The cartoon show stars Fraidy Cat (voiced by Alan Oppenheimer), an unlucky and miserable cat who like all cats has nine lives, but has used up eight of them and is on his ninth and last life. The main joke of the series is that as if Fraidy's life wasn't miserable enough, every time Fraidy inadvertently or accidentally says any single-digit number (from one to eight) or any word that sounds like the number, a ghost from one of his former lives will appear and tend to make things even worse for the hopeless cat.