This is the type of clingy pet who is so attached to their owner that they won't let their new significant other, child, pet, or whoever else the plot demands get near them. They're not an Angry Guard Dog, but they do have an Undying Loyalty and protectiveness over their owner.
A character who is on the opposing side of the animal's disdain is unlikely to be hated by other animals. It's this one pet who dislikes them for trying to "steal" their owner's attention, or for supposedly trying to take advantage of them.
There is some Truth in Television to this. Some pets are known, even as a breed or species trait, to only get attached to a select few. Cats are especially prone to this; many cat owners have experienced their cat being extremely hostile to their romantic partners, to the point of attacking them. In addition, it's pretty common for some breeds of dogs to be hostile to their owners' newborn children, as they regard the tiny, pudgy human as an intruder in their territory. One of the leading causes of dog abandonment is the dog biting at a baby. This is why if a family or family-to-be is going to get a dog, it's important to research which breeds might get freaked out by small children and infants or ask if the dog is safe around small children.
Compare to Boyfriend-Blocking Dad, My Beloved Smother, My Sister Is Off-Limits, Infant Sibling Jealousy, and Friend Versus Lover. Sub-trope of Green-Eyed Monster.
Examples:
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Advertising
- Dear Kitten: Downplayed. While the grown cat isn't jealous enough of the kitten to hate him, and in fact acts as his de facto mentor, he does at one point worry that their owners bought the kitten to replace him.
- A Hey You, Pikachu! commercial features a boy playing the game in question nonstop without giving his pet dog any attention, much to the dog's dismay.
Dog: [blows a bugle] Looking for love here!
- A 2018 Subaru commercial involves a woman whose dog hates her boyfriend. The dog is always glaring at him and trying to steal her attention from him.
Anime & Manga
- Discussed in Inubaka when Yamarin considers getting a new dog to keep her current one company, as her work has been getting busy. Teppei advises her against this because it would make her current dog jealous instead of happy. They did a test run with a stuffed animal, and sure enough, Lucky did not like seeing Yamarin cooing over the new "pet", and starts to act up (i.e. pooping and peeing all over the place) to get her attention back.
- Mametaro in Massugu ni Ikou detests his owner's Aki's boyfriend and considers him to his enemy. Mametaro is very protective of Aki.
- In a manga-only Naruto omake, Akamaru is shown to hate Kiba's new girlfriend Tamaki.
- In The Pet Girl of Sakurasou, when Sorata and Mashiro are about to share their first kiss, their kiss gets interrupted by Hikari (one of Sorata's pet stray cats) jumping on his face. Mashiro remarks that Hikari must be feeling jealous.
- In SPY×FAMILY, Short Chapter 3 shows that the family dog Bond can get quite jealous, as he shredded Anya's beloved penguin plushie when she decided to sleep with that over him. He immediately regrets it after Anya found out that it was him and told him that she hates him for it.
Bond: (Anya reading his mind) "Penguin bad. Stole Anya."
- In Wonderful Pretty Cure!, Komugi and Yuki tend to be jealous whenever their owners, Iroha and Mayu, respectively dote and/or pet other animals.
Comic Books
- In Runaways (Rainbow Rowell), Old Lace is shown to have a bitter feud with Molly's new cat, Rufus.
- One Silver Age Superman comic had Krypto feeling jealous over his master's friendship with Jimmy Olsen. Much of the book is him having a nightmare with Jimmy being disloyal to Superman and cruel to Krypto. The dog wakes up relieved, realizing that the real Jimmy is nowhere near as bad as his dream counterpart.
Comic Strips
- The Far Side: In one strip, a dog is so jealous of the new cat that it ties the cat up.
- In Footrot Flats, the Dog is insanely possessive of Wal, and will go to ridiculous lengths to interrupt any date between Wal and his girlfriend, 'Cheeky' Hobson.
- For the most part, Garfield is accepting of Jon's relationship with his girlfriend Liz, but he occasionally will stray
into clingy, jealous territory in service of a gag.
Fan Works
- The Bolt Chronicles: Played with in "The Cakes," "The Walk," "The Cameo," and "The Ship." Bolt (and in one instance Mittens and Rhino) is portrayed as disapproving of Penny's love interests, but for good reason. The dog only wants his master to have the best, and Penny normally chooses unwisely. Moreover, Bolt goes no further than registering basic disapproval, usually via dirty looks and grumbling.
Films — Animation
- DC League of Super-Pets: Krypto the dog has been with Superman since both were babies, and Superman is his only friend. When he realizes Superman is very serious about Lois and needs Krypto to give them some space, he gets very jealous, imagining in a montage that Lois will take his place. The plot of the film is kicked off by Krypto not hearing that Superman is in trouble because he's too busy binging and listening to music.
