Dead Cat

"9 lives"
Entity ID	5.100.81
Item Pool	Devil Room Devil Room Curse Room Red Chest Curse Room Devil Room
Collection Grid	(page 1, column 8, row 8) (page 1, column 18, row 4)

Dead Cat is a passive item.

Effects

• Sets Isaac's Red Heart containers to 1.
  • Does not remove Soul Hearts or Black Hearts unless picked up as ???, The Soul, Dark Judas, Tainted Judas, Tainted Forgotten, or Tainted Bethany.
  • Does not remove Bone Hearts unless picked up as The Forgotten.
• Grants 9 extra lives.
• Upon death:
  • Isaac respawns in the antecedent room with 1 Red Heart container.
  • Any active items in Isaac's possession will lose all its charges.
• The head of Guppy begins following Isaac like a familiar upon pickup but doesn't do anything.
  • When Isaac has lost all of the lives provided by this item, the dead cat familiar will disappear.
• This item belongs to the Guppy set. Collecting three items from this set will transform Isaac into Guppy.

Strategies

• In the context of a Devil Deal,
  • Taking Dead Cat with 1 or 2 heart containers won't kill Isaac because taking Dead Cat will set your health to 1, saving him from the death that would have resulted from having no heart containers.
    • This means that you should always take Dead Cat if he only has one heart container, since Isaac won't gain or lose any heart containers, essentially making it free.
  • If you plan on getting Dead Cat from a Devil Room, then Isaac can exploit the extra lives and the fact that Isaac can get it for free at one heart container to get the other Devil Deals in the current Devil Room for free. Here's the process: If Isaac doesn't already have one heart container, then make deals until he has one heart container. When Isaac has one heart container, purchase Dead Cat. After purchasing Dead Cat, you can then sacrifice a life to get another Devil Deal. Since spending Dead Cat's extra life will revive Isaac in the antecedent room, (the boss room) choose wisely because the Devil Room entrance may or may not still be there when Isaac gets revived.
    • Do note that Dead Cat is 4th on the Resurrection Item Queue, meaning that Soul of Lazarus, 1up!, and Lazarus' innate extra life will trigger instead of Dead Cat.
    • This strategy is irrelevant to The Lost because they can only take one Devil Deal from a Devil Room with The Lost.
    • This strategy is irrelevant to The Lost since they can't die from taking a Devil Deal as The Lost.

• Dying in the Boss Rush arena will revive Isaac inside the Mom boss room, allowing him to retry the Boss Rush if it's still open.
  • The Boss Rush door will only be open if the run timer is less than 20 minutes. If the run timer has passed 20 minutes, then Isaac cannot retry the Boss Rush.
  • As The Lost, failing the Boss Rush with Dead Cat on purpose is a good idea. Isaac can trade one of Dead Cat's nine lives for one of the items that appear in the start of the Boss Rush. Isaac isn't forced to initiate the Boss Rush, so he can safely leave if you don't see any items you want. Isaac isn't forced to retry the Boss Rush, so Isaac can just take the item and escape regardless if he wins or not.
    • If you aren't playing as The Lost, then failing the Boss Rush on purpose is very risky since Isaac's heart containers will be set to 1 after spending the life. This is particularly terrible because going to the next chapter will make all sources of damage that only deal half a heart of damage deal a full heart of damage instead, meaning Isaac will always die in one hit unless Isaac can generate soul hearts. You shouldn't rely on searching for soul hearts either since tinted rocks are much harder to spot in the Womb, and shops and treasure rooms don't appear anymore in this chapter
• Taking Dead Cat as Keeper will reduce his total number of health coins down to one, meaning he will die upon taking any damage at all. Unless Keeper has immediate access to a Health Up item, it is not recommended to take Dead Cat as the Keeper.

