"Drawing blood is an obsession of this lizard lady. Dressed as a nurse, her intentions can be easily questioned whether she is trying to help or hurt her patients. The huge syringe she carries with her can easily collect gallons of blood to leave the victims barely alive." a previous iteration of the official GHS website from around 2005.
catherine is one of the most prominent characters in her source, and with her source having existed for so long and with the sheer passion of its creator (naomi iwata) to continue to, even in the current year, add onto the world of gregory horror show, there's a lot to cover. a lot of this is mostly synopsis, but i do go into my personal thoughts both throughout these notes and in one big section at the end of this page. spoilers are untagged in most areas for sake of deeper analysis and explanation, as well as the show's age.
catherine's first appearance in her source is the sixth episode of the first season (the nightmare begins), which first aired according to most obscure sources on november 9, 1999. after the first guest had passed out following a spiked meal in the previous episode, he wakes up just in time for her entrance. while initially complimenting his strength in the face of such a threat as that, her actual intentions and role as yet another threat of the hotel become quickly clear as her praise trails off into talking about that huge syringe in her arms, continuing to flatline into outright dirtytalking as she goes in for his blood. however, what very well could've killed the first guest is interrupted by gregory stepping in, interrupting her and asking her to merely, and purposefully, only leave this guest on the brink of death.
this is not the last the first guest sees of her; after meeting mummy dog and mummy papa in the next episode, the two of them actually reccomend her to the guest. sure is a good thing she's a totally reputable nurse...the episode has a gregory-monologue cut-off here, and seeing as the season obviously goes on, it's a little bit of a miracle that the first guest made it out of there.
the pattern of catherine appearing twice in a row per-season continues within the second season...named the second guest...starring the second guest! who is also a young woman, noted upon by catherine after the second guest is presumably overhearing her and gregory speak. kind of on her to wander into a room full of medical equipment in such an establishment and not assume for something to happen (not really on the second guest but like come the fuck on). the second guest also narrowly misses being outright stabbed by catherine with one of those syringes. pretty impressive of her, honestly.
moving onto the next episode, which is actually meant to be an introduction of gregory's grandson, james. he ends up kind of a series stable after this. he is also the one that misleads the second guest into wandering straight into gregory and catherine, lying about an empty room, and then grabbing onto one of those syringes, as untrained children tend to do to about anything in reach. catherine's understandably upset by this. that same syringe lands itself in the floor, and when pulled out, lands at the back of gregory's head. catherine sees this as an opprotunity for, yet again, the engagement of her obsession. honestly probably one of the few scenes of her where i do actually get creeped out about it as other people do, but only because like...girl at least shove james out of the room first. he leaves on his own accord but like. girl come on.
she also makes a few more appearances within the third season, the lost train. while it is mostly focused on gregory's internal turmoil and philosophies in the same abstract way as anything else in this series, i feel like her main showoff in this season also being combined with bonsai kabuki, a character that is also focused on the psychology of desire and how it is either displayed or hidden, was a very great decision for the plotline's sake. it's an interesting combination! anyways, even somebody in that still-disconnected similarity still proves a little weak in the presense of catherine. her overpowering desire leaves him with the same fate as others. later in that episode, he's shown pale and unable to perform. skill issue honestly just get a juicebox before you go on stage man it ain't that hard
she makes a few other appearances within this season; interrupting gregory's speil about watching half-naked women on the beach (he's disgusted by her? he's a pussy. he's lame as hell for this.). this is also right before neko zombie makes an equal fool out of him and his own need for illusions against his reality, but this is not about gregory psychoanalysis so i'll hold off on that. in the last episode of the season, which is kind of just meant to throw even more curveballs as to the nature of the entire show at you, she also makes an appearance after seeing an once-again-pale bonsai kabuki fall off the stairs. she's, as per the usual, getting a little too much out of things. it's just her nature, though, isn't it...desire so overpowering it leaves you cleaning up what you had started; and speaking of which, that is kind of a big thing with the side-season, which, starring my dearest nurse, has plenty to be mentioned about.
the bloody karte is a curious case, and due to the nature of how people watch the show in the modern years, there's some mild confusions over its nature. the bloody karte is not a fourth season, but a side-show. a b-season. something like that. four of each of its episodes were released alongside each of the main three seasons. twelve of them in total. this explains away the majority of what people nitpick about the bloody karte. like yeah man the entire point of this is watching catherine fumble i don't know what to tell you.
