Delcatty

Thirty-two kilos and six hundred grams of cat. At one metre and ten centimetres tall, it weighs as much as six or seven domestic cats put together, and yet the category assigned to it by the Hoenn Pokédex is Classy Cat Pokémon.

It has no home. It sleeps wherever it feels like without keeping its nest in one place, and eats and sleeps whenever it happens to fancy it, so it has no known regular habits. If another Pokémon comes near while it’s asleep, it doesn’t start a fight: it gets up and moves somewhere else. The only things that genuinely upset it are dirt, which it can’t stand, and the state of its own coat, which it grooms as soon as it finds somewhere it feels comfortable. That mass of soft fur explains why it’s so popular with female Trainers.

It closes out a two-stage line. Skitty evolves with a Moon Stone, and that’s where it ends: no third stage, no alternate form and no regional variant. The change is more about bearing than muscle — it loses the round kitten’s head and gains a purple fur collar, the same purple as its ears and tail, giving it the air of a show animal.

The spread of its 400 points leaves little room to work with: 70 HP, 65 Attack, 65 Defense, 55 in both special stats and 90 Speed. It’s fast for something that hits as weakly as it does, which is the worst place to be. With 65 Attack, Double-Edge and its 120 power are the only way to deal any real damage, and the recoil comes out of a 70-HP body with no way to heal itself.

Of its three Abilities, the one that decides everything is Normalize: it turns absolutely everything it uses into the Normal type, and since Generation VII, the converted moves hit a little harder. The price is steep. Shadow Ball, Ice Beam and Play Rough stop covering anything, because they end up running into Steel- and Rock-type resistances and the immunity of Ghost types. What it does gain is Thunder Wave converted to Normal, which can paralyse Ground types that would normally ignore it. Cute Charm can infatuate anything that makes contact with it, and Wonder Skin, its Hidden Ability, makes it harder for status moves to affect it.

As a pure Normal type, it has no offensive advantage, only an immunity to Ghost and a weakness to Fighting. It has a use in a normal playthrough and in short Doubles battles: Fake Out to make the opponent flinch on the first turn, Heal Bell to clear status conditions from the whole team, and Facade, which doubles in power if Delcatty itself is poisoned or burned. Outside that, any physical attacker with its Speed takes it down in two turns.

It belongs to the Field and Fairy Egg Groups, two of the most populated, so finding it a partner is no trouble. The gender ratio is heavily skewed: 75 % are female, and one in four is male. Its 15 incubation cycles work out at roughly 4080 steps, an average figure on the shorter side.

Evolution doesn’t depend on level or friendship: use a Moon Stone on Skitty at any time. It’s worth thinking about, because everything Delcatty knows is already available at level 1 and it learns nothing new by levelling up; anything Skitty hasn’t learned before using the stone has to be recovered from the Move Reminder.

In the wild, it appears in forests and often carries a Pecha Berry or a Leppa Berry. Its catch rate, 60, puts it in the awkward middle ground: it isn’t a legendary with 45, but it’s a long way from the 255 of a route Pokémon, and at full health, a Poké Ball will normally let it break free several times. It grows at the Fast rate and gives 1 point of effort in HP and 1 in Speed when defeated.