“He’s a star – he comes with his own following”: Tonic the Cat’s trainer Melissa Millett on Caught Stealing
This summer, cult filmmaker Darren Aronofsky reignited the spirit of the adrenaline-fuelled thrillers that ruled the 80s and 90s. In Caught Stealing, a whole chain reaction of calamitous events is set off when Hank Thompson (played by Austin Butler) is asked to look after his neighbour’s cat, Bud (Tonic).
The film may boast an all-star cast (Regina King, Zoë Kravitz, Vincent D’Onofrio, to name a few), but the feline McGuffin is also the main attraction. The Upcoming spoke to Tonic’s trainer, Melissa Millett, about the four-legged exceptional talent.
Hi, it’s such a pleasure to speak to you today. Congratulations, Tonic really managed to stand out in what is a great ensemble film! To start with, I would like to know, how do you know when a cat is suitable to be a film cat?
I’m looking for confidence, and food drive.
At what age can you determine this? You probably can’t just train any old cat, as the saying goes, “you can’t teach an old dog new tricks”?
Yeah, every project is different. Tonic was adopted specifically for Pet Semetery. That’s how I came across him. He was 10 months of age. And for that project, they needed a double. There was a cat named Gin, actually, that was going to be the hero. And she didn’t love to work, so she didn’t end up working, but he needed to look like her, so needed to be adult enough.
Working with kittens is obviously great, because you get them from young, and you can socialise them. But 10 months, it’s still doable. A little older, it’s still doable. The challenge becomes to socialise them to feel safe in the world, after they’ve lived their life indoors.
Speaking of Pet Semetery and now Caught Stealing, these are quite intense films. And Tonic was also in Thanksgiving. Are there perhaps special characteristics that are needed for film cats to be able to thrive in genre films like these?
Yeah, you know, what’s funny is I was really surprised when cats were non-bothered by us pretending to stab each other and things. It wasn’t like dogs that were like, “I’ll save you!” We would start to stab each other, and the cats would just lick themselves, unbothered. And we were like, “Well, that’s weird?” So that was one thing I noticed about the majority of the cats right away, they weren’t like dogs coming in to save you.
But you do need a high level of confidence, and most of all, you need a good animal coordinator to negotiate. So we negotiate what those scenes look like and say, obviously, Tonic can’t be in any of those scenes, you’re gonna have to shoot the action and then shoot the cat. But Tonic ended up being in the background of some of them, even though I said he couldn’t, because he was completely unbothered, as long as it wasn’t directed towards him, he was completely unbothered.
So, a good negotiation tactic, to make sure that the cat feels safe, and the relationship with the cat. The cat has to have a high level of confidence, but one wrong move, the cat doesn’t trust you anymore, and he’s not gonna play with you anymore. So the pressure to make sure it’s fun for him the entire time is really high for the humans.
Hopefully the cat, and in Tonic’s case, doesn’t notice, and they can just have fun.
So then, how does daily life look for Tonic when he is not shooting? I imagine he needs to be kept engaged and ready for future films that may come along.
Yeah! We live in the country, and the shop that I’m in right now is our training facility that’s in the country. But he does have to have a lot of exposure to the world and training, and wants to. Because cats – you know, the typical cat you think about, sleeping all day, that’s the level of stimulation and enrichment that they become used to. Tonic becomes used to getting a lot of stimulation and a lot of treats, and they actually really enjoy that. They’re not different from us, right? They’re the same as us. They want a lot of stimulation; they want a lot of reinforcers.
When we take that away after a movie, the cats are not happy. They want to be the centre of attention. They want the world to revolve around them. So I have to make sure that he gets a lot of that to stay happy. So I give him a lot of training sessions in here, I take him out and do a lot of training sessions in public, which always looks funny. It attracts a crowd. Like, “Why are you walking a cat? Why are you doing tricks with a cat in the middle of a department store?”
And then Tonic is a star in our live performances, so we travel and perform with him all year. That is what gives him the edge, that he performs for screaming fans, and he gets out to fairs, and he sees it all. He loves that.
Wow! Yeah, I was wondering, because I also saw him attend the premiere of Caught Stealing with the little leather jacket on. So he’s not just used to the hustle and bustle of a film set, but like the magnified version of that?
Yeah! There are variations of film cats. Some of them are good outside, some of them, you manage the environment, and they’re in quiet spaces, because that’s what cats are used to. Tonic is used to carnival rides and people screaming and hanging off carnivals and laughing and action. He doesn’t mind it at all. So when I took him down to New York, he was completely unbothered by the chaos…
But the premiere was interesting because I thought Tonic is a special cat meets a very experienced trainer. Like, I’ve been training animals for 20, or 27 years. So when I meet up with a cat that is this amazing partner, I wanted to showcase how incredible he was by having him drive onto the premiere in a mini car, because I wanted them I wanted people to see what he was, and I feel like that reflected that just perfectly.
That’s amazing! So you told us a little bit about how Tonic got involved in Pet Sematary. What did his audition process for Caught Stealing look like?
For Caught Stealing, I got an email from Darren’s team, from the UPM, and it was, “We’re looking for a cat for this production.” And what I do at that moment is I ask what the action looks like, because I’m not gonna agree for Tonic to do just anything. And when I read it, I was like, “Oh, wow, this is a lot of action!” Because I had done Pet Sematary, I know that we’re not just gonna throw the cat in the middle of a horror movie. There are a lot of tricks that you can do to separate the cat. There are split screens, there is shooting the action, and then doing inserts on the cat. There are a lot of things that you can do. You just have to make sure that you have the right team that cares about the animal, and the people you work with are everything.