anyways, my slight gripes with some GHS fans aside, the bloody karte is a side-series focusing on none other than catherine's still as suspicious as ever duties as a nurse...at an actual hospital this time, which may or may not also just be the hotel in alternative forme. it's mostly about both her struggle to carry both the needs of her actual duties as a nurse, her deeper wants for a serious relationship with somebody and romantic yearnings, and the many, many times she manages to fumble this with the men of GHS. it's probably the closest look out of anything as to below the surface-level of catherine's being, and i appreciate the bloody karte's existance so damn much for it. also, dr. fritz, her "boss" that is barely able to boss her around. quite the opposite! what a dynamic! i would like to shove him down a hill
and when i mean fumble, i mean, like. horribly fumble. both of her fault and other's. one episode she sabotages a patient about to recover and locks him up for enough episodes for his sister to come and rescue him (don't worry, he's fine, but he's also found pretty drunk off his ass), unknown timeframe, but good GOD, and the other episode, gifts of her cooking rejected in a rather physical manner and finding out they didn't even go to who they were made for in the first place! and yet, between this and the actual treatment of illness, it takes a stress on her own psyche; there has to be more to life than work, maybe if she focused less on it...the climax of the show is her attempt to choose between one or the other, and then being (rightfully) told that, well, both were possible. this is the one time i will say, albeit how deserving she is of the title, really; girlboss behavior to be told that and then to cut immedietly to a PILE of drained men. there's a deeper analysis into this at the bottom of this page btw.
her conflict in the bloody karte of balance and a very oddly-human yearning gives her the sense of character-rounding she honestly didn't get much of in the actual show, and without bloody karte, i doubt that her complexities would be apparent, or even there in the first place. thank you, bloody karte!
curiously to me, as somebody who did not get interested in gregory horror show as early as many did, soul collecter is sometimes what people find out about before the show itself. a licensed game released in asian and european regions (americans got cucked) for the ps2, and to not dredge on about the complexities of the game too long, your role is yet another guest, but sent by death himself (who uniquely to this, has a more boston-esque accent) and collect some lost souls from being sacrificed. and, of course, catherine is involved in here, and actually serves as part of the tutorial on how to collect said souls.
the tutorial in question is basically just watching james drop trash on the floor (or listening to cath complain about it), finding a banana peel somewhere, and leaving it on the floor for her to slip on and drop her soul. easy, which i feel like kind of cuts out some extra development she could've had with a more personalized way to get the soul as later residents have, but it's a LITTLE cute to watch. for the rest of the game, she'll chase you down if you're even in the same hallway, and when caught, you get the Catherine Usual -- it's time for a blood test. it's always time for a blood test.
however, an overlooked, underdocumented part of the game that i really appreciate her being around for is that everyone has their own individual scheldule, things to do, certain events to break monotony, and, of course, all of this for the player to peep through a keyhole and watch.
in a way, watching her is a lot of little things that add up to help shape into a person i could really love. grateful for that; soap-opera enjoyer, favorite dessert food seems to be donuts, creeped out just as much as anyone else is of neko zombie, drinking alone at a bar some nights, sleeps with her needle being used like a pillow to hold (CUTEEEEEE) ... won't shut the fuck up about hell's chef. ok, maybe i could go without that, but it's ok. nobody's perfect, but catherine comes pretty close.
...am i allowed to say "there's not enough information on this in my language for a proper write-up"? the game isn't translated, nor is anyone out there exactly itching for fan-translations. and i can't really blame anyone -- it was nearly lost to the age of the phones it was made for until it got a steam/switch re-release. however, she IS plot-relevant in it anyways. here's a screenshot of that and all. carrying on...
catherine mostly makes her appearance in an earlier chapter of another world, which is a rather interesting manga in its own right; the stylization is on-point for the series tone, but i also generally found the protagonist/guest of this one underwhelming, so...carrying on, while the guest does bump into her, a "proper" introduction is only made a chapter later, in which the usual plays out, advances and the disgust of them -- though this time, the disgust comes from catherine, which goes from talking about his lungs to being disgusted by the smell of smoke on him. it's a little funny to see such a switch-up. even the lovesick are not immune to some level of shallowness.
in a similar case to the g-mode game, i've unfortunately not a lot of interest for going through a game that i cannot read or understand at the moment. however, what i do have is rips of her cards from lost qualia from various events, as well as some machine translations from phoneyogurt's youtube channel. 
her introduction to the player starts off with her complimenting their skin ... it's a little moe, but i think i might just be ill over her as always. the choices for her event cards i find very interesting; she gets two alt. outfits, with one being an obvious nod to vampirism, and the other a nun. very good choices for her, honestly. her entire thing with blood fetishism is very vampiric in nature, and the nun may reflect those rarer moments of genuine care for her patients she still manages to have.
