Who is this "black cat"?
The Black Cat On Dr. Briefs's Shoulder (or TBCODBS) is a mysterious figure in the DBZ world. Not much is known about him. I don't think anybody even really thought about who he was until now. From what I've gathered, the black cat is an alien that landed here sometime between 10000 B.C. and 710 A.D.. It'd be after 10000 B.C. because that's when the DBZ earth began to finally get settled in it's current state and it's before 710 B.C. because it was around 700 A.D. when Dr. Briefs was born. Over the years, many ideas have arose about the kitty on his shoulder. The best one I heard was one about it being a huge tumor. This is disproven because the cat tends to move from shoulder to shoulder sometimes. After hearing all these rumors, I finally figured him out. He's a tiny black alien from a far away planet called Blacatika. When he landed here, he found his body to be feeble compared to the other beings on the planet. To adjust, he took control of a certain person's mind, body, and soul by attaching itself to that person's shoulders. That person was an ancestor of the Briefs family line. The black cat was a genius. He had 14x the IQ of a person with a PhD. This made the Briefs line a VERY intelligent one. Unfortunatly, TBCODBS couldn't repress all of the beings natural feelings and he couldn't speak at all. He had to speak through the person as an interpretor and even though the caveman-type Briefs was a genius now, he still had those sudden thoughts of shiny new clubs and eating dinosaur ribs. TBCODBS was apparently immortal, seeing as this trend would've continued for at least a thousand years. 1000+ years later we get to Dr. Briefs. He has TBCODBS on his shoulder now. He is a pure mountain of genius with the black cat on his shoulder, but at heart he is just a big pervert. The black cat cannot supress those perverted thoughts, so sometimes they happen.
10-19-99: Discovered that his U.S. given name is Scratch and that he has at least 4 years experience of working with mechanics. This is mentioned in the U.S. dub episode "Explosion of Anger". I don't trust this as his solid Japanese-translated info seeing as this is Funimation's writers we're talking about here, but it's still some info. Also, if the four year bit is true, this backs up my theory that he is a genius and that he has been around for quite a while. It backs up the fact that he is a genius because Dr. Briefs has allowed him to work on projects with him. The four year bit tells me that he's been with Briefs for a long time because he has 4 years of working experience and a few years of studing and impressing Dr. Briefs with his own little projects to gain his trust.
3-5-2000: Discovered that his Japanese name is Tama. Tama, by the way, is common kitty cat name, but Tama-Sama is no ordinary kitty, and we know that, don't we? ^_-
That's all I've got about TBCODBS right now. Check back for updates every once in a good while.