- In Hercules (1997), Hercule's horse Pegasus becomes jealous of his love interest Megara nigh instantly. As his first act after hero training, Hercules rescues snarky beauty Megara and falls in love with her. His flying steed Pegasus does not share his liking for her. During their first flight, he purposely makes it difficult for Meg, who has a fear of heights. He eventually comes around after Meg frees him from captivity and saves his master.
- In Lady and the Tramp, Lady begins to feel neglected when Jim Dear and Darling stop spending so much time with her. Jock and Trusty explain to her that Darling is expecting a new baby. Tramp overhears and tells Lady that once a baby is born, the humans will give more attention to it than to their dog, even going as far as to mistreat the dog by giving it leftover baby food instead of juicy beef, and a leaky doghouse instead of a cozy bed by the fire. Tramp even insinuates that Lady’s owners will get rid of her and quips in before he leaves, "When the baby moves in, the dog moves out". When Jim Dear and Darling's new baby is born, they go back to giving Lady attention, and Lady herself becomes both fond and very protective of the baby.
- Pinocchio (1940): Implied. Figaro the cat doesn't like Pinocchio at first. It's never revealed why, but Geppetto, the man who made Pinocchio, wonders if Figaro is jealous.
- The Secret Life of Pets: Max is a terrier adopted by a young woman and lives a happy life in the city. Then she brings home a second dog named Duke, who is large, clumsy and uncouth, and Max becomes jealous of the attention she gives him while Duke crowds him and makes him miserable. Max's plan to get rid of Duke backfires and both get lost in the streets, which sets up the main plot.
Films — Live-Action
- Garfield's jealousy of Odie is what kickstarts a majority of the events in Garfield: The Movie. After getting punished for accidentally knocking over a majority of things in Jon's house, Garfield sings about the time he used to spend together with Jon, then locks Odie out. Odie runs away, leading him to be found by Happy Chapman, a greedy TV host looking to bank in on the popularity Odie achieved from a dog show the previous day. When Garfield finds out, he sets out to rescue Odie.
- The final segment of Movie 43 features a cat who takes this trope to obscene levels, including masturbating to pictures of his owner.
- Otis from Son of the Mask didn't like Alvey Avery at first, since his original "dog house" became Alvey's room.
Literature
- Animorphs: Marco's dad gets remarried with his son's math teacher, who has a pet poodle named Euclid who hates both of them.
- In the The Berenstain Bears book "The New Kitten", Lady the dog gets jealous of Gracie the new kitten. The vet suggests stroking Lady more to rectify this.
- In Callies Kitten, Callie the cat actually has several reasons why she dislikes Celia the new baby, but one of them is the lack of attention.
- The Count of Monte Cristo: Danglars' wife has a small yippy dog that doesn't like Danglars, growling at him whenever he enters his wife's chambers. It gets punted across the room when Danglars needs to have a serious discussion with his wife.
- Dirty Bertie: In one book, Bertie gets an animatronic toy dog, Tiny, which Whiffer (the Burns family's actual dog) gets jealous of, since he feels the Burnses like it more than him.
- Played for Drama in Flawed Dogs. The showdog Psycho Poodle Cassius becomes deeply envious when his owners adopt the protagonist, a dachshund named Sam, and Cassius frames Sam for various horrifying events to get Sam kicked out, kickstarting the story.
- Discussed in Ginger Pye: The Pyes are considering adopting a dog named Ginger, but are worried that their cat, Gracie, will be jealous of him. However, they decide that she won't, since the kids weren't jealous of her when they got her.
- In Lia Geraskina's In the Land of Unlearned Lessons series, when the protagonist gets a dog, his Non-Human Sidekick cat can't help but feel jealous (even though they do eventually get along quite well). Then the family is also given a parrot, and all three of the pets begin to constantly argue which of them is the protagonist's best friend (when the protagonist himself is, they think, out of earshot).
- Noodles: In "No New Pets", Noodles's owner gets a kitten. He dislikes her, partly because her behaviours, smell, and appearance bug him, but mainly because he wants his owner to pay attention to him instead of her. However, he changes his mind when other dogs laugh at her.
- In The Perfect Present, Henry gets a dog as a present. His pet duck worries that he is being replaced, especially since he knows for a fact that Henry has always wanted a dog. However, after the duck runs away, Henry assures him that he loves both pets.
- In Socks, when the titular cat's owners bring home their new baby, Charles William, he is jealous because they are paying more attention to the baby when they used to give all their attention to him.
- In Woof Woof Story, sapient wolf Routa yells at the equally sapient carthorse Mare when she expresses envy at his and Mary's deep friendship.
"Woof, woof! (No way! Lady Mary is my lady and mine alone! Now leave! Leave!)"
"Whinny. (Y-you don't have to say it like that.)"
With a whinny Mare pulls her head from the window.
Hmph. I’m the only one my lady can hug.
