In Stephen King’s novel Pet Sematary, the family cat is named Church.
Church is short for Winston Churchill, and the cat belongs to the Creed family after they move to rural Ludlow, Maine. The animal’s death and subsequent burial in the ancient ground beyond the pet cemetery set the novel’s supernatural events in motion.
Pet Sematary was published in 1983. Its premise combines a local burial ground with a much older Micmac burial site said to restore the dead, but with disturbing consequences. Church is the first major example of that resurrection process and becomes one of the book’s most recognizable figures.
Readers sometimes remember the cat simply as Winston Churchill, but Church is the form normally used in the novel. The story was adapted into a 1989 film and a 2019 film, with both versions retaining the cat’s central role while changing various details of the plot.