Team Rocket's Meowth

This Meowth is a -type Pokémon who is a member of Team Rocket that travels with James and Jessie, serving as one of the main antagonists of the anime series. It seems like he is the only non-Legendary Pokémon in the anime that is capable of speaking human language without using telepathy. He regularly helps Jessie and James (and sometimes Ash and co.) to translate Pokémon language and is revealed to be the one responsible for building the machines that Team Rocket uses.

Personality
Meowth fits in perfectly with his human comrades of Team Rocket as he is conniving, prideful, greedy, and mischievous. His ability to speak like a normal human only makes him equally outspoken. He sometimes views himself as the boss and the leader of the trio, reason being, he builds all the contraptions and thinks of all the plans, though he is rarely taken seriously (and like James, Meowth can be rather submissive to the domineering Jessie). For all his faults however, he is loyal to Jessie and James, and never lets a few fights get in his way of being friends with them. He thinks highly of their boss Giovanni, and dwells on becoming his "top cat" (having a disdain for his Persian as a result).

Meowth is superb at lying, as he often tricks Ash and his friends to believe he is on their side. Pikachu is the only one who doubts Meowth's loyalty due to remembering his countless double crosses. Despite their rivalry, Meowth has arguably the most sociable moments with Pikachu, especially since they are often forced to team up for real. In some cases he laments they can easily be friends if not on opposite sides. As often as he likes to consider himself a dastardly villain, he is also often shown to be rather jaded and even philosophical at times. He often looks at the moon and laments his directions in life. Among the trio, Meowth tends to be the one who stands most on the facts rather than belief.

Meowth frequently shows himself to be a rather amorous cat: in Kanto, before he met Jessie and James, he fell in love with a female Meowth named Meowzie, in Hoenn he fell in love with May's Skitty and in Sinnoh he fell in love with a female Glameow. In Unova he competed with Ash's Oshawott for both a male Purloin (that they believed to be female) and Meloetta despite she was the main target for Team Rocket's Operation Tempest in the BW series until in the episode Unova Survival Crisis!. Also, in the short "Eevee and Friends" he also shown attraction for Espeon, Glaceon and Leafeon. His pursuits for Meowzie in particular chained off his ambitions to learn to speak and act human-like and ultimately his employment within Team Rocket.

Meowth sparsely battles, he explains learning to walk and talk came at the expense of his battle abilities (he claims he permanently lost the ability to use Pay Day in particular). As such, most instances he is forced to fight prove pitiful. On rare occasions however, when passionate or incensed enough, Meowth can be very formidable in battle. He has also proven quite able as a performer as well, helping Jessie win several contests and showcases. More commonly, Meowth acts as a translator for Team Rocket and sometimes Ash and his friends, translating what other Pokémon are saying.

Meowth has yet to evolve. He often expresses a contempt for his evolved form, Persian. He is in fact jealous of Giovanni's Persian and has a desire to fill in for it as the boss's "top cat".

Early life
Before joining Team Rocket, he was just a normal Meowth living on the streets of Hollywood (AKA "Tinseltown"). He had been abandoned as a kitten and was left to provide for himself, often violently rejected by people for trying to steal food.

He joined a gang of street Meowth led by a Persian. They annoyed people of Tinseltown in a typical alley cat fashion, such as stealing food and rummaging through trash cans. Eventually he met a female Meowth named Meowzie, who he fell in love with. However she rejected him, in favor of the attention of her rich mistress. Desiring to impress her, Meowth began learning to become more human-like. With a great amount of time and effort, Meowth learnt how to speak in human language (with a New York accent) and how to walk upright. However all his efforts backfired, as he was again rejected by Meowzie, who now sees him as a freak Meowth. With his heart now broken, he decided to join Team Rocket (mainly due to the fact that the word "Rocket" was the first word he learned to say and understood its meaning).

According to Meowth (himself), he claims to have been Boss Giovanni's personal pet (or "Top Cat"). However, as a result of his incompetence, he was later replaced by a more majestic Persian, the evolved form of Meowth. However, this was far from the fact. Giovanni's Persian have been with him since the start. Meowth started in Team Rocket as an intruder, and began to serve Giovanni on insist. It was by chance that Meowth became a Team Rocket agent, as the starting purpose was said to be to disrupt Jessie and James's training, to cause the two trouble trainees to leave.

Partnership with Jessie and James Eventually Meowth was assigned by Giovanni to work alongside Jessie and James. Though he often bickers with the duo (originally considering himself their superior/boss), he bonds with them, the three ultimately becoming their best (and usually only) friends. After their first run in with Ash Ketchum and his Pikachu, they become obsessed with stealing Ash's Pikachu and presenting it to Giovanni to regain his good favour. All their attempts however ultimately ended in failure, and usually an excess amount of abuse and humiliation. This tenure continued throughout Kanto, Johto, Hoenn and Sinnoh, with the trio only earning a bigger laughing stock status within each region.