Video Games
- Fate/Grand Order: Fou is completely sentient despite what his fluffy adorableness and lack of human speech suggests, so he's frequently shown getting annoyed if Fujimaru and Mash encounter another adorable creature in their travels across time.
Web Animation
- Simon's Cat: In "Double Trouble", Simon's Cat discovers a kitten as his "little brother". It's also where the actual conflict begins for the rest of the series, though he does develop a Big Brother Instinct over time.
Western Animation
- Clifford's Puppy Days:
- In "Oh, Brother", Daffodil reveals to a young mouse having Infant Sibling Jealousy that she too has been jealous of her "little brother", Clifford, since when he was first adopted, everyone fawned over him.
- In "Be My Guest", Norville the bird injures his wing and recuperates in the Howards' apartment. Clifford is jealous of all the attention Emily Elizabeth is giving Norville, such as reading him a book about birds and letting him use Clifford's blanket.
- The Disney animated short Feast features a dog who does not take kindly to his owner's new gal pal, primarily because she takes him off table scraps and puts him on normal dog food. He's actually ecstatic at first when a fight causes the two humans to break up and his master dives into junk food to heal his broken heart, but the pup soon realizes how miserable his master is without his girlfriend. Leads to a heartwarming moment when the dog engineers the two meeting again and patching things up, giving up the food he loves to make two people happy... at least until their baby is born, who is more than happy to bring back the feast of scraps.
- George of the Jungle (2007): In "Lil' Orphan Anteater", George brings home a baby anteater, which causes Shep the elephant to grow jealous of how much more attention it gets.
- The Jetsons: In "Elroy Meets Orbitty", the Jetsons adopt an alien named Orbitty, but Astro is jealous, since they are giving Orbitty more attention than him. This, in addition to Orbitty stealing Astro's stick and food, prompts Astro to run away.
- Lilo & Stitch: The Series: When Lilo & Stitch meet Experiment 254 (Named Mr. Stenchy by Lilo), it becomes adored by Lilo, while Stitch grows envious of the attention his cousin is getting. So much so that he willingly lets Gantu take Mr. Stenchy away which causes Gantu to start adoring the little creature making 625 jealous. Makes one wonder if Mr. Stenchy was also made to invoke jealousy in his fellow experiments.
- Little Princess:
- In "Can I Keep It?", Princess adopts a tadpole named Taddy. Since she fawns over him for most of her time, the existing pets Scruff and Puss become jealous and do circus tricks for attention. Then, Puss tries to steal Taddy.
- Zigzagged in "I Want My Snail", where Puss spends most of the episode trying to prove himself better than the Princess's new pet snail Speedy, though it's unstated whether this is because he's jealous, he thinks snails are a ridiculous pet, or he's just arrogant.
- One episode of The Loud House has the Loud pets getting jealous over a new dog Lana found since it was taking all the Loud kids' attention.
- Martha Speaks:
- In "The Dog Who Came to Dinner", the Lorraines pet-sit Francois, the dog of Helen's teacher Mrs. Clusky. Since he is a very needy dog, Martha (one of the Lorraines' dogs) becomes jealous of the attention Francois is getting. Thus, when he steals some cupcakes, the Lorraines think that she stole them and lied due to her jealousy.
- In "Martha Plays Favourites", Martha reveals that when Skits was a puppy, she was jealous of him because, due to his young age, the Lorraines would pay more attention to him than to her. She uses this to tell Truman in the present, who is jealous of the babies his mother babysits at her home daycare, that babies and baby animals just need more attention than older beings, and nobody is actually playing favourites.
- Played with in "Martha vs. Robot", in which Martha gets jealous, not of anyone living with the Lorraines, but of the Boxwoods' new Robot Dog Dynamo, since everyone finds him impressive. Then, when she thinks Helen will be square dancing with Dynamo (actually with Mr. Boxwood), she fears that the Lorraines are going to adopt Dynamo.
- Milly, Molly: In "Sooty", the Horrens look after an injured cat, which their cat Tom Cat becomes jealous of. He starts being a Troublesome Pet, even pooping under Molly's bed.
- The Real Ghostbusters:
- In "Victor the Happy Ghost", the Ghostbusters adopt a second pet ghost, Victor. Their existing pet ghost, Slimer, is sulky about this, even before Victor is revealed to be Evil All Along.
- In "It's a Jungle Out There", Peter says he wants a dog because they're "man's best friend". Slimer scoffs, "Why can't I be man's best friend!?".
- This is used as a major plot point in season 1 of Scooby-Doo! Mystery Incorporated. Shaggy and Velma are in a Secret Relationship because Shaggy knows his dog Scooby will be jealous of it. When Scooby learns of it, it causes a rift in their friendship.
- SpongeBob SquarePants: Discussed in "A Pal for Gary" — SpongeBob thinks Gary is jealous of his second pet, Puffy Fluffy, but actually Gary is afraid of Puffy Fluffy because the latter is secretly very aggressive.
