The Cat Came Back (Plunger, Mousetrap, Poke 'Er Eye)

Quick note before I start: I know I said I was going to change up the blog and take it to a new direction, but I have five entries on the back burner formatted in the old style. For ease of transition (and because I'm still thinking of new ways [or a new way] to approach my entries), the entries to this short, Milk and Money/Porky's Prize Pony, I Love to Singa, and The Village Smithy will be in this style. After another full post covering a group of similarly censored cartoons (it will either be the Banned Bugs Bunny 12 or The Hunter's Trilogy), I will transition over to my as-yet new style (I am considering a podcast-style transcription with accompanying video and picture stills, but nothing is set in stone yet). So, enjoy these last five entries as they are.

Director: Friz Freleng

Summary: In this platonic version of Romeo and Juliet, a kitten and a mouse, despite being taught by their respective mothers that they and their kind are sworn enemies of the other, run off and become friends. When the two end up getting trapped in a sewer, will the two warring families put aside their differences and save their children?

The Channel: Unnamed syndication

Part(s) Edited: Going by the old Censored Cartoons Page and the Looney Tunes wiki, there are four parts edited for seemingly no reason (though at least one part has a justified reason for being edited).

• The momma mouse training her kids on how to run through a mousetrap without getting caught
• The momma cat getting poked in the eyes (and the momma cat poking the momma mouse in the eyes after thinking back to why they're enemies in the first place) [this counts as two cuts, and is probably the only justified edit, as eye-poking is often considered dangerous, imitable slapstick violence, especially if you've ever seen a Three Stooges short with the classic trio of Moe, Larry, and Curly]
• The momma mouse using a plunger to get the kitten and mouse out of the sewer.

Please Note: the accompany video refers to the momma mouse as a "momma rat." That's my bad for doing these on lack of adequate sleep.

How It Plays Edited/Video Comparison: Not too bad, though the eye-poking part being edited is obvious. Without it, there's no reason why the momma cat and mouse hate each other (besides the fact that cats and mice don't get along anyway). Here's the compare/contrast clip:

Please Note #2: I switched over to Filmora for this video because it works better. There's a watermark on it because I have the free version. Somewhere on this journey, I will get a paid version, but that's probably not going to happen. DaVinci Resolve is good and I will come back to it, but Filmora has better features and I will stick with it unless otherwise noted.

Availability Uncut: It is available for streaming (uncut, naturally. It's not problematic by modern standards, outside of some violence, drowning peril, and species discrimination, but it's cute and charming enough to get away with it) on HBO Max (now called "Max"). If you're looking for a physical release of it, there's only two choices: The Golden Age of Looney Tunes laserdisc set (volume 5, side 5, "Pesky Pets") or the Blu-ray version of the movie The Walking Dead (no relation to the graphic novel or the AMC series) starring Boris Karloff and Ricardo Cortez.

Update: As of 2025, “The Cat Came Back” is not on HBO Max (a.k.a Max) anymore. It is uploaded on Tubi.

Beauty and the Beast (No Time to Duck, or Duck Off)

 

Director: Friz Freleng

Summary: In a cartoon that's nothing like the 1991 animated Disney feature film, the 2017 live-action Disney film, or even the 1946 French film (which wasn't made by Disney, but is worth seeing if you hate or are sick of Disney), a little girl dreams she's in Toyland (or some kind of nursery rhyme fantasy kingdom that was popular and appealed to kids at the time) and teams up with a toy soldier to take down a beast that's threatening to destroy the dream world.

The Channel: Unnamed syndicated prints.

Part(s) Edited: The scene of Humpty Dumpty laughing at the toy soldier blushing over being kissed by the little girl shortened the part where, after Humpty Dumpty falls off the wall and breaks, five wooden ducks pop out and do a dance/skate on their wheel feet as a gnome feeds soda crackers through a fan to simulate snow. As the old Censored Cartoons Page and the Looney Tunes wiki section has stated, this scene isn't problematic (unless you find a man blushing over being shown any kind of open affection, Humpty Dumpty falling off the wall as per that nursery rhyme that didn't even mention he was an egg, or the sight of wooden ducks somehow offensive) and was only edited because the sequence ate a lot of clock and would probably cause a lot of people (particularly younger audiences, since this does feel like something that would appeal more to children) to get bored with it and tune out.

How It Plays Edited/Video Comparison: Like the older black and white musical cartoons, this doesn't affect the plot much. There's a slight jump in the audio, but the scene has nothing to do with the rest of the short, so you're not missing much. And the approximation video below shows that, despite some amateur video editing on my part:

Availability Uncut: On physical media, it’s available on the Golden Age of Looney Tunes laserdisc set (volume 2, side 7). On streaming media, it’s available restored on HBO Max (now known as “Max”). It might come out on physical media again someday, especially since the new restored version really captures the whimsical, fairy tale aesthetic that Cinecolor tried to capture in the 1930s (though I’m so sure, through 1930s eyes, it probably did look amazing).

Update: As of 2025, “Beauty and the Beast” isn’t on HBO Max (a.k.a Max) anymore and, strangely, isn’t a part of Tubi’s 700-800 WB shorts collection. However, it is a part of the first volume of the Looney Tunes Collector’s Vault Blu-ray that was released this year.