may contain inaccuracies until i fully play through this one!
soul of roses is a roguelike released in 2024, and is also currently the only full-fledged GHS media to use catherine's modernized design. while the game is still in early access, she mostly serves a passive role. after your player character's every death, she's basically on autospy duty, detailing your deaths with some levels of enthusiasm that could be considered unusual, and maybe passing by a tip or two on how to get past that adversary.
while the status of mystery holiday/save our souls is "definetly cancelled and not even relevant enough to admit it", there was absolutely an in-between of catherine's classic and modern/soul of roses design for it. it's a lot more rounder than what naomi eventually settled on, which leads onto that these design's most relevant appearances were actually a series or two of LINE stickers that would both use that design and the original show's art style.
and, of course, chara-freaks, which kind of doubles as both a general artbook for the series and had papercraft for the characters included with it. speaking of those, the gregory horror show website has (slightly different) papercrafts of basically ANYONE in the show, and even some unused characters, included on it for free. pretty neat. anyways, back to chara-freaks -- there's actually a few pretty neat details that just aren't mentioned anywhere else in here, a nod to how i feel GHS is to the creator of such a vivid world; if only i could peer into naomi iwata's skull myself!
the wording is a certainty at her most truest intentions, not one to kill, but not one to do no harm either. sick enough to take care of, weak enough to make rely on her so that it seems as if her love is selfless for such a sickly person ... also one of the few things ever said about her life before ending up in gregory house is that she was showing this even before, sneaking into patient's rooms at night to take unneccessary blood samples, and having to leave a previous hospital as a result. this is also mentioned in soul collecter, but she doesn't like donating her own blood. seems like a domination thing for her as a whole, so it makes sense. her favorite words are "red blood cells" and "cartroid artery". wonder why such a specific one...a few extra pages with her in chara-freaks are also about accupuncture, with some commentary about it.
this blog made by, again, phoneyogurt, has some machine translations for most of the book. thank you phoneyogurt you are carrying my need for obscure knowledge for this show and also my awful, awful girlfriend.
...your final fun fact for today is that the manual for soul collecter misspells her name as katherine, and i occasionally still see people use this typo. kind of funny.
there will certainly be more of these later, but check out the drop-downs for my thoughts on some things.
as is with most of the GHS characters, while their characterization may seem simple and even a bit shallow on the surface, there's enough hinting as to something more beyond their surfaces that the guests witness that it rounds them out to interesting cases; and if i said catherine is, in fact, a VERY interesting case of this. mostly because of bloody karte, though, but it is almost enough for a slight sense of pity to see somebody as imperfect and disturbed in her love, yet it seems all she wants is for it to be returned in any way. even the slightest gesture of a "love-you-too" is enough to bring her into great excitements, with the two most notable parts of this being when notes are left on the meals she leaves out for hell's chef (which aren't even from him, as revealed at the end of that one), as well as the nearly-cariacture spin and smile when frog fortune-teller predicts roses in her future (again, sabotauged in the end and not in catherine's favor).
and this plays back into her main sense of horror. this is gregory HORROR show, after all. she is a vastly psychosexual character in nature, while a (personally, surface-thought) interpretation of the common fear of needles is acceptable, her obvious pleasures in partaking in the act are a much more perverse symbolism of the power that so-called health workers can hold over their patients, and the many ways they can be exploited. unwanted advances. enjoyment of the venipuncture process that more than leans on schadenfreude. she's outright moaning about it.
there's also even some sense of irony in her physical form, warped by gregory house and her own desire. a lizard is a cold-blooded animal that will always need external warmth to survive, and in a climate that does not provide it, artificalized needs of such. it's a very easy thing to see that as symbolism of her inner conflict; she wants connection and the warmth of somebody else, but it is not in gregory house. thus, the venipunctural fetish, a procedure that perhaps is almost routine for some of the sicklier in the place, makes up for that lacking-of.
and suffering turning into strength is almost parallel with the nature of gregory horror show. she is no exception to this, and shown time and time again with a physical strength that is not explained in any way whatsoever (most literal example i can explain in simple terms is swinging dr. fritz around with something like the TIP of her tail, gif related), as well as a seemingly psychological one, being very close to the keeper of the place, his much worse mother at one point, the chronically ill father, cared for by the other residents for her, again, genuine talent with her job, except for the whole blood-taking thing...price to pay for healthcare around here! but back to the physical strength thing. in a certain tweet, naomi iwata has talked about this, actually, saying that she's one of few to be able to overpower even hell's chef. the giant candle golum with an even bigger knife and EVEN bigger anger streak.
