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Home / The SFF Bestiary / One Hundred Years of Cattitude: Salem and Sabrina the Teenage Witch Comment 1 Share New Share Column SFF BestiaryOne Hundred Years of Cattitude: Salem and Sabrina the Teenage Witch
Part house pet, part cursed warlock... |Published on October 19, 2026
Credit: ABC / Viacom Productions
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Credit: ABC / Viacom Productions
Sabrina the teen witch was born in comics, sharing a universe with Archie and the gang in Riverdale. She moved on to television and films, notably the series that began in 1996 and ran until 2003, starring Melissa Joan Hart and featuring her cat companion (because what’s a witch without her cat?). Salem in the comics is a ginger tabby and he doesn’t speak, but Salem in the TV series is a whole mood. In his way he is the series.
TV-Salem is the classic witch’s familiar. He’s a black cat, he’s a key player in every episode, and he never fails to express his opinion in eloquent human speech. He’s one of her mentors, a guide to the practice of witchcraft as spelled out in the great tome, The Discovery of Magic, and he’s a master of the snarky one-liner.
When we meet him in the pilot, he’s the family cat, keeping Sabrina and her two aunts company while she celebrates her sixteenth birthday plus her first day at a new school. When her aunts inform her that she’s a witch and her powers have been activated, she refuses to believe it. As she heads off to school, she says to herself, “My aunts try hard, but you have to admit they’re pretty weird.”
To which Salem replies, “You have no idea.”
Sabrina doesn’t hear that, but later in the day, he speaks to her directly. She has the classic reaction: “Did the cat just talk?”
He did indeed. But there’s a twist. Salem was not born a cat. He’s a witch like Sabrina, he’s hundreds of years old, and he’s been sentenced to a hundred years in cat form for acting out a childhood fantasy. He tried to take over the world.
He’s still trying. How can he not?
It would have been glorious. Me as the firm but just emperor of earth. Trust me—being a house pet wasn’t even plan B.
And yet here he is. In between attempts to rule everything, he’s one of Sabrina’s mainstays as she navigates the process of learning witchcraft. He’s her confidant as well as her guide, and above all, he’s her friend.
This is a constant in the black-cat-and-magic-user genre. A boy and his dog is a much-loved trope; so is a girl and her cat. Ordinary humans generally can’t handle the reality of witches and magic. Other witches have their own, sometimes inimical agendas. The cat-friend, the familiar, is the one person (or person-slash-cat) the witch can rely on to be there when she needs him.
Or mostly. She can depend on him to offer trenchant commentary, and if she makes mistakes, he’s usually the first to rub her nose in it.
Salem is an interesting combination of cat and warlock. He has a fascination with cat toys and loves fishy snacks, but he never forgets where he started. He frequently complains about being a house pet. He can’t dance, he laments; he can’t play squash. On the other hand, he’s highly portable and he gets to sleep twenty hours a day.
Part of his punishment for acting out his dreams of domination is that while he’s in cat form he has no powers. That doesn’t slow him down much. Sabrina and her aunts can be prevailed on to give him a zap here and there. He’s still a part of the Other Realm, and he knows The Discovery of Magic by heart, which is useful when Sabrina needs to find a spell in a hurry.
The TV series ran into the same issue other live-action shows have had with feline actors. Cats, as Next Generation proved before Sabrina, are not the easiest animals to train. Sabrina tackled the problem by using multiple cats for different moods, moves, and tricks—but then there was the fact that this cat had to talk.
The solution was technology. Talking Salem is an animatronic cat. He moves various parts of his body, especially the head and tail, and his mouth opens and closes as a voice actor (usually Nick Bakay) delivers his lines. He’s remarkably expressive, though there’s a visible difference between talking Salem and live-cat-running-around Salem.
It’s a little ironic that Star Trek, the show that’s all about technology, cast real cats in the ever-changing role of Spot. Sabrina, the fantasy about witches and magic, features a robot cat. Then again, the whole point of Spot is that he (she) is the android Data’s insight into friendship with organic beings. A robot Spot, however cleverly designed, would challenge viewers’ suspension of disbelief.
Spot’s job is to be a cat. Specifically non-sapient, doing cat things, interacting with sapients as a cat will. Salem plays a much larger role, starting with the fact that he’s fully sapient. Above all, he talks.
Speech for Salem, as with other witches’ familiars we’ve seen, is extremely important. Humans can only understand him if a witch casts a spell—that’s a staple of the talking-animal genre, and it features in various episodes with various complications and consequences.
The ability to speak makes up to a degree for the suppression of his magic. Maybe he can’t cast a spell, but he can tell someone else how to do it. And he can make his feelings known early, often, loudly, and at length. icon-paragraph-end
About the Author
Judith Tarr
Judith Tarr has written over forty novels, many of which have been published as ebooks, as well as numerous shorter works of fiction and nonfiction, including a primer for writers who want to write about horses: Writing Horses: The Fine Art of Getting It Right. She has a Patreon, in which she shares nonfiction, fiction, and horse and cat stories. She lives near Tucson, Arizona, with a herd of Lipizzans, a clowder of cats, and a pair of Very Good Dogs. Learn More About Judith black cats cats nostalgia Sabrina the Teenage Witch SFF Bestiary Witches Subscribe Connect with Login I allow to create an account When you login first time using a Social Login button, we collect your account public profile information shared by Social Login provider, based on your privacy settings. We also get your email address to automatically create an account for you in our website. Once your account is created, you'll be logged-in to this account. DisagreeAgree Connect with I allow to create an account When you login first time using a Social Login button, we collect your account public profile information shared by Social Login provider, based on your privacy settings. We also get your email address to automatically create an account for you in our website. Once your account is created, you'll be logged-in to this account. DisagreeAgree 1 Comment Oldest Newest Most Voted
Tiro
5 hours ago
I’m not going to lie, learning that Ms Kiernan Shipka was allergic to cats and that the role of Salem would therefore be minimised in THE CHILLING ADVENTURES OF SABRINA made me mentally add “… and if we brought in an animatronic that thing would OWN us.”
On an equally-serious note, as a cocktail of Evil genius, teddy bear, yammering ninny and mean girl Salem Saberhagen really was the quintessential incarnation of Cat, eh?