The nameless cat is one of the most important symbols in Breakfast at Tiffany’s. While Holly Golightly lives in a relatively sparse apartment, one of the few distinguishing features of her home is that she shares it with a cat. She claims to have found the cat when it was wandering the streets and, though she took the cat home, she insists that she is not the cat's owner. To that end, she refuses to even name the cat—the cat, in Holly's opinion, is an individual on its own terms and she has no right to impose something as identifying as a name on the cat. Holly’s refusal to name the cat symbolizes Holly's own reluctance to forge formal ties with anyone or anything. While she claims to sympathize with the cat’s directionless life, many of these sentiments are projected onto the cat by Holly: she wants to be independent, so she creates the symbolic meaning of the cat as an expression of her desire for independence. In this sense, the cat is a symbol of Holly's self-identity.

However, the independence Holly believes the cat possesses is an illusion, as the cat has a limited capacity to survive in her apartment without help from others.