The film is divided into 36 chapters. In the fictional Irish town of Tyrellin, bordering Northern Ireland in the late 1970s, animated cartoon robins narrate as Patrick Braden's mother, Eily Bergin, leaves her baby on the doorstep of the local parochial house, where his father, Father Liam, lives.
Patrick is placed with an unloving foster mother. Male at birth, young Patrick is later shown donning a dress and lipstick, which angers her foster family. Patrick is accepted by her close friends, Charlie, Irwin, and Lawrence, as well as by Lawrence's father, who tells Patrick that Eily looked like blonde Americanmovie starMitzi Gaynor.
In Patrick's late teens, Patrick gets into trouble in school by writing explicit fiction imagining how she was conceived by her parents and inquiring about where to get a sex change. Patrick comes out as transgender, renames herself Kitten, also going by Patricia, and approaches Father Liam in confession, asking about Eily, but is rebuffed.
Kitten runs away from home, catching a ride with a glam rock band, Billy Hatchet and the Mohawks, and flirting with leader Billy. He installs the lovestruck, homeless Kitten in a trailer, where she discovers he is hiding guns for the IRA.
Meanwhile, Irwin has begun to work with the IRA, much to his now-girlfriend Charlie's dismay. Kitten dismisses Irwin's politics as "serious, serious, serious", but after Lawrence is killed by police detonating a suspected IRA car bomb, she tosses their gun cache into a lake.
Billy abandons Kitten to flee the IRA, forcing her to face the "serious, serious, serious" men alone. Her lack of connection to their politics saves her from being murdered.
Kitten next journeys to London searching for Eily, but initial inquiries prove fruitless. Penniless, she shelters in a tiny cottage in a park, only to find that it is a children's entertainment park themed around The Wombles.
Kitten gets a job as a singing, dancing Womble, but immediately loses it when her sponsor and co-worker punches their boss. Forced into prostitution, she is violently attacked by her first client, saving herself from strangulation by spraying him in the eyes with Chanel No. 5.
At a diner, magician Bertie Vaughan asks her what she is writing in her notebook. She explains it is the story of "The Phantom Lady" who was "swallowed up" by the big city, then reveals it is about the mother she is seeking. Bertie hires her to be his magician's assistant, turning her life story into a hypnosis act.
On a romantic day trip, Bertie tries to kiss her and she explains that she is transgender, something he already knew. Soon, Charlie finds Bertie's show and takes Kitten away.
Kitten goes to a club frequented by British soldiers and dances with one, only to be injured when the club is bombed by the IRA. Police discover that Kitten is transgender and Irish, so she is arrested as a suspected terrorist.
Beaten and deprived of sleep, she writes a hyperbolic statement, shown in a fantasy spy film spoof sequence. The police's attitude softens, realising she is innocent, and they release her. With no place to go, Kitten begs to stay in the station, but is tossed into the street.
Kitten is again forced to turn tricks, but is saved by one of the cops who interrogated her. He brings her to a peep show where she transforms herself into a blonde. Her repentant father finds her and in a scene mirroring their confessional one, professes his love and tells Kitten where to find Eily.
She goes to her house posing as a telephone company market researcher and discovers a younger half-brother whose name is also Patrick. She faints upon meeting Eily, but after reviving does not reveal her identity.
A short time after, she finds out that Charlie was arrested and used as leverage against Irwin to reveal IRA activities. As a result, Irwin is killed by the IRA, and Kitten returns home to tend to a pregnant Charlie and reconcile with her priest father. The town reacts against the unwed mother and her transgender friend living with her by firebombing the parish house. Kitten and Charlie flee to London with her father promising to visit frequently.
In the final scene, they run into pregnant Eily and little Patrick at the doctor's office, where Charlie is getting postnatal care. Kitten is friendly, but still does not reveal who she is and comments that she hopes that Eily's next baby is a girl.
To prepare for the lead role of Kitten, Murphy studied women's body language and for a few weeks met with a transvestite who instructed him and took him out clubbing with friends.[3]
Neil Jordan and Pat McCabe made big changes to the story in their adaptation of the novel for the silver screen. In the book, the protagonist is called "Pussy", but Jordan and McCabe rename her "Kitten" in the film. Unlike the highly sexual Pussy, who is sexually involved with numerous male and female characters in some rather kinky situations as well as a few long-term relationships, Kitten is never shown to engage in kissing or any other sexual behaviour of any kind. One sexual encounter for hire is strongly implied, but Kitten is not shown being overtly sexual with anyone on screen. Kitten's flirtatious relationships with the series of male characters she meets throughout the film are never shown or strongly implied to have been consummated, leaving the yearning main character unrequited.
The seaside scene between Kitten and Bertie was considered by some to be an allusion to director Jordan's earlier film The Crying Game,[4] which also involved a transgender major character, the IRA, and actor Stephen Rea. In The Crying Game, Rea's character doesn't realise that the woman he has fallen for and becomes sexually involved with is transgender. In Breakfast on Pluto, Kitten confesses that she's "not a girl" before Rea's character can kiss her, and he says kindly that he already knew, but does not follow through with the kiss.
On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 58% of 123 critics' reviews are positive, with an average rating of 6.1/10. The website's consensus reads: "Well-acted if monotonous drama about a transvestite prostitute in London during the 1970s."[6]Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 59 out of 100, based on 36 critics, indicating "mixed or average" reviews.[7]
