"Stop banning the cat please": Jetpack Cat just became the most popular Overwatch hero as players call her the "most fun" – but she's starting to get banned from overuse

Blizzard knew what it was doing putting Jetpack Cat into Overwatch, I'm certain of it. Coming in Season 1 of the hero shooter's soft reset, whereby Overwatch 2 became simply Overwatch and there's a revamped narrative focus, the skyward feline is already standing out as a fan favorite, for good and ill.

In case you're wondering, Jetpack Cat is just that, a cat with a jetpack you can use to fly around the map. It has lasers for offense and defense. Fika is its actual name, and she’s voiced by Jennifer Hale. I say voiced, it's all meowing.

People are enamored. Streamer Timothy 'TimTheTatman' Betar clipped his live reaction to the flying furball. "OK, I'm a cat. And I can fly. Forever???" he asks, incredulously. He then checks out Fika's attacks, where he makes an incredible discovery.

"Look at [her] little paw," he says, focusing on how the cat's paws actively press buttons to shoot their laser beams. They are extremely adorable, to be fair. Many are becoming similarly obsessed.

"I refuse to play anything but Jetpack Cat for the rest of my life," says one enthused Redditor, who adds it's "the most fun" they've had in Overwatch since becoming a fan in 2016. "The movement is so good," says another fawning Reddit post over the flying furbaby, "stealing people and throwing them off the map is hilarious, and you can contribute offensively as well as healing."

They're referring to Jetpack Cat's ability to capture other characters in a force field. You can use this for your team, carrying others around, or on enemies, opening a lot of strategic possibilities, as shown here by streamer Frogger, where he's able to sneak up on an enemy team from around the corner several floors up. There are limited restrictions on these abilities right now, suggesting there'll be a nerf of some description.

This flurry of community excitement is seeing downsides, too. People are reportedly banning Jetpack Cat from matches in competitive because it’s being chosen too much. "Stop banning the cat please, I wanna have some fun and whimsy," Overwatch streamer Flats posted on Twitter.

Fika's actually a returning concept, as it was on the drawing board during the early days of the first Overwatch, before being scrapped. Thankfully, the devs understood some ideas deserve better than to be discarded like used cat litter, especially if they involve flying around as an adorable household pet.

Overwatch smashes its Steam record, more than doubling its previous concurrent player peak with over 165,000 people jumping in as Blizzard's hero shooter enters a new era