all of this leads to the sense of fortitude she is known for, as well as what she is MOSTLY known for; an uncomfortable feeling of something poking at your skin whenever she's on screen. don't worry, though. the episodes are short. it'll only hurt for a second...
yeah i know fans can do whatever they want in the end but also a bulk of catherine fanart humanizing her feels like it goes against the entire point of the show and herself. it feels distasteful, thoughtless, ect.
it's a reduction of the warping of her desires into delusion that ANY resident of the hotel went under in the first place. it's a declaration that her role as a "sexy woman" is what people see first, and her as a genuinely interesting character less than that. it's proof that, well, god forbid people do anything. in a way, it's a denial of agency that her sexualization is, in fact, controlled by her -- plenty of more gothic horrors use the repression of a woman's sexuality for horror points, but catherine is a case where she is the one in control, and the horror, oh, the horror! as a result.
tldr: stop putting white chicks in pink wigs and saying it's catherine. learn how to draw furries. git gud.
tbh while the gif i have lovingly dubbed "catherine 9/11" has absolutely brought me more laughs than this it has also led to my thoughts on the episode of the bloody karte it is from as a climax of her own arc and how, even if beyond saving of their own measure and faults, the residents of gregory house, in any form, are just as under gregory's manipluation as any regular guest who ends up there by chance. linking the episode it is from just in case and for context's sake while i write;
while the side-season's setting of a hospital might seme odd at first, it's kind of quickly obvious as well as outright confirmed that it is merely another form of the reality that these little freaks have always been a part of for the main show, just in a different form, a different building. also made obvious by how the last train functions and all but i feel like the biggest tell is actually the opening for the bloody karte sharing exterior decor with the loading screen for gregory house as a hotel from lost qualia; it really is only much different on the inside, which compliments the focus on catherine quite well. speaking of, onto her after all of that.
anyways, the episode's beginning and, abck to what started all of this thinking; the scene of a plane exploding right within her eyes. this is definetly meant to be taken as a sign to her, with the whole dimension being in some way, still controlled by gregory and all. but the sheer time it took from her to lament about her paths that seem exclusive to each other to that sign -- enough to, well, Obviously shake her up a bit ! but i really do wonder if this was intentional signage. to not think about it too hard, and yet, to not let it slide into fate's hands ever so. she does have at least a slight belief in superstitions if the collectable blood horoscopes in soul collecter are a sign as well.
onto what i want to actually get onto dissecting, though. that same issue of not trusting fate -- and her temporary decision to attempt leaving her position in order to seek what she truly wants despite her disturbing nature of aquiring it, the many failed attempts already within the bloody karte to take love into her own hands.
but, of course, the path of no return had been reached long ago by catherine, if not obvious by not only the fact that she is there in such a reptilian form in the first place, and everything else, but by the bloody karte existing as a season in the first place; in a more meta nature, catherine is pretty important as a character i feel to naomi himself -- more appearances than most, at least, as well as being one of few characters with a Name name, rather than a name that is more a title than anything.
and glorious shoutout both to catherine's rather pretty suitcase, as well as dr. fritz' kind of hysterical reaction to all of this being a relief about it. sorry fritz you're kind of stuck with her until the next episode where you get hit by a taxi and all of that can you wait a few minutes....
but also the sheer power of gregory over his own guests is not to be understated; his immediete rejection of her own path. such is the nature of gregory, honestly -- while his own murmoring might be to try and lead somebody somewhere, well. Don't Fucking Go There. but again, we are talking about a woman who's fate was sealed -- her destructive nature to be continued, lest the hotel and the lost world as a whole loses one of its most notable, powerful inhabitants.
and like YEAH gregory kind of has a point with how she already did love her career and these patients she claims to want to help, and YES there can always be both but like. The Cycle. Ohhhhh the Cycle of it all. and the way this love is expressed, well, we already know how abhorrent she is even if i, personally, love her back for it, but maybe it is also the nature of the lost world that i shall never be let in it …
but ALL of this leading to that honestly more main-season esque scene of so, so many of the men, some of which we never see otherwise in the bloody karte, collasped on the hallway, a victim to that sickening love. and even if gregory does remorse about his regret with that, i do feel like such would differ if he just wasn't on the recieving end of it. refer to...catherine's first appearance in the nightmare begins, with the two speaking of leaving the first guest half-alive, half-dead -- he's in on this, and she's in on him.
ok i'm kind of losing steam here and it's not like i'm trying to say ohhhh catherine did nothing wrong because i wouldn't BE here if she did nothing wrong but like. somebody please understand what the fuck i am on about here. There's So Much To Be Said About Catherine Nine Eleven Gif.