by Linda Kay
Original Air Date: April 19, 2012
Directed by: Tristram Shapeero
Cat Out of the Bag Alert! This review contains spoilers for this episode!
Synopsis: Leslie (Amy Poehler) successfully saves the division’s budget by demanding other city services have their budgets cut, leading to unforeseen complications.
Cat Cattle Call: It turns out the animal shelter is the one that gets hit with budget cuts causing it to shut down. This threatens Leslie’s political ambitions because her rivals say she is killing puppies and kitties. Needless to say Ben (Adam Scott) is surprised to wake up in the morning to find their house filled with cats and dogs, not to mention a rabbit and a pig.
Leslie explains that she adopted all the animals from the doomed shelter to save them.
April (Aubrey Plaza) and Andy (Chris Pratt) are visiting in the next scene and Andy is sprawled on the floor with cats all over him.
Andy calls to Tom (Aziz Ansari) who is standing outside the screen door and points out he had five cats on him at once and wonders if Tom would like to try to beat that record. Tom replies that he prefers to keep his distance to prevent animal dander from getting on his cashmire suit.
Leslie assures Ben that the situation is only temporary until she can figure out how to keep the animal shelter going.
April, who had been looking for a project to spark her enthusiasm for her work, suggests throwing a pet adoption fair in one of the parks. At the park they have the dogs in pens and the cats in cages and little fictional biographies for each animal written by Donna (Retta).
At the end of the day they’ve only adopted out one dog but a woman named Mindy (Katie Dippold) stops by with two cats in carriers and asks if this is where she is supposed to drop off unwanted pets. Despite being told no, Mindy leaves the poor cats and runs away.
Later April is feeling down at home with the animals when Tom comes over to try to cheer her up. In the end Leslie manages to come up with a plan to keep the shelter open.
Final Mewsings: In a perfect world all kitties would have loving homes.
Many thanks to Laurie Morrison for letting us know about the cats in this episode.
Relevant Links:
To discuss this show and other cats in movies and on television, join us on Facebook and Twitter.