danger.

Francis does not condone killing, but will kill to save his own life.

He doesn't hold back from personally facing the killer and has pointed out how a true detective should ever have "sharp claws".

In addition to his deductive investigative skills, Francis often receives help from mysterious dreams that provide direct and/or indirect clues to solve cases.

The reason and the origin of these dreams are never clearly explained and remains a mystery for Francis himself.

Biography:[]

Childhood And First Years:[]

The childhood and the first years of Francis are revealed in the novel Schandtat that was never translated into English and that includes a number of flashbacks, narrating the events of Francis`s youth.

His mother was a stray she cat that mated with a black and white unnamed tom.

Francis`s father makes only one visit before keeping on his solitary life.

Francis`s mother finds it hard to feed her kits and has to steal food from the humans.

A hunting party search and find the cats and Francis`s mother, brother, and sisters are all killed.

Only young Francis managed to survive by falling into an empty well, where he finds an underground community of intellectual cats and Francis establishes a special relationship with Eloi, a Siamese cat that is both a father figure and a teacher to him.

After some time, Francis mates for the first time and then a number of mysterious murders occurs.

An inexperienced Francis wasn't able to solve his first case but managed to survive; however, the mysteries of the past are eventually resolved at the present time.

First Adventure (Novel And Movie):[]

Francis first appears when he moves into the new neighborhood from his previous home due to his owner, Gustav, who works writing romance articles in magazines, so whenever Gustav gets writer`s block or wants inspiration, they move.

Francis meets Bluebeard and also finds a nasty surprise in his back garden: Sascha, a victim of the killings was apparently killed by a 'can-opener', or human, according to Bluebeard.

His new friend reveals that other cats were also killed recently.

Driven by curiosity and a sense of morality and pity for the victims, Francis starts to investigate with the help of Bluebeard.

After having found the body of another victim, Deep Purple, he realizes that the victims were all caught before mating.

In one of the houses in the new neighborhood Francis discovers a sect of cats led by Joker, worshiping the prophet Claudandus.

Francis is chased from the scene and meets a blind female cat named Felicity who gives him more information.

However, after meeting Pascal, an old cat and a friend of Bluebeard`s who uses his owner`s computer to list the cats in the neighborhood, which he intends to use to help find the killer, Francis returns to Felicity only to find her murdered.

The investigations are then influenced by a number of factors as the disappearance of Joker (later revealed to be killed by a still alive Claudandus on his own will), the discovery of Jesaja who had been taking care of the dead bodies for years and years, revealing that the number of victims was larger that anyone estimated, and the meeting with the beautiful she-cat Nhozemphtekh that was part of the breed selected by Claudandus himself.

It's also revealed that the old house that Francis and Gustav had moved in was originally a laboratory for the great professor Preterius, a scientist who was determined to create a skin bonding adhesive, using cats as his test subjects; these experiments are revealed to have awful side effects.

Finally Francis finds out the truth behind the killer who turns out to be the murderous Claudandus who took the new name, "Pascal", to disguise himself.

He was one of the many cats tortured in the scientific laboratory of doctor Preterius years ago, but he managed to escape, killing Preterius and freeing the other cats, including Bluebeard and Felicity.

Then for years Claudandus had kept selecting and breeding the cats of the city to create the "Felidae", a "new and old" breed that resembles the ancient Egyptian cats.

In order to achieve the purity of the breed, it was of primary importance for him to prevent mating`s that could result in an alteration of the "Felidae", so he had been killing cats that attempted to mate with the cats of the new breed.

Knowing he was close to die due to health issues, Claudandus had left clues to Francis, such as letting him meet and mate with Nhozemphtekh to make him fascinated by such a breed, and finally asks Francis to take his place and continue the Felidae project.

Francis, realizing how the search of a racial purity had caused so much deaths and suffering, rather than accepting Claudandus`s offer, proceeds to eliminate the program from the computer causing Claudandus`s rage.

After a grueling fight, Claudandus is killed when Francis rips him down his abdomen, spilling his organs out.

He dies and his owner`s house burns to the ground due to the computer monitor falling and bursting into flames.

In the movie, Francis escapes with a heavily injured Bluebeard who was attacked and almost killed by Claudandus, while in the the book, Bluebeard never got involved in the last fight and was not wounded.

Felidae On The Road:[]

After the surprising love affair of Gustav with a woman, Francis decides to escape when the woman keeps clashing with Francis and making his life almost impossible to bear; his decision is strengthened by the discovery that the woman planned to castrate him.

The cat runs away and after a meeting with a community of blind cats in sewers (initially violent), he discovers a series of mass murders in the countryside around the city.

Francis starts to investigate in the woods, initially focusing on the report of the strange pair of a cat and a dog that became obscure friends.

He meets a number of characters such as Ambrosius, a smart but stuttering cat that offers his help, Mandrake, an attractive wild she cat that mates with Francis, and a lynx that almost kills Francis.

With the development of the plot and the death of a number of characters Francis discovers that the deaths were caused by the community of wild she cats that live in the wood.

A species was reintroduced by men alongside the lynx, but while the lynxes reduced their number or moved away, the wild cats rallied together after the death of all the males due to illness.

It`s revealed that Ambrosius actually tried to help them, which only fueled their anger and despair, causing the wild she cats to perform mass killings of domestic cats and even cannibalism in order to survive at a wild nature that was no longer suited to them.

After the death of Ambrosius by the claws of the same she cats, they decide to move away and leave the woods trying to reach Scandinavia while Francis is almost killed by bullets of a woman that was aware of the danger posed by the rogue wild cats.

In the end Francis recovers and returns home after the accidental death of the woman that threatened the tomcat`s male hood.

Return At Home (Before Cave Canem):[]

An year before the events of Cave Canem, Francis mated with a stray she cat without meeting her again after.

She gave birth to a litter of four kits, but cold winter took away the life of one of them, another was killed by a truck, while the mother died because of an infection.

Apart an unnamed sibling, whose fate is unknown, the only confirmed survived kit was Junior that decided to search for his father.

Trivia:[]

Francis is an acculturate reader and a connoisseur of human culture and often quotes real or fictional humans from books, TV shows, etc.
According to him, Francis`s favorite human philosopher is Schopenhauer, even it seems that Francis doesn't fully behave according to the dictates of the philosopher.
Francis is also known to surf on Internet.

In the seventh book, his personal e-mail is said to be "junior89@web.

Com".

Being an un-castrated tom, Francis is known to have had many lovers, siring at least a hundred of kits.

While Francis`s behavior toward females is polite and well-mannered, it follows natural instincts rather than human behavior and he kept no relationship or contact with the females he mated with.

Only one of his children is known to have met him (Junior) while toward his last years Francis established a more stable and human-like effective relationship with Sancta.

In the English dub of the film, his voice actor is unknown but is thought to be John Hurt (other sources reports Cary Elwes, but he denied this (source)).