Last week, I found a very young kitten on my daily cemetery walk.

I couldn't just leave her there. So now I've got a new cat, Miss Marple, who's still making friends with Phryne Fisher, Nick and Nora Charles, my other kitties.

Miss Marple may be teeny-tiny, but she's got a set of lungs on her to rival Aretha Franklin; every moment I'm not actively holding her, she's screaming. And no amount of calm assurances will appease her. Like her namesake, she's nosy and stubborn to a fault.

So in Marple's honor, here are a few of the best talking cats in film, TV and fiction:

9. SYLVESTER ("Looney Tunes"). "Sufferin' succotash!" The tuxedo feline with a spluttering speech impediment courtesy of Mel Blanc is as known for concocting plans to eat Tweety Bird as he is for his lisp. He has the distinction of dying more often than any other "Looney Tunes" character and can boast three Academy Awards under his (non-existent) belt.

8. BINX ("Hocus Pocus"). The ill-fated Thackery Binx was once a teenage boy who fell foul of the witchy Sanderson sisters. While trying to save his little sister from their life-sucking clutches, he ended up transformed into an immortal black cat. Binx befriends Dani Dennison and helps destroy the Sandersons for good in this Halloween mainstay, breaking his curse in the process and dying peacefully to be reunited with his sister, Emily. How bittersweet.

7. THE CAT ("Red Dwarf"). The humanoid Cat (Danny John-Jules) is an evolved descendant of a housecat that the chicken soup machine repairman Dave Lister smuggled aboard the spaceship Red Dwarf in this gonzo British sci-fi series. A flamboyant dresser, Cat only really cares about eating, sleeping and admiring himself — proof that 3 million years of evolution won't change a cat at a fundamental level.

6. THE CHESHIRE CAT ("Alice in Wonderland"). A feline who really needs no introduction. His signature smile and cryptic conversations have been immortalized in Disney merchandise and he's been voiced by the wonderfully sardonic Stephen Fry. But did you know he wasn't created by Lewis Carroll? "Grinning like a Cheshire cat" is a phrase that pre-dates the "Alice" novels; Carroll just took the popular simile and built a character around it. Cue the flying star and musical riff: The more you knoooow.

5. MEOWTH ("Pokémon"). The third member of the bungling, villainous Team Rocket, Meowth is unusual for a Pokémon in that he can walk and talk like a human. Physically he resembles a Siamese; in the English dub of the anime he has an inexplicable Brooklyn accent. Alongside fellow criminals Jessie and James, Meowth is usually a comedic character who gets into goofy scrapes before "BLASTING OFF!" to escape.

4. HOBBES ("Calvin & Hobbes"). A tuna-loving anthropomorphic tiger to Calvin and a cute stuffed animal to everyone else, Hobbes — named for the philosopher Thomas Hobbes — is usually the rational straightman to his wild 6-year-old BFF. Hobbes knows how to rock a good scarf and is always down for a rousing game of Calvinball or trip in a time machine. If only all stuffed animals/Bengal tigers were as much fun.

3. GREEBO AND MAURICE (Terry Pratchett's "Discworld"). So I'm cheating a little here: Greebo — the beloved pet of witch Nanny Ogg, winner of countless back alley skirmishes and father of the Ramtops' entire feline population, covered in scars and smelling to high heaven — can only speak when he's in his piratical human form. But he's an iconic tomcat, sweet to his owner and a hellion to everyone else.

Maurice, on the other hand, can talk thanks to eating an intelligent rat (who became sentient due to magic). A conman — concat? — who works alongside a clan of sentient rats to bilk towns in pied piper schemes, Maurice is such a good boy that he offers up one of his nine lives to the Death of Rats to save the albino rat Dangerous Beans.

2. LUNA AND ARTEMIS ("Sailor Moon"). The kitty advisors to Sailor Moon and Sailor Venus respectively in the ultimate shojo series, Luna (the black female) and Artemis (the white male) have cresent moons on their foreheads, can turn into humans when necessary and are actually aliens from a planet called Mau. They can also materialize special weapons when monsters attack, which just goes to show that a cat can be a magical girl's best friend.

1. SALEM ("Sabrina the Teenage Witch"). "Dogs guard. Cats watch — and judge." Every witch needs a black cat, and the snarky, self-absorbed Salem Saberhagen is the black cat all others aspire to be. The best thing about the ABC/WB sitcom, he's usually portrayed as a somewhat goofy-looking animatronic puppet and always has a scathing quip at the ready. In recent years he's been embraced by millennials as a Voice for the Generation, and there's a plethora of Salem supercut videos on YouTube — a perfect way to kill a half hour or two, if you ask me.

• ANGIE BARRY is a page designer and columnist for The Times. To suggest future topics for The B-List, which covers pop culture, history and literature, contact her at abarry@shawmedia.com.