As candidates for the protagonist of a post-apocalyptic power fantasy go, feral cats (ginger, no less) are an unlikely pick. With no opposable thumbs, aiming a gun will prove a challenge, and what feline could hope to outrun, say, a band of Mad Max-style villains racing scrapheap muscle cars? Stray, however, presents a different sort of end-of-world vision, a city slum abandoned by humans and instead inhabited by their bipedal robot servants, who dutifully sweep the streets and weed and water the flowerbeds. In this context, the vagrant cat proves a potent cipher. In the dense and warren-like subterranean slums, manoeuvrability and the capacity to lithely slip through rusty railings are far more valuable assets than raw animal strength and military-grade weapons (although a bit of firepower does eventually, inevitably, come your way).
Stray’s world is based, compellingly, on Kowloon Walled City, the claustrophobic, densely populated real-world Chinese enclave in Hong Kong that became, prior to its dismantling, a notorious hotbed of human vice. Stray’s city is ostensibly rundown, but with its Instagrammable strings of amber lanterns and geek-chic neon-lit bars, it’s a more sanitised, Pixar-esque interpretation of shantytown poverty. There is no prostitution or gambling here, only launderettes, robot buskers and backyard electronics fixers. The humans moved out and took the sin with them, apparently. What remains is a place of abandonment, not exploitation, where the robot citizens have been left behind to rust and decay among the paraphernalia of human desertion.
