Mog (Judith Kerr)

"Mog the Cat" redirects here. For the cat in the children's books by Helen Nicoll and Jan Pieńkowski, see Meg and Mog.

Mog is a fictional cat character in a series of children's books written by Judith Kerr. Other regularly occurring characters include Mr and Mrs Thomas (Mog's owners) and their two children Nicky and Debbie. In each book Mog gets into a different conundrum with a new character or event. Unusually for a popular children's series, Mog dies in the final book, 2001's Goodbye, Mog.^[1][2]

Mog on the cover of the first book

Kerr based her illustrations of the house in which the family live on her own family home in Barnes, London, and the two children were named after the middle names of her own son and daughter, Matthew and Tacy.^[3] The family name "Thomas" is from the first name of her husband, Nigel Kneale, upon whom the appearance of Mr Thomas was based.^[3]

In November 2015, the character was featured in the Christmas advert for supermarket Sainsbury's.^[4][5] In Mog's Christmas Calamity Mog accidentally starts a fire in her home after having a bad dream, but is able to alert the fire brigade (as she had called 999 when scrabbling across a phone); she is hailed a hero for saving her owners, and (after her owners' neighbours pool their resources to undo the damage she had done, in reference to Sainsbury's "Christmas is for sharing" tagline) is later given an egg as a treat. Kerr herself appears in this advert as a neighbour of the Thomas family. A special plush Mog and book version of the story were sold exclusively through Sainsbury's, with all profits being donated to Save the Children's child literacy work.^[5][6][7]

In 2019, 50 years since the publication of the first book, a new book was released titled Mog's Birthday in which a birthday party is thrown for Mog, to the cat's annoyance, but she comes to enjoy the celebration.

"Mog" is a short form of moggy, a word for a cat that is not a specific breed.

Publications

Titles include (with year of first publication):

• Mog the Forgetful Cat (1970)
• Mog's Christmas (1976)
• Mog and the Baby (1980)
• Mog in the Dark (1983)
• Mog and Me (1984)
• Mog's Family of Cats (1985)
• Mog's Amazing Birthday Caper (1986)
• Mog and Bunny (1987)
• Mog and Barnaby (also known as Look Out, Mog, 1990)
• Mog on Fox Night (1992)
• Mog in the Garden (1993)
• Mog's Kittens (1994)
• Mog and the Granny (1996)
• Mog and the Vee Ee Tee (1997)
• Mog's Bad Thing (2000)
• Goodbye, Mog (2001)
• Mog's Christmas Calamity (2015)^[4][5]
• My First Mog Books (Mog’s Family, Mog’s Day, Mog Loves, Mog Plays) (2015)
• My First Mog 123 (2017)
• Mog's Birthday (2019)

Adaptations

A 2023 play version of Mog started in April at the Birmingham Rep.

On 23 May 2023, London-based animation studio Lupus Films and Channel 4 in partnership with American film studio Universal Pictures and HarperCollins (which Lupus Films previously adapted Judith Keer's picture book The Tiger Who Came to Tea with HarperCollins) commissioned a television adaptation of the 1976 picture book Mog’s Christmas which premiered on Christmas Eve 2023 with Benedict Cumberbatch and Claire Foy starring.^[8]

Two years later in September 2025 following the success of the 2023 TV movie adaptation of Mog's Christmas, Lupus Films and Channel 4 commissioned a second sequel to Mog's Christmas called Mog's Bad Thing which is an adaptation of the 2000 picture book called. The TV movie sequel adaptation will have a theatrical UK premiere in 2026 before premiering on Channel 4 in that same year with Lupus Films appointed Serious Kids as the worldwide distributor for the sequel outside the UK.^[9]