Fraidy Cat (TV series)

Fraidy Cat is a 1975 comical children's cartoon show that originally appeared as a segment on Filmation's  short-lived ABC series Uncle Croc's Block. 18 episodes were commissioned and planned for inclusion on Uncle Croc's Block; 12 were ultimately made. The remaining six were scrapped due to the show getting removed from Uncle Croc's Block when the latter was shortened to a half hour. Episodes would be aired in short 6-7 minute story formats.

The premise revolves around a paranoid alley cat who is haunted by his eight past ancestors, all from different time periods. He tries to avoid saying any single digit number (excluding zero), as doing so will cause one of the corresponding ghosts to appear and make the situation he is in worse.

The show was aired in the USA on ABC, Canal+ in France, Junior in Germany, TV2 in Portugal, Super Écran in French-speaking regions of Canada, and RTÉ2 in Ireland.

Background
The show stars Fraidy Cat (voiced by Alan Oppenheimer), an unlucky, stuttering, miserable cat who, like all cats, has nine lives, but has used up eight of them and is on his ninth and last life, where he wants to make it last the longest.

The show builds itself upon the fact that as if Fraidy's life was not miserable enough, nearly every time Fraidy inadvertently says out loud any single-digit number (from  one to eight), or any word/homonym that correlates to said number, a ghost representing one of his previous lives will appear from the Other Side and mistakenly tend to make things even worse for the hopeless cat.

In each episode, Fraidy gets himself into a predicament caused by his desire for sleep or food, or something else, such as a dog, or another aggressor. This can include ending up into a sketchy town, a junkyard, or a bird shop, and usually has the character inhabiting said area to interact with or harm Fraidy in some sort of action against him (although this format is broken in several episodes). Fraidy always ends up saying a number “one” through “eight” out of pure accident, and each ghost cat corresponding to that number tries to help Fraidy in the situation. Saying “nine” however, summons Cloud Nine, an evil storm cloud whose purpose is to electrocute Fraidy.

The spirits in the series include:

 Elafunt (voiced by Lennie Weinrib) - An overweight prehistoric saber-toothed tiger with a caveman motif. He owns a huge pet brontosaurus named "Ant" (voiced by Lennie Weinrib). Ant is usually a hiding spot for Fraidy if someone is on the lookout for him.
 Kitty Wizard (voiced by Lennie Weinrib) - A befuddled wizard whose wand is often on the wrong setting. He is the most problematic of the ghosts, with his goofing up causing Fraidy more hindering than help.
 Captain Kitt (voiced by Lennie Weinrib) - A pirate who is the self-proclaimed "buccaneer's buccaneer". Anything he sees that has value to it or is important he steals, such as keys, and money (which he calls “green printed parchment”).
 Sir Walter Cat (voiced by Lennie Weinrib) - A foppish Elizabethan nobleman who is also an expert swordsman. He tends to look out for Fraidy the most and is the most loyal of the spirits.
 Billy the Kit (voiced by Lennie Weinrib) - A western cowboy with a very loud voice, who carries a very problematic lasso. His name is a play on Billy the Kid.
 Jasper Catdaver (voiced by Lou Scheimer) - An undertaker who is Fraidy's cousin and prefers to expedite his passing to the Other Side, though not out of spite. Jasper is ironically the least troublesome of the ghosts. 
 Captain Eddie Kittenbacker (voiced by Lennie Weinrib) - A pilot who is a very erratic flier, usually resulting in his plane flying upside-down or sideways. His name is a play on Eddie Rickenbacker, a WWI fighter ace.
 Hep Cat (voiced by Lennie Weinrib) - A zoot-suited jive-talking street cat with a beatnik accent. He actually seems to be the smartest of the lives, often providing assistance to Fraidy. 
 Cloud Nine (voiced by Alan Oppenheimer) - Whilst accidentally uttering any of the aforementioned numbers gives Fraidy a ghost, saying the number nine materializes Cloud Nine, a malevolent anthropomorphic deific number nine made from a storm cloud. Cloud Nine is always seen trying to electrocute him with his lightning bolts, and plus, he can regenerate if he mistakenly electrocutes himself.

Episode List
The twelve existing episodes listed were made before the cancellation of Uncle Croc's Block. The episodes listed after "A Semi-Star is Born" were in production and eventually scrapped after Uncle Croc's Block was shortened to a half-hour. However, excerpts of synopses for two of the scrapped episodes, "Fraidy Gone Fishin'" and "Double Trouble", have turned up in online eBay listings containing storyboards for said episodes.

