More specifically, the Meowth belonging to Team Rocket.
He is in actuality a wild Pokemon. There is never a situation where Jessie or James indicate that he has a Pokeball to return to, should the need arise. There is, of course, that stint in the Unova series where Meowth was travelling with Ash and his friends - actually some of the best episodes I had seen in a while and genuinely made me feel sad when it really was all just a trick, not least because Ash came to genuinely care about Meowth and see him as part of the team - where on several occasions Iris or random NICs (Non-Important Characters) tried to catch Meowth. He would always escape the Pokeball and declare that he would “never be caught!” for anything.
Meowth is actually a very important Pokemon, though. This is not just because of his ability to talk but the insight he gives into Pokemon psyche.
Meowth’s Inability to Learn Pay Day
According to Meowth, his ability to speak negates his ability to learn the signature move of his species, Pay Day. In the episode with the Meowth-worshiping islanders, he tells Jessie and James that when he should have been learning Pay Day he was teaching himself to talk. Initially, the implication of this is that Meowth can’t learn any other moves, like TMs or any of the moves he would naturally learn growing up. This would suggest a connection between a Pokemon’s ability to learn human speech and their ability to grow. If Meowth has stunted himself by learning to speak then this could also have implications for his ability to ever evolve into a Persian.
One argument against this theory is that Meowth tried to/managed to teach himself Night Slash - but refuses to use it because it is too scary. It is never made clear whether he successfully managed it but the fact that he was attempting it, and was able to do it enough to realise it is a scary move, suggests he must have had some degree of success. So, while his speech negated his ability to learn Pay Day it did not affect his ability to learn new attacks altogether.
As a result of the above, this is Meowth’s probable movelist:
- Fury Swipes (His most commonly used move)
- Bite (Which he used in the Sandshrew episode)
- Scratch (First move he ever used and he invariably uses it)
…and the third slot is taken up by his ability to talk.
*It is also possible that one of the three moves above was copied over so Meowth could learn Night Slash.
This indicates that he can learn other moves and presumably could teach himself TM moves. Meowth has a fairly interesting move-pool and, if Jessie and James wanted to have a Pokemon who could use an electric attack, they could steal a TM for Meowth and teach him Thunderbolt. The fact that it has never occurred to them to ask Meowth to learn some of the moves in his arsenal via TMs, which they could easily steal or even ask Giovanni for (If he’s happy to waste money on those robots, surely he’d be pleased at the prospect of making Meowth a useful battler), indicates that Meowth would have to learn these useful TMs as a captured, trained Pokemon - which Meowth would NEVER agree to become. As a result, his experience growth is stunted.
Meowth as an Untamed Pokemon
So, Meowth possibly shows the key differences between a wild Pokemon bonded with humans and a human trained Pokemon. While a wild Pokemon may have its “freedom” it will never be as powerful as a human trained Pokemon. This goes back to that Sparrow in Episode 1. According to the Pokedex, wild Pokemon are often jealous of human trained Pokemon - this could be because the latter is innately stronger.
But Meowth NEVER shows any indication of wanting to be stronger. His desires tend to revolve around being rich and successful, being Giovanni’s “Top Cat” again by any means possible not matter how naughty and bad. We can infer from this desire that Meowth perhaps was popular with the Rocket boss as a result of his unique speaking skills but he likely fell out of favour due to that being his only positive quality - and that he cannot learn Pay Day. In Island of the Giant Pokemon, Meowth is shocked when Koffing and Ekans tells him that Pokemon only do bad things because the humans around them are bad. Meowth exclaims, “But my Master isn’t here and I always do ad things!” - but if we were to assume that his true Master is Giovanni… well, that would probably explain by Meowth “always acts bad”. Together with the humans having most influence on him being Jessie and James, or other Rocket members, it is the only behaviour he knows. Prior to his association with Team Rocket he also worked under the influence of a Persian who ordered the little Meowth to commit petty crimes so they could survive. Then before to that, he was an abandoned baby Pokemon who was always starving and treated cruelly by humans who saw him as a pest. Ultimately, Meowth is the product of a very harsh upbringing.
Considering the level of nastiness humans and even members of his own species showed him before be met Jessie and James, it is also no surprise that he stays with them. Despite being members of the notoriously cruel and merciless Team Rocket, Jessie and James are very kind to their Pokemon. They can be harsher to Meowth but probably because they treat him like they do each other and do not consider him to be an ordinary Pokemon. They interact with him like they do each other, treat him like an equal. Given the life Meowth led for most of his babyhood it is understandable that his goals would match that of Jessie and James, and it is worth noting that none of them ever realistically selling out the others for all the glory. Meowth, in fact, is the only one who ever came close. In the Meowth worshiping cult episode, he briefly considered selling out the two Js for what he thought was a better deal. However when his team members return to help Meowth trick a stadium into thinking he can use Pay Day, he realises just how much they care about him and chase after them. A lot of the positive lessons that Meowth learns about comradery tend to come from Jessie and James. The rest come from Pikachu.
Meowth as Proof of Pokemon Sentience
“Pokemon is bad because Master is Bad,” is what Ekans told Meowth, a fact that shocked him. This lesson is likewise echoed by Ash when Gary stated that the mysterious Pokemon he battled - later revealed to be Mewtwo - was evil. These statements infer that as far as humans are concerned, Pokemon are innately good and only do bad things because the humans who train them (or they just interact with) are bad.
I already explained how I feel Meowth came to be “bad” is the result of a bad upbringing. Yet one of the big differences between him and, say, his biggest rival Giovanni’s Persian is that Persian is a trained Pokemon obeying the orders of his trainer; Meowth does bad things off his own back.
But the key thing is the difference between being bad and being evil - and Meowth has never done anything to suggest he is evil. He is a naughty, sneaky and badly behaved Pokemon, which if we are honest is not anything new to the Pokemon world nor is it a trait unique to him. After all, Ash’s own Squirtle was a gang leader who committed petty crimes for giggles before he joined the team. Hell, Scrafty are hoodlums and will do “naughty” things to survive. Meowth as a species are pretty much the Scrafty of their generation, associated with being criminal tricksters. So, if we look at our Meowth we might just be seeing a personality trait of a whole species being taken to a new level thanks to his ability to voice his intentions/feelings in a language that idiotic humans can understand.
Meowth is so good at speaking that it is easy to forget sometimes that he is a Pokemon who taught himself how to do that little trick. That he taught himself suggests that any Pokemon within reason could also teach themselves to speak, if they wanted. So why don’t they? Well, we can see from Meowth that it appears to have at least in someway hindered his development. He isn’t a strong battler and seems to find it difficult to learn new attacks. Many Pokedex entries suggest that battling is an important part of a Pokemon’s culture, not just something necessarily forced on them by humans. Perhaps most Pokemon don’t realise they could learn to talk or maybe they do know but opt not to because the chance to learn more attacks is more important to them.
Either way, that Meowth can express himself gives us such an interesting look into the way a Pokemon’s brain works. It proves that most Pokemon are almost certainly on the same level of intellect as most humans. In which case, the final question should be this - how did humans become the dominant species when Pokemon just as intelligent as a Meowth but with far superior powers can be captured and placed in a Pokeball?
