Swings

Swings are performers who do not have one specific role in the show, instead they understudy the ensemble roles. Sometimes in Cats the swings have their own distinctive costumes and characters.

London Swings
In the early years of the Original London production, there was an ensemble of un-named kitten characters, some of whom grew into named roles and others became swing costumes. Characters were cast strictly to height, the adults being notably taller than the kittens. This led to issues with the swings, as often a short swing would need to cover a tall character or vice versa. Each of the six swings had a distinctive costume.

The three female swings have readily identifiable markings - the tall girl looks somewhat like a pale Cassandra, often called "Greycat" or "Nameless Brown Queen/NBQ" depending on the colouring of her costume which varied from silver to tan. One looks similar to Jemima but with much less colour and more white on her body, sometimes called "Almost Jemima/AJ". The last swing looks rather like Victor, a dark brown Tabby, sometimes known as "Tabbygirl". The Swings usually featured in the photocall for the brochure in the big group shots until the late 1990s. However Summer Strallen, a swing wearing NBQ, featured in the 2001 photos.

Australian Swings
The Australian production, and subsequent productions modelled on it, has names for all the swings, which can cause confusion when comparing to other productions.

Admetus, Carbucketty, Electra, Exotica, George, Grumbuskin, Jemima, Jonathan, Noilly Pratt, Olivia, Quaxo and Victor have all been used as names for swings.