Catseye - Phase 1
This page is about the Phase 1 incarnation of the character. For other uses, see Catseye (disambiguation).
| Sharon Smith - Deceased | |
|---|---|
 Portrayed by Summer Glau | |
| Codename: | Catseye |
| Affiliations: | X-Men |
| Birthdate: | August 1, 1989 |
| Journal: | x_catseye |
| Player: | Retired |
Sharon Smith, better known as Catseye, was an X-Man and restaurant manager. She was killed during a mission in January 2015.
Contents
Details
Character Journal: x_catseye
Real Name: Sharon Smith (birth name Gabrielle Elizabeth Smith but legally changed to Sharon Smith)
Codename: Catseye
Aliases: n/a
First Appearance: November 11, 2004
Date of Birth: August 1, 1989
Place of Birth: New York
Citizenship: American
Relatives: Harold (father), Rebecca (mother), Evan (brother), Harrison (brother)
Education: GED from an Adult Education Center in New York City
Relationship Status: Single
Occupation: Owner and Proprietor, Deli-CAT-essen
Team Affiliation: X-Men
Biography
Childhood
When Catseye was born, she already showed signs of physical mutation - miniscule claws and a tail. When she was less than a year old, she developed the ability to change into a small purple kitten, an ability her mother attempted to hide from Catseye's father who was already upset by his daughter's 'deformities'. However, Catseye's older brother Evan was also aware of the kitten, although he did not make the connection between the cat and his baby sister.
Once Harold Smith discovered his daughter was a mutant, however, he took the small kitten from his home and abandoned her in the city during a snowstorm. After the winter, the Smiths told everyone their daughter had died during the winter.
As a small kitten, Catseye was raised by a pack of alley cats - although aging as a human, she outlived them all. Lost and confused, she was eventually found by an older lady who was only known to neighbors as "the Cat Lady". It was during these years that Catseye discovered the ability to change back to a human form, but thought of herself as a cat.
Coming To Xavier's
When the Cat Lady had a stroke and was hospitalized, her menagerie was taken by Animal Control to a shelter. It was in this shelter that Catseye shifted into her human form and one of the shelter employees called Xavier's School, due to Rahne Sinclair being a part-time employee of the shelter. Rahne and Kylun retrieved Catseye and brought her to the school.
Catseye made many friends quickly, with her guileless demeanor occasionally causing problems as she attempted to learn about human life, but more often than not endearing her to most of the mansion's residents. She became exceptionally close to many of the students, especially Rahne, Forge, Kyle Gibney and Jay Guthrie, often spending many nights sleeping in one of the boys' beds as a cat, curled up against them.
As time went on, Catseye began spending more time in human form, although she still thought of herself as a cat. Due to these longstanding habits, she refrained from using pronouns and very rarely called people by their given names, instead deciding upon her own descriptive names for them, such as "ShinyBitsBoy" for Forge, and "ManySkinsGirl" for Paige Guthrie.
Family
In the months that followed, Catseye wanted to discover what had become of the Cat Lady, and took a long journey from the school to the house she once lived in. Not finding her there, she was aided by Kylun in finding where the Cat Lady was being taken care of in a nursing home.
Later, the school was visited by Elspeth, an older woman who had been friends with the Cat Lady and had seen the small purple cat around her friend's home. She encountered Forge, and gave him an old flyer about a missing purple cat, made almost fifteen years prior by a young Evan Smith. Deciding to pursue this link, Forge spent weeks digging through public records and managed to track down Catseye's birth certificate and the current address of her family.
Catseye, however, did not take the news well. Her entire belief structure was hinged upon the reality that she was a cat who became a girl, not the other way around. Eventually she agreed to meet her family, and she went along with Forge and Kylun to meet them. However, upon walking towards their home, she noticed a Friends of Humanity sticker in the window, and promptly urged everyone to leave - but not before being seen by her brother, Evan.
Evan tracked the car's license plate back to the school, and showed up one morning claiming that the car had been in an accident. When he learned the truth about his sister, the two had a tearful, heartfelt reunion and Catseye made the choice to learn more about her family, despite her father's connections to the FoH. She learned that her mother and brother had been told that the baby (Gabrielle, by her birth name) had died, and that Harold had "taken care of things". Catseye's younger brother, Harrison, had never been told he had a sister. Over the following months, Catseye would spend more time with Evan, eventually leaving the school in the summer of 2006, to attempt to rebuild connections with her family.
The Return
In the two years that followed Catseye has met with her mother, but her younger brother and father still don't know of her existence. She has been schooled at home by Evan, but has come to realize that Evan has his own life and can't spend it constantly teaching her. BigBrother needs to go out, he needs to see his friends and while Catseye enjoys her solitude to a degree, she finds Evan's place lonely at times. She misses her humans at Xavier's very much and after discussing it with Evan has decided to return to the school to finish her education. Catseye has re-enrolled at the school as a freshman and is currently studying Biology/Life Science, Basic Math/Pre-Algebra, World History, Speech, and Visual Art.
