Artist and graphics designer Patience Phillips is a meek people-pleaser whose main support is her best friend Sally. She works for a cosmetics company called Hedare Beauty, which is ready to ship a new skin cream, called Beau-line, that is able to reverse the effects of ageing. However, when Patience visits the factory, she overhears a discussion between the scientist, Dr. Ivan Slavicky, and Laurel Hedare, the wife of company-owner George Hedare, about the dangerous side effects from continued use of the product. Laurel's guards discover Patience and are ordered to dispose of her. Patience tries to escape using a conduit pipe, but the minions have it sealed and flush her out of it, drowning her. Washed up on shore after drowning, Patience is mysteriously brought back to life by an Egyptian Mau cat, which had appeared at her apartment earlier; from that moment on, she develops cat-like abilities.
From Mau's owner, eccentric researcher Ophelia Powers, Patience learns that Egyptian Mau cats serve as messengers of the goddess Bast. Patience realizes that she is now a "catwoman," reborn with abilities that are both a blessing and a curse. Disguised as Catwoman to hide her identity, Patience, under cover of darkness, searches for answers as to who killed her and why. Eventually, her search (which includes finding Slavicky's body, and later being accused of his murder) leads her to Laurel. She asks Laurel to keep an eye on George, to which Laurel agrees. However, when Patience confronts George (who is at an opera with another woman), he reveals he knows nothing about the side effects. The police, led by Patience's love interest Detective Tom Lone, arrive and Catwoman escapes. Later on, Laurel murders her husband for his infidelity, and admits to having Dr. Slavicky killed because he wanted to cancel the product's release. She contacts Catwoman and frames her for the murder. Catwoman is taken into custody by Tom, but not before Laurel reveals the side-effects of the product: Discontinuing its use makes the skin disintegrate, while continuing its use makes the skin as hard as marble. She also plans to release the Beau-line the following day.
Patience slips out of her jail cell, and confronts Laurel in her office, (rescuing Tom, who'd come there to question Laurel after second thoughts about Patience's guilt, in the process), revealing that Laurel is the one responsible for her death. During the fight, she scratches Laurel's face, and Laurel falls out of a window, grabbing onto a pipe for her life. Laurel sees her face in a window's reflection and, horrified by her skin's rapid disintegration, fails to grab hold of Patience's outstretched arm and falls to her death. Though Patience is cleared of any charges made against her regarding the deaths of Dr. Slavicky and the Hedares, she decides to end things with Tom, choosing to continue living outside the law and enjoying her new-found freedom as the mysterious Catwoman.
What brings Patience back to life?
cat