by Linda Kay

Directed by: Chuck Jones

Cat Out of the Bag Alert! This review contains some spoilers for this film!

Synopsis: Claude the Cat lives a feral lifestyle in a junkyard. All is well until Frisky Puppy shows up and starts scaring the poor stray every few seconds.

Cartoon Cat: Claude, looking scruffier than in other cartoons where he appears as a housecat, awakens in the back seat of an old jalopy located in a junk yard.

Some blue birds are flying overhead and Claude whistles to them sweetly, then nabs one of the birds out of the air and stuffs it into his mouth.

A couple of other blue birds fly overhead with a brick and drop it on Claude’s head, causing him to spit out the bird.

Still hungry, Claude watches as Frisky Puppy appears with a large bone and buries it nearby.

Once the pup has left, Claude desperately tries to dig up the bone only to be scared when Frisky Puppy suddenly returns and barks at him, causing him to fly up into the air and cling to a power pole with his claws.

Next Claude approaches a trash can only to be startled by the pup popping out and barking again. This time Claude ends up hanging from an awning. As in other cartoons of this nature, Claude drops down, stops in midair and rights himself before landing on his feet.

Frisky Puppy finds an old shoe and starts shaking it violently. The sole part flies off and hits poor Claude in the face.

Claude chases the dog through a pipe only to have the puppy bark and scare him again, this time flying up through a manhole cover which ends up landing on Claude after he lands on his feet.

His head flattened, Claude stumbles to a water spigot to rinse his head, only to have the pup scare him again.

This time Claude flies up through some elevated train tracks just in time to get hit by a train.

Next Claude angrily chases the puppy through a lumber yard and is startled after the dog barks through a pipe, causing the poor cat to fly up with his legs going right through a plank of wood.

Defeated, Claude is walking along a sidewalk when he hears some baby birds chirping in a nest in the tree above. He starts to sneak up the trunk when the pup arrives and barks, causing the cat to shoot up the tree, stripping it of all branches and leaves. Sitting in the nest is Tweety Bird who says he thought he saw a Putty Tat.

Claude stuffs an old sock to make it look like his tail and sets it down as bait to lure Frisky Puppy.

The puppy barks at the decoy only to have Claude jump on him from behind and gag the noisy pup.

Claude is walking away, satisfied, when a bulldog suddenly appears, barking so loudly that Claude ends up on the wing of an airplane flying away across the ocean. Tweety Pie appears again to proclaim, “I did! I did see a Putty Tat!”

One flaw in this cartoon which makes it a bit more difficult to enjoy is the fact that Claude really hasn’t done anything to deserve this kind of torment. In other cartoons he is usually trying to do harm to the puppy but this time around he is just a hungry cat trying to survive.

Final Mewsings: Dogs and birds should have more sympathy for hungry cats.

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