The Cheshire Cat, Matroskin the Cat, and Bagheera are Russians' favorite animal characters.

      26 November 2025, 13:36 Culture and Leisure

      The book service LitRes, VTB bank and recommendation service LiveLib conducted a study to find out which literary animal characters users like best. The most popular fairy-tale character turned out to be the Cheshire Cat. Respondents named the cat Matroskin as their favorite animal from Russian literature, and the panther Bagheera* as their favorite from foreign literature.

      According to the survey, the leader among fairy-tale characters was the fantastic Cheshire Cat (38%) from Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. In second and third places were also fairy-tale cats – the Learned Cat (24%) from Alexander Pushkin’s Ruslan and Lyudmila and Puss in Boots (23%) from Charles Perrault’s Mother Goose Tales.

      The top three favorite animals from Russian literature again included members of the cat family. In first place is the charming cat Matroskin (47%), the hero of Eduard Uspensky’s tale Uncle Fyodor, the Dog and the Cat. In second place is the witty and eloquent cat Behemoth (43%) from Mikhail Bulgakov’s The Master and Margarita. Rounding out the ranking is the kitten named Gav (37%) from Grigory Oster’s book of the same name.

      The ranking of favorite animals from foreign literature was topped by the graceful and wise panther Bagheera (44%) from Rudyard Kipling’s The Jungle Book. In second place was Harry Potter’s postal owl Buklya (30%) from J. K. Rowling’s novels about the boy wizard, and in third place – again a hero from The Jungle Book, the brave mongoose Rikki-Tikki-Tavi (27%).

      “Judging by the results of the study, Russians’ favorite animals are cats from fairy tales and classic works. There is not a single dog in the top — neither Sharik, nor White Bim Black Ear, nor Mumu or Kashtanka. The image of the cat in world culture is multifaceted and diverse — it can be a kind advisor endowed with insidious power and wisdom, and a servant of evil. It can balance between real life and the afterlife, be a positive character or an unclean spirit. While dogs have a different role — to be loyal friends and reliable companions. They are not distinguished by cunning and sophisticated intelligence and depend more on people than cats do,” comments Ekaterina Pisareva, editor-in-chief of the LitRes group of companies.

      “Fairy tales are one of the first forms through which children are introduced to literature. Recalling the folklorist Vladimir Propp, who emphasized their key role in the upbringing of children, I believe that fairy-tale images help form a basic understanding of social norms and lay the foundation of a generation’s cultural code. Reading fairy tales allows one to analyze life situations and the hero’s actions, understand his inner state, recognize conflicts and meanings. It is precisely the power of intellectual comprehension that distinguishes literature from other forms of creativity. In our corporate social projects we often use creative reinterpretation to help adapt perceptions of the classics and preserve Russia’s cultural heritage,” comments Dmitry Breitenbicher, member of VTB’s management board and a figure in the bank’s image TV campaign “VTB — it’s classics.”

      *The study was conducted by LitRes and VTB as part of the companies’ joint project — support for the VIII season of the literary prize “Electronic Letter – 2025,” for which the bank is the general sponsor and will award winners in two nominations: the main one, “Book of the Year,” and a new special nomination for readers, “The Voice of Classics.”

      The survey was conducted in November 2025 among more than 600 Russians aged 18–65 in cities with populations of at least 100,000. Respondents were asked to answer questions via an online form, after which the data were analyzed. In the calculations all respondents were taken as 100%, and the other data were calculated based on that number. Users were offered both preset answer options and an “Other” field. They could choose not only one but several answer options.

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