On the evidence of his films, Hitchcock did not think much of cats. They appear quite often in the British films, and occasionally in the Hollywood ones, but usually a bit sneakily. They turn up on dinner tables (RICH AND STRANGE, MR AND MRS SMITH); their propensity to flee from danger is used to signal murders (THE LODGER, MURDER!) or to add a sense of farce to a panicking crowd (JUNO AND THE PAYCOCK: ➢ PUBLIC DISTURBANCES). They tend to be metaphorically associated with suspicious behaviour: when the Lodger sneaks out late at night, the shadow of a prowling cat behind Mrs Bunting illustrates her thoughts about the manner of his exit; when Verloc in SABOTAGE manicures himself after his successful act of sabotage, a cat in the foreground washes itself; a cat is used to signal the surreptitious roof-top manoeuvres of the cat burglar in TO CATCH A THIEF. IN RICH AND STRANGE, when Fred and Emily are rescued from their sinking ship by a Chinese junk, Emily also saves the ship's cat. Later, the Chinese give them a rice and meat meal which they find delicious. Then one of the crew pins the cat's hide on a wall and the couple realise what they have eaten. They are promptly sick.

Dogs are a very different matter. It is well known that Hitchcock liked them: not only did he personally own a number of dogs during his life, but his production company for MARNIE was named Geoffrey Stanley Inc., after his two Highland terriers. In English Hitchcock, Charles Barr includes a section ‘Hitchcock and Dogs’ in which he discusses dog appearances in, mainly, the British movies (Barr 1999: 186-9). His overall argument is that the dogs, almost always family pets, tend to operate in these films as a ‘moral touchstone’ (), as in THE PLEASURE GARDEN, where the dog identifies Levet as a villain from the latter's first appearance, and is duly rewarded at the end with the heroine's recognition of his talents: ‘How do you like that?