Meowth

Meet Meowth, the Scratch Cat Pokemon

Number 52 is a Normal type from the original generation and the opening stage of the Persian line, evolving at level 28. Pickup and Technician fill the standard ability slots, with Unnerve hidden away. Nothing comes before it.

Its place in the series has very little to do with battling. Meowth is the mascot of the animated show's villains, the Pokemon that talks, and the one most people recognise before they know anything about stats. In the games it has a quieter but equally specific role attached to money, and that role has outlasted most of the competitive sets it ever had.

Pay Day and the coin economy

Meowth learns Pay Day, a move that damages the target and scatters coins that get added to the player's total afterwards. In the early games it was the only renewable way to earn money in battle, which made a Meowth a genuinely useful thing to carry around.

That mechanic gave the Pokemon a purpose outside of damage. It was the money Pokemon, and the design has kept the association ever since, right down to the way it is drawn holding a coin. In the early games it was genuinely the fastest route to a full wallet, and that alone made it worth a party slot.

Three abilities, all useful

Pickup gathers items after battles, which quietly turns a party slot into an income stream across a long playthrough. Technician boosts any move with a base power of 60 or less by half, which is most of what a Pokemon at this level learns. Unnerve stops the opponent eating held berries.

That is an unusually good set for a Pokemon with a 290 total. Technician is the competitive pick, since it changes the maths on the weaker moves rather than depending on luck, and it is the reason Meowth sets show up in the lowest tiers at all. None of the three needs a specific team around it to function, which is rare for an ability set at this level of the dex.

What the 290 points look like

90 Speed is the standout number, and it is genuinely fast for a first-stage Pokemon. The rest is thin: 40 HP, 45 Attack, 35 Defense, 40 Special Attack and 40 Special Defense, all of which sit near the bottom of the scale.

The result is a Pokemon that moves early and does not survive long. It is not built to win fights, and the games do not really ask it to, since its value is in money, items and the ability attached to it. Even the Speed is mostly useful for getting a weakening hit in before something else finishes the job, and against anything bulky that hit will not be enough.

Fighting, and the Ghost immunity

Fighting is the only type that does extra damage. Ghost does nothing to it, and no type comes back reduced, so the chart has exactly two entries on it. Everything else in the eighteen-type grid lands neutral.

That thin chart is the same trade every Normal type makes. One weakness, one immunity and no resistances is a simple defensive sheet, and on a Pokemon this small it rarely settles the outcome either way.

Team pages and the toolkit

Set the squad up in the Pokemon Team Picker, record the run rules in the Nuzlocke Team Builder, and hand the unpicked slots to the Random Pokemon Picker.

Once the nature is settled on the Pokemon Nature Chart, the spread goes into the Pokemon IV Calculator. Coin flips belong on the Pokemon Wheel Spinner.

Elsewhere in the suite: the Random Mega Pokemon Generator and the Random Shiny Pokemon Generator for the big forms and the recolours, Pokemon Shiny Odds for the numbers behind them, and Who's That Pokemon for a guessing round.

The regional variants

Meowth has picked up two regional forms over the years, one of which is a Dark type and one a Steel type. Each has its own stat spread and its own abilities, and neither behaves like the original. A trainer who knows one version well still has to look the other two up.

That makes the species one of the more confusing ones to look up quickly, since a Meowth in one game is a completely different Pokemon from a Meowth in another. The plain Normal version on this page is the one from Kanto.

Raising one in practice

The Pokemon works as a utility slot rather than a fighter. Put it in the party for a while, collect the items it picks up, and let it level towards Persian without ever relying on it in a serious battle. That is not a limitation so much as the job the games gave it, and it is one nothing else in the dex does quite the same way.

For anyone running a casual playthrough the convenience is the point, and for anyone training competitively the ability choice is the entire build. Either way, the cat earns its place without ever needing to win a fight, which is a strange sort of value to design into a Pokemon.