So I responded and I said, ” Absolutely, I’m really interested. I just want you to know that animal welfare is number one for me because of the ethical perspective, but also, you know, I have worked for seven years, eight years with Tonic, and he’s my partner. He’s my cat, he’s my son. He means everything to me. He’s like, my life’s work. He’s everything that everybody feels with their pet, but more. And it’s important to me that he comes out of this having had fun. And if you take that perspective as well, you’re gonna get the best out of him.
Anyway, they said, “Look, we’re all in on animal welfare.” Great, we’re all on the same page. We do a Zoom meeting, so that they can get more of a conversation about what I think is possible. And then I went to New York with Tonic to audition, which is, like, amazing! I get on a plane from Toronto, we fly to New York, we go to the office, and he’s performing after all of that level of stimulation, he was still phenomenal, so…
How did you introduce him to his human co-stars? Is there something like a chemistry test between actors, whether Tonic would work well with Austin Butler?
Well, I asked about Austin previously, because what I’m looking for is somebody who’s compassionate to animals, and they can feel that. You know, when I say that an animal, I can take them to a horror set and they’ll feel unbothered by that, a lot of that, honestly, has to do with my relationship with Tonic. It’s like, he feels unbothered by it, but he knows I’ll never let anything happen to him. And I’m gonna hand him to Austin, and Austin’s gonna take him in a car without me. He needs to feel the same way about Austin that he does about me. That I have your back, and if you show the slightest bit of concern, I’m gonna take you out of here.
And I was told by Darren that Austin was going to be all in. I didn’t really research Austin, because I don’t want to be intimidated. I want to show up and look like you’re a person, I’m a person, we’re working together. Because the second I feel intimidated, I feel like it’s difficult fighting for what I need from him. But I was assured that it wasn’t going to be like that. So when we had our training session together, Austin was everything that Darren said he was. He’s absolutely that compassionate person that people say he is, which is amazing, because that’s what I needed to achieve success. Like, Tonic’s success is only as good as the people who worked with him.
Austin called him a scene stealer, and if Austin’s calling him a scene stealer, and there’s any animosity that the cat is stealing the scene, and he’s not connecting, then it doesn’t bring the best out of Tonic. So I rely on Austin so much for that performance. So we had a training session for the two of them to get to know each other, and he was a good communicator. He is caring, and they connected, and he felt that safe space with Austin like he did with me.
I’m curious about one scene that isn’t necessarily action but one of emotional distress, with Austin at the beach, where he punches the sand. Does something like that affect the cat, because Tonic doesn’t know that Austin is acting?
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Tonic wasn’t sitting next to him; that one was CG. There was absolutely very minimal CGI. He was in a lot of it, but that was one – what we did is we put the stuffed cat in that, because we knew Tonic’s not going to like Austin after sitting next to him, Austin’s punching a pillow, he’s going to be like, “I don’t like you anymore!” So that was the CGI cat. We knew in advance, and that comes down to the negotiation, we knew in advance he wasn’t going to like that.
But yeah, I did get together with the person who did the CGI afterwards. I watched the movie, and he said, “So, could you see what I did?” And I was like, “Wow!” There wasn’t a lot, but there was that, and there was a moment where he was on the train and I was like, “I don’t remember being there?” Phenomenal job on his part!
Yeah, I only noticed one scene where Tonic is hissing, where I thought that must have been digitally enhanced.
Yeah, yeah, because Tonic doesn’t actually hiss much in his day-to-day. He lets the other cat steal his food. The other cat sit on his head. He’s relatively unbothered by a lot.
Did Tonic’s behaviour ever change the way a scene was shot, apart from something that was negotiated beforehand?
I don’t think so. We trained for everything Darren envisioned. We had access to the set. We were on the set, showing him what was gonna happen. So he pretty much was all in on everything that he was supposed to do. He didn’t really ad lib much.
What are Tonic’s favourite snacks? What are the go-to things you give him to get him motivated for a scene?
I have different levels based on what he does. So everything is very particular, very thought out.
He gets Temptation treats when he’s sitting still. Because the other treats excite him too much. And he gets this Inaba chicken, it’s like soaked in chicken broth, and you open up the package and the chicken is juicy and soaked in chicken broth. That’s one of the highest.
The lickstick is the highest, but if you give them a lickstick, they start licking themselves. The Inaba chicken is pretty high.
Would Tonic ever be considered for a family film, or do you say no, he’s perfect in thrillers, in exciting genres?
I would freak out and dance for joy. My dream would be to do some sort of Homeward Bound remake with Tonic. You know, where it’s all about the cat, and the cat is the star, and yeah, some kind of family film. Cause it’s funny, Tonic performs for children, and we say, “This is Tonic from Pet Sematary, Tonic from Caught Stealing.” It would be cool to have something for the genre that he performs for.
And is there any other project coming up for Tonic?
Perhaps there is. He is being considered for another feature, a smaller role, but we find out in the next couple days. They said they were interested in another one of my cats, and I was like, “Did they not know who Tonic was?” And then they came back and they said, “Oh, we noticed Tonic was in there”, because I didn’t push him. I just said, “Here’s the cat,” and then they came back and they were like, “Oh, actually, we’re interested.” And I said, “Of course you’re interested in Tonic!”
He’s a star. He comes with his own following.
What I found really cool is that there are some A-list actors in it, and I can’t say unless we get it, but they said that the director had called around and found out that Tonic was a star, and I’m like, “How cool is that? Hollywood’s talking about Tonic!” So I hope he gets that.
Yeah! Fingers crossed! I wish you and Tonic good luck!
Thank you!
Selina Sondermann
Caught Stealing is now available to buy or rent at home.
Watch the trailer for Caught Stealing here:
Facebook
Twitter
Instagram
YouTube
RSS