my bestie watched 2019 and texted me going mistoffolees is so hot I ship him so hard with Victoria babe is either gonna go fucking insane when I make him watch 1998 or he's gonna HATE stage show misto lmaooo
I could write 10 million essays about how cats 98 communicates things to its audience without directly stating them but one of those things i love is Misto's age.
Jacob Brent once referred to Misto as 'not an adult yet, but he's not a kitten, so he's at that in-between stage' and I love that quote, bc that's pretty much exactly what I would've guessed based off of what 98 shows us.
Firstly, most of the time when Misto is on stage, he's hanging around other adults, like in Pekes, Bustopher, & Jenny's songs. When the kittens are all grouped up together, Misto is pretty much never with them. He also walks a lot, in comparison to the obvious kitten characters doing a lot of crawling and rolling about-- he does crawl, just not as often as the others. And admittedly all the adults cats also crawl on occasion.
(Most of them at least. As far as I'm aware, the only time Tugger crawls anywhere in 98 is when he does that slutty hand-walk thing during his song)
So given all of that, one might categorize Misto as a shortish adult, but he gives his age away during Grizabella's introduction, when he notably fails to recognize her like all the adult cats do, and gets shuffled away from her like the young girls.
Another moment that gives away that he's not that old is when he messes up during Jenny's number. After he realizes Munk isn't talking about him, he gets waved off to the floor by the older queens, (basically to The Kids' Table™) and then the girls there all heckle him-- not only does he get gestured at to sit there of all places (pretty much the only time I'm aware of that Misto sits amongst the kittens) but the girls all react to him with evident familiarity that makes it obvious they're peers-- he may be older than them, but not by much.
Also given his mild reaction to how they poke at him, he might not be exactly at the top of the Kitten Pecking Order, either. He acts like an adult and gets treated as a kitten-- both by the adults and the actual kitten characters. 'In-between stage' for sure.
I realized I never posted these here on tumblr! 2020 did unspeakable things to my mind and body…I staggered away from lockdown with a whole pitch of how I would make an animated Cats adaptation. I got the whole thing up here *taps skull*—it would be Very Good. I can’t think about it too much lest I awaken my sleeping obsession…still want to finish Old Deut and Macavity one of these days.
Fun fact: The term "Jellicle Cat" is actually the cats’ mishearing of the term "Dear Little Cat" (this gives me much joy)