Becoming Human
Since coming back to the school Catseye has become an enthusiastic member of the New Mutants and has been making many new friends and working to understand the concept of privacy. Jean-Paul Beaubier has been particularly involved in helping Catseye become more human (with or without her knowledge) by encouraging her to try out for the school play and making her understand that the names she gives humans instead of calling them by their given names can be hurtful. Catseye has also developed a love of driving, thanks to friends Carmilla Black and Forge. Her sense of responsibility towards her classmates skyrocketed when friend Yvette Petrovic was injured by a landmine, the catgirl remaining close to keep watch over her. After an uncomfortable (for both parties) encounter with Sarah Vale, Catseye once again talked to Jean-Paul and realized that in order to gain a person's trust she needed to tell people she was both a cat and a girl when they moved in to the school, instead of hiding it from them for the sake of napping with them in catform. She is also learning how to ride a bicycle.
In July 2009 she had an encounter with some alleycats in New York City that led her to realize she was no longer perceived as an animal by other animals- that she was seen as a human. This realization devastated the catgirl, who felt she had completely lost her identity. After three days in the woods and several encounters with friends, however, Catseye came to realize that she could not change what she was, only struggle, just as her friends were doing, with trying to fit in and understand themselves in society. For her twentieth birthday, Catseye met her brother Harrison for the first time, making her father the only member of the family who does not know of her existence.
The catgirl ended the year earning her driving license and visiting her family's home, where she watched her father from a distance and even played with him a little as a cat. It was decided that she should bide her time before introducing herself to him, to better gauge the reactions of her mother and brothers to how informing her father would affect them.
Becoming an Adult
2010 began with Catseye becoming an X-Men trainee. She also formalised her relationship with Nicholas Gleason, agreeing to 'be a couple' with him. Ever more conscious of how she was different from the other students, she focussed on her language, using personal pronouns more, and avoiding the bluntly descriptive nicknames she had been known to employ.
More and more often, she was called upon to play peacemaker in Nick's issues with Julian Keller, being one of the few people who could calm the werewolf's temper in wolf-form. It was a position she wasn't always comfortable with, but she cared deeply for Nick and wanted the best for him. When Nick disappeared after being wounded at the graduation ceremony attack, Catseye insisted on being allowed to look for him, making an agreement with Charles Xavier that she would check in regularly and ask for help if needed. She then left the school, intent on seeking out her 'mate'.
For three months Catseye followed his trail, beginning her journey by eating out of trash bins and sleeping in alleys and doorways and woods in cat form. She quickly grew tired of this, however, and started taking some casual waitressing jobs to earn money to stay in motels and eat properly. She lost the trail fairly quickly, however, and by August was back in New York with her brother, recognizing that without a trail she had no way to find Nick, and beginning to accept that she had to move on. She didn’t really feel like she could do that by returning to the mansion, however, so she stayed with Evan and his girlfriend.
In the fall of 2010, Catseye expressed a desire to go back to school to finish her high school diploma, but was persuaded to get her GED at an Adult Education Centre near her brother’s place instead. Going to an Adult Education Centre instead of a public high school really hammered the point home for her that she was no longer a child, she didn’t fit in with high schoolers anymore. Determined to close that chapter of her life once and for all and move on as an adult, she took all the extra credit courses she could and became more diligent than ever at her studies (while still maintaining her part-time job at Elpis) so that she could achieve the credits allowing her to get her GED in January 2011.
Tel Aviv and Disillusionment
After getting her diploma, Catseye requested a transfer to the Tel Aviv office of Elpis and became the Personal Assistant of the person in charge. This allowed her to do some travelling around the Middle East and Africa, which she loved (she even got used to dyeing her hair brown to attract less attention to herself.) She heard early on in her stay overseas that Nick had returned to the mansion with amnesia, but it was explained to her that in cases such as his, her presence might actually do more harm to his recovery than good. And under the circumstances, Catseye felt that returning to a Nick that didn’t know her would be too difficult for her. Plus, she liked her job and what she was doing, and didn’t want to give it up.
After several months in the Middle East, however, Catseye began to lose her enthusiasm for the tasks she was responsible for. The travelling was amazing when it happened, she loved learning about new cultures and trying new things and meeting new people… but she wanted more. At first, being a personal assistant had her feeling like part of the process of helping people, which she loved, but eventually she wanted to be more than just a little cog in a huge machine. She didn’t feel like she was *actually* helping people in need anymore, when all she seemed to be doing was keeping someone else’s schedule, taking notes in meetings, formatting reports, making travel arrangements, and making coffee. She wanted to have a say in the meetings, write the reports, to participate in the details that were written in them, instead of just formatting them.
Basically, she wanted to have a voice and to get her hands dirty, and didn’t feel like she could do that with Elpis in her current position. In fact, she realized that what she wanted was to act like an X-Man… something that had her wishing to resume her training at the mansion.
Another stumbling block to furthering her career was her lack of education- she’d gotten as far as she could with just a GED and even then, it was more her connections than high school education that got her the gig of PA, as most of the other PAs at the office had certificates in office administration. Having taken her SATs, Catseye applied to several colleges/universities in America and was further driven by her desire for personal growth when she realized she was accepted to a fair number of schools. This helped remind her that she did have other options, other paths to take in her life- she could make her life be about more than being someone’s assistant.
