Growltiger is a caricature personality, highly passionate, swift to anger at the incompetence of his crew, desperately smitten by the beautiful Griddlebone, and terrified of the Siamese. Growltiger was a "Bravo Cat who lived upon a barge", one who scoured the River Thames from Gravesend to Oxford, terrorizing the inhabitants along the river, including "cottagers", canaries, geese, hens, "pampered Pekinese", and the "bristly Bandicoot that lurks on foreign ships".