Makoto Kobayashi is an orange American Shorthair tabby cat embodying an everyman archetype rather than possessing a consistent identity. His background shifts dramatically across chapters and adaptations, lacking a fixed origin story or continuous narrative. He appears in vastly different contexts: sometimes an ordinary house cat with various owners, other times standing upright in human clothes, engaging in activities like joining street gangs, working office jobs, or participating in criminal investigations. This discontinuity affects his life circumstances, including changes in ownership, marital status, and even mortality—dying in certain chapters only to return unscathed later.

Recurring animal characters, including Popo (his wife), their kittens, and a dog named Bear, populate episodic storylines alongside him, without fostering overarching character growth. His personality centers on typical feline behaviors: frequent napping, strong food preferences, loud nighttime vocalizations, and territorial instincts. These traits are depicted with realistic accuracy in some segments and exaggerated for comedy in others, particularly fantasy sequences involving human characters like K, a yakuza hiding his affection for cats, or M, a rival gangster with a paralyzing fear of felines.

His character exhibits no evolution or long-term development throughout the original manga (1984–1989), the 2001 volume, or adaptations like the two OVAs (1985, 1988) and the 45-episode TV series (1988–1989). His role remains situational, serving as a vehicle for humor through observational comedy about cat behavior or absurdist parody of human society, without continuity between episodes or media.