Sassy

Sassy is the Himalayan cat who makes the journey of the title in Disney's 1993 film 'Homeward Bound: The Incredible Journey', voiced with dry, superior impatience by Sally Field. Left behind at a ranch while their family moves away, Sassy sets off across the American wilderness with two dogs — the elderly Shadow and the young, foolish Chance — to find their way home.

The film is a remake of Disney's own 'The Incredible Journey' from 1963, itself adapted from Sheila Burnford's novel, in which the cat was a Siamese named Tao and the animals made the trip in silence. Giving the animals interior voices was the significant change, and it works largely because of Sassy: the film needs somebody to point out how ridiculous the enterprise is, and a cat is the natural candidate.

Her defining sequence comes when she is swept over a waterfall and separated from the dogs, presumed lost — a genuinely upsetting stretch for a family film — before being nursed back to health by a man living alone in the woods and rejoining the group.

What the film gets right about cats, and what has kept it in circulation for three decades, is the relationship between Sassy and the dogs: she is not softened into one of them, she never stops finding them exasperating, and her loyalty is offered on her own terms and never explained.