Sprinkles the Cat was one of the unsung heroes of The Office and the true story behind her is both weird and hilarious. Sprinkles' death in The Office season 4 was one of the most memorable and hilarious moments in Dwight and Angela's secret relationship. Angela, portrayed by Angela Kinsey, is a proud mom of many cats, with Sprinkles being one of the most well-known due to her untimely demise. However, she may not have existed at all without a funny true story from the pilot.
Angela Martin is one of the most fearsome characters in The Office, known for her sharp tone, judgemental opinions, and ruthless running of the Party Planning Committee. Her love for cats reveals that she has a gentle side, despite the fact that this love is often met with indifference from her colleagues. Sprinkles is one of these cats, who finds herself sick at the beginning of season 4. Angela entrusts Sprinkles into Dwight's care while she's away only to find out when she gets back that Sprinkles has died. Although he tries to hide it, Dwight its to killing Sprinkles with a lethal dose of poison and putting the cat into the freezer while still alive thinking it a kindness. This incident drives a wedge between the two and significantly halts the progress of their relationship, at least for a little while.
All this trauma may well have been avoided had Angela not created Sprinkles the Cat and invited the cast to her birthday party in the pilot episode of The Office. The cast was encouraged by director Kevin Kwapis to do different busy tasks in the background so that things felt "more real." This allowed the actors to explore their characters, who were still fresh at this time, while creating a natural environment on The Office's Dunder Mifflin set. It was during these random busy tasks that Angela Kinsey planted the early seeds of one of Angela's most memorable traits: her crazy cat lady persona.
How A Post-It Note Created The Office's Sprinkles The Cat
Angela only had two lines of scripted dialogue in the pilot episode of The Office, meaning that Kinsey had plenty of spare time to spend looking busy. As she wandered around behind the talking heads interviews, looking for things to do, she drew a picture of a cat on a Post-It note. In a moment of inspiration, she decided to draw more with the added caption: "It's Sprinkles' 3rd Birthday! Come celebrate!" As she roamed the office, she handed out these invitations to her colleagues, although she missed out Jim, assuming he would probably make some snarky comment and she wasn't having it.
It turns out Angela was right about Jim. During The Office episode, Jenna Fischer (Pam) decided to improv a line to John Krasinksi (Jim) by asking him if he plans on going to Angela's cat party. Krasinksi responds, "Stop. That's ridiculous," which leads to one of the pair's first giggles together. Jim and Pam become one of the show's most important love stories and perhaps they owe some of their early chemistry to Sprinkles and his birthday party. The pilot doesn't include Dwight's reaction to Angela's invite, but given his future misgivings with Sprinkles the Cat, perhaps this is just as well.
It is never easy to launch a new show of ensemble characters, but The Office does one of the best jobs. Michael Scott's disted Dunder-Mifflin team of paper sellers is a group of unique characters that became individually loved and ed. Those characters were not just developed in the writers' room. Had Angela Kinsey not been bored, scribbling cats onto Post-It notes, perhaps Sprinkles would never have been killed and perhaps Dwight and Angela would have gotten married far earlier. It turns out that Post-It note has a lot to answer for.