Run by Daisy Whitney at daisywhitney.com

Note: The BookChick is pleased to welcome young adult author Daniel Nayeri to the site! Here’s his guest post on EVIL PETS.

by Daniel Nayeri, author of “Another Faust”

Okay, so, as you might know, there’s a character in “Another Faust” named Madame Vileroy, and she’s the devil. Or at least *a* devil. Anyway, we wanted her to be extremely eeeevil. And this got me thinking about villains, and more specifically, villains’ pets.

The pets or little sidekicks that villains keep around them can be a great help in emphasizing their vile nature, provide a bouncing board for dialogue (“Yes, Poopsie, our plan is going purrfectly!”) or they can add comic relief. For example Doctor Claw ends every episode of “Inspector Gadget” by saying, “Next time, Gadget!” But the real evil part is that fat black cat he lovingly pets. And remember Gargamel’s cat in “The Smurfs?” And the stepmother’s cat in “Cinderella?”

(Bookchick note: yes, yes, yes, I remember all these evil pets!)

Black cats may be overdone, but quite a few fantasy villains have baby dragons skulking around. A brilliant recent entry was Mrs. Coulter’s golden monkey in “The Golden Compass”—that thing did wonders for her viciousness. The Wicked Witch of the West had flying monkeys, which seem to be in turns hilarious and horrifying (lot of people seemed to find the flying monkeys funny—don’t know why, prolly the hats).

On the comedy side, the wizard Howl has Calcifer, a sarcastic fire demon (I contend that Howl is the main antagonist for much of Sophie’s first adventure in “Howl’s Moving Castle”). Doctor Evil has Mini Me, Bowser has Baby Bowser (or even better, the Koopa Kids), and The Grinch has a doe-eyed puppy.

For me, Buddy the Dummy was always the pet that our Madame Vileroy kept around, and eventually gave to Christian. The way she treats him were, to me, the most villainous parts of Vileroy’s character, and probably the reason Buddy was always my favorite.

But that brings me to my question: What is YOUR favorite villain pet? Evil, creepy or funny. Doesn’t matter. As for me, the Joker’s smiling fish would be high on the list as would Frankstein’s Cat (if only for that one lonely tooth, dawww…)