How to Write 猫 (māo) — Meaning “cat”

Picture a cat (犭, the animal radical) sitting in a field of seedlings (苗). The image of a cat among green plants can help you recall that the right side looks like 'seedling' and the whole character means 'cat'.

Start with the left radical 犭: write a left-falling stroke, then a curved hook, and another left-falling stroke. For the right side 苗, write the grass radical (艹) on top, then the field (田) below. A common mistake is making the hook too straight or the 田 part too big—keep the left side narrow and the right side balanced.

猫's right side is 苗 (grass over field), while 狠 has 艮 on the right—an entirely different shape with a dot and horizontal line. 狊 is rare and has a 'dog' radical with a different phonetic; it means 'to stare' and is not used in daily Chinese. Focus on the right-side components: 猫 = 犭+苗, 狠 = 犭+艮, 狊 = 犭+目+大 (approximately).

猫 is the standard word for 'cat' and appears in common words like 小猫 (kitten) and 熊猫 (panda, literally 'bear-cat'). In modern Chinese culture, cats are popular pets, and the character is also used in internet slang like 喵 (miāo, 'meow') to represent cat sounds. There is also the idiom 猫哭老鼠 (cat crying over a dead mouse) meaning fake sympathy.

Common words containing 猫 include: 小猫 (xiǎo māo) — Kitten; 熊猫 (xióng māo) — Panda; 猫粮 (māo liáng) — cat food.