Salem the Hat-Topped Kitty

As a crocheter who has a cat, one of my favorite things is seeing crochet hats on cats! Unfortunately, my own cat isn’t a fan. That doesn’t change the fact that every year, especially around Halloween, I can’t help but want to make some cat hats!

So this year, I decided to just crochet a cat instead with interchangeable hats—meet “Salem the Hat-Topped Kitty”! This little kitty comes with four removable spooky hats and a broom. You can watch the video backstories here: the cat, the pumpkin hat, the witch hat and broom, the candy corn hat, the monster hat.

Of course, to fit the spooky theme, I wanted to make a black cat. I wanted it to be a smaller size than my usual big pattern designs, so it can be a quicker project for those who make plushies for markets, as gifts, or just want a less time-consuming crochet project.

But for the longest time, I didn’t really know how I wanted the cat to look. I already created a spooky cat design two years ago and I didn’t want it to look too similar. Nonetheless, I started crocheting and after completing the head and the body along with some failed attempts on the legs, I suddenly knew what I wanted it to look like!

It did unfortunately mean that I had to restart my whole piece. But I quickly frogged it and started working from the legs up instead.

And here’s the finished cat! I added a pipe cleaner inside of the tail, so that it can curl.

Now it’s time for the hats! Surprisingly, they took longer to design than the cat itself. I began with the witch hat, but found it difficult to visualize how the hat would shape to the head. So I ended up shifting to the pumpkin hat, which had a flatter shape and was much better at helping me visualize the shape of the hats.

After that, the witch hat became much easier to make! I finished the witch hat and made a little broom to go with it. This broom was inspired by a previous design I freehanded a few halloweens ago that I thought was too cute to not ever release in a pattern. Since the cat didn’t have arms to hold it, I thought that it could be flying on a little broom instead.

Next up was the candy corn hat! While it’s quite similar to the witch hat, I made a few tweaks so it can have its own unique flair! I also chose to make mine more of a pastel candy corn because I personally prefer pastel colors. Especially after using so many bright and dark colors for the cat and the other hats, I took this opportunity to make something in the colors that I like.

Finally, it was on to the last hat: the monster hat! I decided to give it a pom-pom as an antenna—because beanies often have pom poms and I thought this was so perfect for a monster + hat fusion. I do feel like it kind of gives off “alien” as well, so it can double as an alien or monster hat!

My next challenge was choosing a name for the cat. I initially really wanted to name it “SpooKitty,” but I already used that name for my spooky cat pattern two halloweens ago. I almost just went with “Spooky the Cat”, but shout out to @bloominghookscrochetco on Instagram for suggesting the name, “Salem.”

Also, huge thank you to my pattern testers who helped bring this pattern to life! Here’s all the different cats that they made! You can find these testers on Instagram!

Where to find the pattern:

You can find the PDF pattern for “Salem the Hat-Topped Kitty” on Etsy, in my shop, or join my Patreon (it’s included along with all my other patterns!)

You can also now find the cat portion of this pattern as a free video tutorial on YouTube. This tutorial does not include the hats.

I hope you love this pattern as much as I do! If you share your kitty on social media, don’t forget to tag me—I can’t wait to see your creations!

Instagram, Tik Tok, YouTube: @themaryjay

Looking for free patterns? Check out my collection of free patterns here!