A hellcat is a special cosmetic variant of a normal cat that can be accessed after starting the Freeing Evil Dave sub-quest of Recipe for Disaster. During the quest, players must visit Evil Dave in his mother's basement. There they must use their cat to kill hell-rats, which have stolen his mother's special coloured spices which are needed to make the spicy stew to free him. After your cat catches seven rats, it will become corrupt by the demonic nature of the rats and will suddenly transform into a hellcat.[1] Alternatively, killing the hell-rat behemoth seven times will yield the same result. Kittens on the other hand, have a chance to turn into hell-kittens on any hell-rat catch.
Note that any existing hellcats may need to be placed in a menagerie, or transformed back in to an ordinary cat, in order for subsequent cats to be transformed. A hellcat can be turned back into a normal cat of the same colour it was before the conversion at any time by feeding it a bucket of milk.
A cat at any stage of growth can be a hellcat, and a cat that has become a hellcat will continue to age as normal.[2] To get an overgrown hellcat, you must either grow a regular hellcat into one (by having it following you for another 5-6 hours), or have an overgrown cat kill seven hell-rat behemoths. Players who have completed Ratcatchers can also get wily and lazy hellcats, either by using their regular wily or lazy cats to catch Hell-Rats, or by taking an overgrown hellcat to Felkrash and having her train it into a wily hellcat.
Combat stats
When fighting Hell-Rat Behemoths, the King rat, or in the Rat Pits, hellcats have the following combat stats:[3]
| Cat |  Hitpoints
|
 Attack
|
 Strength
|
Max Hit |  Defence
| |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 |
Hell-kitten | 4 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 0 |
 |
Hellcat | 6 | 4 | 3 | 1 | 0 |
 |
Overgrown hellcat | 10 | 3 | 5 | 1 | 0 |
 |
Wily hellcat | 12 | 12 | 8 | 2 | 2 |
 |
Lazy hellcat | 14 | 6 | 6 | 1 | 2 |
Training
An overgrown cat can be transformed into a wily cat (both normal and hellcat versions) by talking to Felkrash in the Port Sarim Rat Pits. They can also be given a name by speaking to her, allowing the player to input a combination of any six letters or spaces, but no numbers. Note that the name will be used for every wily and lazy cat the player has.
When the wily hellcat eventually reverts to a lazy hellcat, it can be re-trained into a wily hellcat by repeatedly catching rats (both normal and hell-rat versions). Around 15 rats have to be caught before players can expect their lazy hellcat to turn wily again.[4] If the hellcat does not seem to transform after catching rats for an extended period of time, players can pick up their lazy hellcat and re-drop it to reset the 'training timer', as otherwise it may be possible to keep training them indefinitely to no avail.
It is not possible to re-train a lazy hellcat into a wily hellcat using a ball of wool to play with them or by stroking it, only by chasing rats.[5] Likewise, having your cat chase a mouse toy will not transform it back into a wily one.[6] Lazy and wily hellcats are known to have a hidden activity level that is incremented by catching rats, which will in turn increase their catch rate as it is raised higher.[7]
Players are only allowed to have one wily or lazy hellcat out or in bank at a time, in addition to one kitten or adult cat, and as many overgrown cats as they wish. You can however have multiple lazy/wily cats by storing them in your menagerie before training another. Players can store both lazy and wily cats in their menageries. Wily hellcats will not become lazy while in a menagerie.
Dialogue
| This article on an NPC has an associated dialogue page. Click here for a transcript of possible conversations with this NPC. Click here for a list of other transcripts that this NPC speaks in. |
Changes
| Date | Changes |
|---|---|
| 4 June 2025 (Update) |
Cat chasing rats will no longer delay your character. |
| 16 May 2006 (Update) |
|
| 10 April 2006 (Update) |
The wily item was renamed from "Wiley[sic] hellcat" to "Wily hellcat". |
Trivia
- When asking an unhappy wily hellcat where it wants to go, it will say "Oh, it's a nightmare I tell you, a nightmare!" and "Look! My thumbs have gone weird!". This is a reference to 1987 British comedy film Withnail and I.
- Bob the cat makes the same reference when talking to him in Ardougne, saying "Argh! My thumbs have gone weird!".
- When shooing away a regular hellcat, the cat would say "Thank Zaros for that". This was eventually updated to instead say "Thank Zamorak for that".
References
- ^ Jagex. Mod Ash's Twitter account. 11 January 2020. Archived from the original on 11 July 2022. Mod Ash: "Looks like it's counting 7 like the wiki says, but won't do it if you already have a hellcat of some sort."
- ^ Jagex. Mod Ash's Twitter account. 16 December 2016. Archived from the original on 20 March 2023. Mod Ash: "[ if a cat changes to a hellcat, does it reset the timer for it becoming overgrown? 🤔] Doesn't look like it, no."
- ^ Jagex. Mod Ash's Twitter account. 27 January 2020. Archived from the original on 28 May 2020. Mod Ash: "[do you know the actual levels for each type of cat?] Attack, Strength, Defence, HP for each... Kitten: 1, 1, 0, 4 Grown: 4, 3, 0, 6 Overgrown: 3, 5, 0, 10 Lazy: 6, 6, 2, 14 Wily: 12, 8, 2, 12 @OSRS_Wiki"
- ^ Jagex. Mod Kieren's Twitter account. 13 April 2016. Archived from the original on 21 April 2023. Mod Kieren: "Catch successfully about 15 rats and it should turn soon :)"
- ^ Jagex. Mod Ash's Twitter account. 18 August 2022. Archived from the original on 2 March 2023. Mod Ash: "(...) as far as I can see the thing's plugged into catching vermin only, rather than stroking or playing with wool."
- ^ Jagex. Mod Ash's Twitter account. 19 December 2019. Archived from the original on 16 December 2020. Mod Ash: "[The wiki currently states the Mouse Toy "can be used to play with your cat, which can turn a lazy cat back into a wily cat". Can you verify?] I don't see any sign of it doing that to lazy cats, but the code suggests that it makes kittens and grown cats occasionally say "Meow" more and perform a 'pounce' animation at it. I don't believe it'll do anything else."
- ^ Jagex. Mod Ash's Twitter account. 20 April 2023. Archived from the original on 20 April 2023. Mod Ash: "That legacy code is deeper spaghetti than most, but it looks like they have an activity level tracker that makes you increasingly likely to succeed once it's been raised. Which your first catches would presumably have done."