Meowth

It lives where people do: streets, alleyways, dumpsters. It sleeps for most of the day and wakes at sunset, then prowls the city looking for lost coins. Pokédex entries have repeated the same obsession since Generation I — it’s drawn to shiny objects, adores round ones, and in rubbish dumps it ends up fighting over the haul with some Murkrow.

To move without being heard, it retracts the sharp claws on its paws and walks stealthily. It measures 40 centimeters and weighs 4.2 kg, so a fully grown specimen fits in a backpack. The category assigned to it, Scratch Cat Pokémon, says less than its list of wild-held items: Nugget and Quick Claw, its fixation with anything shiny turned into a game mechanic.

Its evolutionary line splits into two branches depending on where the specimen comes from. The Kanto form ends in Persian, a long, slender cat; the Galarian one, with a body partly turned to iron, ends in Perrserker. Add the Alolan variant and Gigantamax form, and the species has four different forms in total, something very few Pokémon from Generation I can claim.

290 base stat points and only one worthwhile figure: 90 Speed. The rest is what you’d expect from a four-kilo animal — 40 HP, 35 Defense, 45 Attack, and 40 and 40 in the special stats. Any neutral hit that gets through knocks it out.

What gives it a reason to exist is Technician, the Ability that boosts moves with no more than 60 power. Fake Out, learned at level 4, gets boosted, has priority, breaks a Focus Sash, and makes the opponent flinch on the way out. Thief, Bite, and Assurance also fall within the threshold. Pickup, its other regular Ability, does nothing during battle: it finds items between battles. Unnerve, its Hidden Ability, stops the opponent from eating its Berry.

Being a Normal type gives it immunity to Ghost, no resistances, and a weakness to Fighting. Offensively, it isn’t super effective against anything, so its coverage has to come from TMs: Foul Play with 95 power, U-turn to hit and switch out, and Shadow Ball on the special side. Nasty Plot, learned at level 40, is a wasted move here; with 40 Special Attack, doubling it still gets you nowhere.

In Little Cup, where everything is played at level 5 and that 90 Speed beats almost the entire format, it works as a lead: Fake Out breaks the opponent’s Focus Sash, and U-turn gets it out before it takes a hit. If it doesn’t get the knockout, it leaves. Outside that format, its role is different: at the start of a normal game, moving first against everything matters a lot, and False Swipe leaves the opponent at 1 HP for catching it.

The Field Egg Group, the most crowded in the Pokédex, so almost anything with legs can serve as a partner. The gender ratio is even, 50% female, and the 20 Egg cycles come out to about 5355 steps.

Six moves come from the Egg, and two of them justify the breeding. Hypnosis, because with 90 Speed it usually goes first, and putting something to sleep is putting something to sleep. Flail, with 140 power, can only be used once all its other moves have been used at least once, an awkward condition that gives it the strongest hit in its arsenal in return. Tail Whip, Fury Swipes, Spite, and Covet complete the list.

Evolution depends on the form. The Kanto and Galarian forms evolve at level 28, one into Persian and the other into Perrserker. The Alolan form has no fixed level: it levels up with a Friendship value of 160 or higher, a requirement that forces you to walk it around before seeing it change.

Its habitat is urban and its catch rate is 255, the highest possible. A Poké Ball at half health is usually enough, and the 58 base experience points it gives when defeated confirm that it isn’t meant to be a target for levelling anyone up. It grows at a medium rate, the most predictable growth curve of the six. The only EV it yields is 1 Speed.