Cat's Eye is a 1988 novel by Canadian writer Margaret Atwood about fictional painter Elaine Risley, who vividly reflects on her childhood and teenage years.

Her strongest memories are of Cordelia, who was the leader of a trio of girls who were both very cruel and very kind to her in ways that tint Elaine's perceptions of relationships and her world — not to mention her art — into her middle years.

The cat's eye later appears as a common motif in Elaine's paintings, linked with those she perceived to be an ally, although she does not remember why it is associated with those feelings.

At the age of eight she becomes friends with Carol and Grace, and, through their eyes, realises that her atypical background of constant travel with her entomologist father and independent mother has left her ill-equipped for conventional expectations of femininity.

After her first full year of attending traditional grade school, during her summer break, her parents return her to their previous life of travel and insect exploration.

After mostly destroying any self-esteem Elaine has developed in her new life, she gradually becomes depressed and feels helpless, unable to stand up to them or rescue herself.

She continually complies with the demeaning demands of the group and considers the worst transgression she could ever commit would be to tattle on her "friends," a sick loyalty nurtured and fed by Cordelia, who has two older sisters, apparently treating her in a similar manner.

Later, now in high school, and earlier events somewhat repressed, Elaine reestablishes a friendship with Cordelia but without Carol or Grace, who have both moved out of the area.

After a couple of years, Elaine again meets with Cordelia who has completely fallen off the tracks and has been committed to a mental facility by her parents.

Cat's Eye explores the construction of identity; it is written mostly as flashbacks, as Elaine reflects on the forgotten events of her childhood that shaped her personality and struggles to integrate lost aspects of her self.

Elaine's story is detailed in rich visualizations and descriptions of her art reflecting her childhood influences, not only by the trio of girls, but also by her rootless untraditional upbringing, and relationships with her parents who remain nameless and unidentified throughout the story; her genius brother and his strange ways and fate; her comforting secret alliances with the male gender; kind and stern female teachers; art instructors; peer artists; the media; motherhood and mid-life confrontation of self.