The Return (Again)
Feeling energized once again, she quit Elpis at the beginning of November 2011 and returned to New York. The timing worked out as she wanted to be home with Evan to help with the wedding planning he and his girlfriend were doing for Christmas nuptials, as well as being home for Thanksgiving and Christmas. She took out a month-to-month lease on a bachelor suite in District X, got a part time job working at a diner to supplement the savings she’d accrued working for Elpis, and began to resume X-Men training.
Catseye returned to the mansion in January 2012 to begin college classes at Westchester Community College in Restaurant Management. She resumed her duties as Nico's familiar and became unofficial assistant chef to the mansion's chef and nutritionist Lorna Dane, as well as one of the mansion's Residential Advisors.
Becoming a Business Owner
Catseye graduated from college in early 2013 and by July 2013 she'd made known her intention of opening a restaurant in Salem Center. Mansionites helped her decide on a deli in particular and even suggested the name Deli-CAT-essen. After the Professor helped her co-sign the loan she needed to lease a building, Marius helped her find a location and many people at the mansion helped with the renovations over the summer. Catseye was also involved in protecting the students during a field trip which led to her becoming a full member of the X-Men.
In November of 2013 Deli-CAT-essen was ready to begin hiring and Catseye set out constructing her menu in anticipation of an opening early in 2014.
The Final Years
After Deli-CAT-essen opened in 2014, Catseye found herself with little free time. The restaurant had opened with a gaggle of protesters outside and there was a constant presence of protesters at the deli on a daily basis, which left the owner feeling like she constantly needed to go above and beyond to win Salem Center over. Drained and harried, she was left with little time for socializing and withdrew into her work. She would always make time, however, for the X-Men, and didn't hesitate to join the team that traveled to Muir when it was attacked.
Catseye lost her life in a fight with Sabretooth on Muir in an attempt to protect Angelica, one of her oldest friends.
Physical Characteristics
Height: 6'0"
Weight: 160 lbs
Eyes: purple
Hair: purple
Other Features: Retractable claws on hands and feet, prehensile tail in human form
Powers
Catseye is a metamorph, shifting from a human form into a feline form. She has shown the ability to shift into a medium-sized housecat while retaining her full intelligence, although she cannot directly speak in this form. As a cat, the has the normal physical abilities of a common housecat.
Catseye has also displayed the ability to shift into a much larger feline form, similar to that of a mountain lion or cougar. In this form, her intellect is reduced to a more primitive state, and she operates primarily on instinct. Through time, she has learned to master this form and has become more adept in its use.
In human form, Catseye retains retractable claws on her fingers and toes, and her tail becomes prehensile. She also possesses acute senses of sight, hearing, and smell in all forms.
Equipment
Formerly, clothing that changed shape with her from a collar to various clothing combinations, but she mostly wears regular clothing now.
External Links
Phase 1
Trivia
Catseye's favourite possession was the pink Mini-squid Forge made for her.
Catseye owns a classic VW Beetle.
Catseye used to have her own names for everyone at the mansion, usually based on the residents' unique talents, hobbies, or quirks of their powers. Some of these names included:
Amanda: SmellyPotionsGirl, CityMagicGirl
Angel: BurningGirl
Angelo: SillyPuttyBoy
Cain: BigMan
Callie: PointyEarsGirl
Cammie: BlackBloodGirl
Clarice: GlitterGirl
Crystal: WindyGirl
Dani: BreadCookingGirl
Dori: SquirrelGirl
Doug: ComputerBoy
Evan: BigBrother
Forge: ShinyBitsBoy, BrainyButtBoy
Haller: ManyPeople, SitsOnFloor
Hank: BigBlueFur
Illiyana: SharpTongueGirl
Inez: TableBreakingGirl
Jay: BirdBoy
Jean-Paul: MisterPointyEarsBeaubier
Jenny: BadLuckGirl
Jubilee: SillySparkyGirl, BrightSparksGirl
Kevin: ShinyRoomBoy
Kyle: WarmSnugglyFriend
Laurie: SmellyGirl, PastramiBringingGirl
Lil: SillyDreamsWoman
Manuel: SneakyBadBoy
Marie-Ange: VisionGirl
Marius: MouthyBiteyBoy
Meggan: LittleFur
Moira: SadGentleHands
Morgan: WrongNamesWoman
Nathan: SoftHands
Nori: ShockyGirl
Paige: ManySkinsGirl
Rahne: RedFurFriend
Terry: ScreamingGirl
Sam: SplodeyButt
Scott: OneEye, RedEye
Yvette: SharpSkinGirl
Plots
2005
2008
2009
2010
A Betrayal of Heart (as NPC)
2012
2013
Age of Apocalypse (alternate reality version)
2015
Meta
Former Player: Mon
Player Icon Base: Summer Glau
Meta Trivia
Previously played by Willow. Played by Mon from September 2008 until May 2010, then picked up again in November 2011.