Notes

• This item can drop from Super Pride.
• Resurrection items activate in a set order. Dead Cat is 4th in this order after Soul of Lazarus, 1up!, and Lazarus' extra life.
• Picking this up as The Lost would not show the number of remaining lives, but will still function.
  • The number of remaining lives is shown unless Curse of the Unknown is in effect.
• If picked up as The Forgotten, his bone hearts are reduced but The Soul's soul hearts remain unaffected. The reverse is also true.
• Taking Dead Cat through a deal with the Devil while at one heart will still leave Isaac with one heart.
• The lives are added after the "picking up an item" animation has ended, so characters that die while the animation is playing will not be revived by this item.
• The effects of the D4, D100, Missing No., or 1- or 6-Pip Dice Room will not remove the lives granted by this item.
• Deaths do not count towards the statistics if Isaac still has extra lives.
• Additional Dead Cats can be picked up during a run, increasing lives well past 9. Only the first dead cat counts toward becoming Guppy.
• Picking up Dead Cat when the player has 0 Red Heart containers and greater than 11 Soul Hearts can cause the player to go over the normal 12 cap by up to 1 heart temporarily.
• This item counts as 9 items, so if the player is game on trying for an early portal to The Void after beating Mom, this will significantly boost the progress closer to 20 items.
• During The Beast fight losing a life will not spawn Isaac at the beginning of the room, he will instead respawn after a brief instant without losing progress.
• If Jacob and Esau take the item, only the character who takes it will be set to one heart container on pickup. But if they die, both are resurrected with one heart container.
• Dead Cat cannot appear in game while playing as Tainted Lost.
• If Tainted Jacob takes this item after being touched by Dark Esau, he will return to his previous health total upon reaching the next floor.
  • Dying as Tainted Jacob after being touched by Dark Esau and carrying this item will respawn him in the previous room in his lost form. Making it to the next floor will still return him to his previous health total. It is thus better to die in lost form with this item, to preserve your health total.
• Dying to Mother's Shadow will end the run even if more than 1 live remains.

Synergies

• Guppy's Paw: After spending a life, Isaac can convert his single heart container into 3 soul hearts, allowing him to get much more out of his nine lives.
  • This can be paired with the Converter to get Isaac back to full heart containers after dying.
  • This synergy doesn't work with characters that can't have heart containers ( ???, Tainted Judas, Dark Judas, and The Lost) for obvious reasons.
• Diplopia: Isaac gains 18 extra lives in total.
• Gold Hearts: Gives Isaac many coins when picked up, due to the amount of hearts lost.
• Suicide King: Allows Isaac to spend lives to use Suicide King to generate pickups and items.
  • Suicide King + Blank Card: Allows Isaac to repeatedly use the Suicide King.

Unlockable Achievements

• 

  The Parasite - Pick up any 2 of the following items in a single run: Bob's Rotten Head, Dead Cat, Cricket's Head, Tammy's Head.

Trivia

• The 9 lives gained by the item is a reference to a myth that cats have 9 lives.
• The Dead Cat shares the same tuxedo type bicolor fur with Guppy.

Gallery

• 

  Isaac and Dead Cat familiar.

• 

  2 Dead Cat heads around Magdalene.

Seeds

PC R96W PFVJ (Dead Cat, Guppy's Head, and Guppy's Collar all on the first floor in the Curse Room)

PC G6GE 0GFV (Curse Room adjacent to spawn, found in Red Chest along with Guppy's Paw)

PS4 Vita G6GE 0GFV (Curse Room adjacent to spawn, found in Red Chest along with Guppy's Paw)

Switch MW2N WAJC (Curse Room adjacent to spawn, found in Red Chest)

Switch KEBM C08G (Second floor Devil Room)

Bugs

Bug!	Dead Cat will grant unlimited lives to Jacob and Esau when picked up by Esau.

Bug!

If picked up as ???, Dark Judas, Tainted Judas, Tainted ???, Tainted Forgotten or Tainted Bethany while in possession of bone hearts, the health bar may become glitched. The actual health amount is correctly set to 1 soul/black heart + all bone hearts, but some of the bone hearts are incorrectly displayed as half soul hearts depending on the situation before picking up Dead Cat. The glitch is only cosmetic and will resolve itself after taking damage, picking up health or touching an item.

Pet Items

Cricket:

• Cricket's Body
• Cricket's Head

Guppy:

• Dead Cat
• Guppy's Collar
• Guppy's Eye
• Guppy's Hair Ball
• Guppy's Head
• Guppy's Paw
• Guppy's Tail
• Kid's Drawing

Tammy:

• Tammy's Head

Revival Items

Items:

• 1up!
• Ankh
• Dead Cat
• Guppy's Collar
• Inner Child
• Judas' Shadow
• Lazarus' Rags

Trinkets:

• Broken Ankh
• Missing Poster

Soul stones:

• Soul of Lazarus