The Cat Creeps is a 1946 American film directed by Erle C. Kenton and starring Noah Beery Jr., Lois Collier, and Paul Kelly.

[2] It follows a journalist and his photographer who attempt to research an unsolved death and locate a missing fortune, with the help of a black cat that appears to be possessed by the spirit of a dead woman.

Journalist Terry Nichols is hired by his boss, Sampler, to research a mysterious letter received by the Morning Chronicle from a Cora Williams, who writes that she discovered a $200,000 fortune and considers it proof of Eric Goran's murder, which was ruled a suicide fifteen years prior.

Cora's relative, Walter Elliott, once a suspect in Eric's murder, is now running for the United States senate against Sampler's brother-in-law.

Tom eventually relents and confesses to having fronted a bootlegging operation with Eric years prior, which was run out of Cora's mansion.

Terry proceeds to admit that Kyra is in fact not Eric's daughter, but an actress whom he hired to pressure the murderer in the hopes of revealing their identity.

The authors of the book Universal Horrors noted that by the mid-1940s the popularity of horror films was apparently waning, noting that Universal kept making them despite the fact that their major stars Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi had left the company and other players such as Lionel Atwill, George Zucco and John Carradine had also left.

[9] Bosley Crowther of The New York Times stated the film was "a routine little thriller, with feeble attempts at comedy" and that "the cat gives a pretty good performance but it gets mediocre support".

[9] Otis L. Guernsey, Jr. of the New York Herald Tribune found that "there is nothing either frightening or mysterious about the law-breaking in The Cat Creeps, and it is not quite silly enough to be laughable".

[9] From retrospective reviews, Hal Erickson of AllMovie described the film as "not a particularly distinguished [ crime melodrama]...Though blessed with an unusually strong supporting cast, The Cat Creeps is strictly B material".