Was the cat real?

The Spellman household lives with a talking cat named Salem, a former power-mad warlock sentenced to living in a feline body for 50 years for plotting to take over the world.

Four trained cats were used to portray Salem in non-dialogue scenes, whilst a series of puppets were used for others. Because of the amount of special effects needed on the show, voice actor and writer Nick Bakay explained it was impossible to film in front of a live studio audience.

He said: "You know, we didn’t do that show in front of a live audience because of all the special effects, so we would do three pretty long shoot days on Wednesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays. Whenever the cat was in a scene I would check out of the writers room and go down and do the voice live on stage. There was a crew of puppeteers, and Thom Fountain was the name of the head puppeteer who also worked the mouth."