As of his, Jessie and James' promotion and transfer to Unova however, Meowth has become a highly skilled stealth artist, an excellent negotiator and is often successful in many missions with his team-mates to the point of the trio becoming a serious enemy for Ash and co. The trio were key in Team Rocket's Meteonite plan, taking order directly from Giovanni himself as well as his secretary. Meowth and his team-mates worked together with Pierce and met Doctor Zager.

Once the plan culminated, Meowth and his team-mates were asked to be as they please in Unova, so they continued working hard to do Team Rocket good and now work closely with Zager. Ash has also become less important to them but they will still antagonize him if he interferes in one of their plans.

During a mission in Unova, Meowth was fired from Team Rocket. After he was fired, he was found by Ash and Co. being beaten by a wild Scrafty. He then decided to travel with Ash and help them on their quest. Later, Iris tried to catch him, but failed to do so. Meowth later reveals that his expulsion from Team Rocket was nothing but a ploy to take Ash and his friends off guard whilst Team Rocket stole hundreds of Pokémon from Nimbasa City's grand Pokémon Center. This plan was foiled by Ash and company and Meowth rejoined his true allies Jessie and James.

As their tenure in Unova continued, their obsession with Pikachu returned and as a result their serious attitude faded (though their more dangerous weaponry and shades of their former competence remained). After just barely remaining on Giovanni's good books through their defeat of Team Plasma and handing in their Unova Pokémon as supposed stolen goods, the trio reunited with their team mate Wobbuffet and set upon returning to shadowing Ash's team throughout Kalos in attempts to capture Pikachu.

Improvised moves

 * Fury Swipes of Love: When smitten by a Glameow in For The Love Of Meowth!, Meowth used an extremely powerful variant of Fury Swipes made of heart shaped claw marks.
 * Tickle: Used on a Rhydon in Bound For Trouble!. However, Tickle was not an official attack until Generation III.
 * Meowth has also been shown using variants of Jump Kick and Headbutt while fighting in episodes The Ninja Poke-Showdown, Jumping Rocket Ship! and What Lies Beyond Truth And Ideals, though they have never officially been termed as such.

Voice Actors

 * Inuko Inuyama (Japanese)
 * Nathan Price (English; IL002-IL017 & IL019-IL031)
 * Maddie Blaustein (1997-2007) (English; IL018 & IL032-AG145, Movies 1 - 8, Pokémon Chronicles, Mewtwo Returns)
 * Jimmy Zoppi (2008-present) (English; AG146-Present, Movie 9 - present, The Mastermind of Mirage Pokémon)
 * Charis Grigoropoulos (Greek)
 * Jan Nonhof (Dutch; IL002-AG104)
 * Bas Keijzer (Dutch; AG092-present)

Trivia

 * Meowth, Gastly, and Slowking are currently the only Pokémon that can talk without using telepathy.
 * Team Rocket's Meowth represented his species in both of their "Who's That Pokemon?" appearances in the US dub. Curiously it took until Capacia Island UFO!, the 790th episode in the series for them to appear in the US segment.
 * Meowth is among the few characters in the anime to repeatedly break the fourth wall, a tendency that is shared with Jessie and James.
 * It has been revealed that Meowth is still a wild Pokémon as Pokéballs are able to grab him, however he has broken free from all trainers' attempts to catch him.
 * Throughout his entire run in the series, Meowth has won only six battles he's participated in alone.
 * The first time that he said Ash's name was in The Beartic Mountain Feud! when he was translating Pikachu (which incidentally was also the last episode where Meowth was fully banded with Ash and his friends).
 * A trend Meowth had in the anime was that would fall for female cat-like Pokémon; in Kanto, before he met Jessie and James, he was in love with a female Meowth named Meowzie. In Hoenn he fell for May's Skitty, in Sinnoh he fell for a Glameow, in Unova he and Oshawott fell for a Purrloin, until it was revealed to be male and later fell for a Leafeon and a Glaceon.
 * And later on he falls in love with a Lopunny and "a very cute" Gardevoir, which both turned out to be illusions conjured up by Gastly and its evolved forms after Meowth looked into Mimikkyu's costume in the Sun and Moon Series.
 * Meowth doesn't seem to know much about type matchup, as in Gotta Catch Ya Later, he tried to attack a bunch of Haunter with Fury Swipes, which would have no effect, and then, was scared by Night Shade, which would not affect him as a Normal type.
 * In contrast to the ever-present running gag of Ash's Pikachu electric shocking him and his team since their first appearance, it took until A Frenzied Factory Fiasco (876 episodes after his first appearance) for Meowth himself to land a single attack on Pikachu (Fury Swipes in that instance).
 * Despite Meowth's constant feud with Ash's Pikachu, the two are shown to have some traits in common;
 * Both hate being confined in Poké Balls, though in Meowth's case who is still a wild Pokémon refuses to be captured and be contained in one.
 * Both have refused to evolve, though Pikachu refusing to evolve into Raichu is just so he can prove that he is powerful enough without evolving. While Meowth simply dislikes Persian due to a stigma that he has developed upon constant gags of him being rejected in favor of one and is shown to have a strong hatred and jealously towards Giovanni's Persian.