Cate Hennessy

Cate Stinky Hennessy (née Egan) (Portrayed by Katey Sagal) is Paul Hennessy's wife and a mother of Bridget, Kerry & Rory Hennessy. She is a deauteragonist of Season 1, until when John Ritter passed away, she takes Paul's spot light as the protagonist of Season 2 & 3.

Personality
She is a wife; a mother to Bridget, Kerry, and Rory; a nurse and easily the most sane and composed person in the family, who is made a widow by Paul's death. She takes a nursing job at the kids' school so that she can work standard hours and spend more time with the kids. Cate starts dating her kids' High School Principal, Ed Gibb, towards the end of Season 3. At first, the rest of the family, especially the kids, do not take this well, claiming the potential relationship was "wrong on a million different levels". However, they grudgingly came to accept it. She received her middle name "Stinky" as a result of her father, Jim promising his best friend he would name one of his children after him after accidentally stabbing him with a bayonet while they were drunk in Korea; to hide this, she claims that the S stands for "Stacy."

Trivia

 * Cate shares some similarities with Katey Sagal:
 * Both shorten their name, though Cate's given name isn't revealed most assume it's Catherine (the given name of Sagal).
 * Cate is shown to be a very good singer as seen in All I Want for Christmas, and Daddy's Girl (which is named after Sagal's hit song that she sings in the episode)
 * Jim sometimes calls Cate "Katey".


 * She might be deauteragonist on Season 1 and a protagonist in Season 2 & 3.