Cat People began as a story by producer Val Lewton published in the July 1930 edition of Weird Tales called The Bagheeta about a woman in the Caucasus region of Russia who could turn into a panther. For the film version, screenwriter DeWitt Bodeen changed the location to 1940s New York, where a young Serbian woman named Irena meets American Oliver Reed at the zoo and falls in love with him. After they marry, she is afraid of getting too close to her husband because she believes that she is descended from "cat people" - people who can turn into panthers when they feel strong emotions. Oliver sends Irena to psychiatrist Louis Judd, hoping she can be helped, but her strange obsession hurts their relationship and he becomes involved with a coworker, Alice Moore. When Irena finds out, she is extremely jealous and Alice thinks that she's being stalked by a giant cat.

Curse of the Cat People: Set several years after Irena's death in Cat People, Oliver and Alice are now married and have a six-year-old daughter, Amy. Amy is a nice little girl, but she had trouble telling fantasy from reality, which isolates her from her schoolmates. Like many children, she has an imaginary friend, but she tells her parents that her "friend" is Oliver's dead wife, Irena.