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The following FAQ entries may contain spoilers. Only the biggest ones (if any) will be covered with spoiler tags. Spoiler tags have been used sparingly in order to make the page more readable.
Cat People is based on The Bagheeta, a short story by Val Lewton. The Bagheeta first appeared in print in the July 1930 issue of Weird Tales magazine. It is the story of a young man of the Caucasus mountains in Russia, who goes into a forest to kill the legendary bagheeta, a seductress who turns into a panther and kills her lover after mating with him. For the movie, the story is reset in New York. American screenwriter DeWitt Bodeen adapted the short story for the screen. The success of Cat People inspired a sequel, The Curse of the Cat People (1944). A remake of Cat People was released in 1982.
That was obviously the story that the movie was attempting to convey. Had director Jacques Tourneur shot the panther scenes in shadow and suggestion, it could be argued that either Irena (Simone Simon) or Alice (Jane Randolph) were imagining things. The fact that Tourneur featured the panther prominently in several scenes is evidence that viewers are supposed to believe in Irena's ability to turn into a panther.
After the scene where Irena has followed Alice, a farmer is inspecting some sheep that have been recently killed. Most likely, the sheep were being kept in Central Park. There's a section of the Park that is known as Sheep's Meadow. Sheep were kept there until the 1950s. They roamed free, grazed on the grass, and had their own sheepherder.
Dr Judd (Tom Conway) forgot his cane on purpose so that he could unlock the apartment door (and leave it unlocked) and, therefore, get back into the apartment in order to wait for Irena.
In the final scenes, Irena returns to the Zoo and opens the panther's cage with the key she took earlier from the caretaker. The panther leaps at her and knocks her down. Ollie (Kent Smith) and Alice find her lying dead on the ground. Ollie says, "She never lied to us."
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