Production
One of the few original series (outside of an adaptation) to be produced by Filmation. Among the three cartoon segments released on Uncle Croc's Block, Fraidy Cat had the longest continued existence with the Frightfully Funny Collection Volume 2 DVD set being the last release to officially contain all of the episodes, released in 2008 by BCI.

The series was supposed to conclude in 1976, with six more episodes commissioned by the network left to produce, but due to a business decision erected by ABC, Uncle Croc's Block was shortened to a half-hour time slot and, consequently, ultimately cancelled. Two of the segments, Fraidy Cat and Wacky and Packy, were cut from the shortened episodes, and only episodes of M-U-S-H were shown from then on. The remaining six episodes never made it past the writing and storyboard stage, as Filmation chose to pocket the money (which ABC had already paid) rather than finish production. There is still debate as to whether the show has twelve or eighteen episodes.

After Uncle Croc's Block ceased production and was cancelled, Fraidy Cat was later syndicated as part of the 1977 Groovie Goolies and Friends series, along with the other segments such as Wacky and Packy and M-U-S-H, alongside numerous other Filmation properties.

In 1995, Hallmark acquired Filmation, and a mass conversion of NTSC to PAL of the master tapes sped the tapes up by 0.5%, which ultimately resulted in nearly every existing copy of the masters being disposed of by Hallmark, supposedly because the company hated Filmation's library. Most of the original NTSC versions of Fraidy Cat are on many public domain DVDs. All surviving NTSC episodes were ripped from VHS tapes, with three episodes being exceptions. The original NTSC master tapes of the show are considered lost media.

Home Media
In 1985, Fraidy Cat  saw an officially licensed video release by The Video Collection in the United Kingdom. After the show was released on VHS in the US, numerous low-end tapes of the show surfaced in the American video market, many without the proper licensing information seen on authorized tapes.

{| class="wikitable"
!width="225"| Title
!width="110"| Release Date
!Additional Information
|-
|The Video Collection: Fraidy Cat||November 3, 1986||Episodes: Feline Fortune, Puss 'n' Boats, A Scaredy Fraidy, Meaner Than a Junkyard Cat, Cupid and the Cat, Over The Wall and Havin' a Ball, Choo Choo Fraidy, Magic Numbers, A Semi-Star is Born
</table>

All of the produced Fraidy Cat episodes were released by UK-based Boulevard Entertainment on two DVD volumes in the 2000s and later by BCI on a compilation DVD called Frightfully Funny Volume Two, which also included episodes of Groovie Goolies and Filmation's Ghostbusters. These DVD releases brought Fraidy Cat back into the public eye after decades of scarce home media releases, and as of its release, the latter is the only release of Fraidy Cat in the American media market to contain the full 12-episode collection.

{| class="wikitable"
!width="225"| Title
!width="110"| Release Date
!Additional Information
|-
|The Frightfully Funny Collection: Volume 2||October 21, 2008||Episodes: The Not-So-Nice Mice, Cupid and the Cat, Over The Wall and Havin' a Ball, Feline Fortune, Puss 'n' Boats, A Scaredy Fraidy, Meaner Than a Junkyard Cat, Love is a Many Feathered Thing, It's a Dog’s Life, Choo Choo Fraidy, Magic Numbers, A Semi-Star is Born
</table>

In the late 2000s, rumors spread of a DVD containing both Fraidy Cat and The Secret Lives of Waldo Kitty. The DVD went unreleased since the company releasing the DVD, BCI, ceased operations.

Status of Copyright
Because of Filmation's decision of not including their copyright info on the individual segments (the copyright notice was included on the Uncle Croc's Block series as a whole, and also the M-U-S-H and Wacky and Packy segments), Fraidy Cat has mistakenly been believed to have fallen into the public domain and nine of the twelve finished episodes have unofficially shown up on many public domain DVDs, most notably in a ubiquitous amount of Mill Creek Entertainment's cartoon compilation DVDs.

The episodes released on said DVDs are bootlegged copies and are instead recorded on aged VHS copies of the show instead of being directly taped from their masters. One of the episodes included on the DVD set, "Puss ‘n’ Boats", is incorrectly titled "This Cat for Hire", which is in actuality one of the scrapped episodes of the show.

After a shuffling of rights between Hallmark and then Sony, the show now resides under the copyright of NBCUniversal and DreamWorks, who currently own the Filmation catalogue as of 2023. While Fraidy Cat is streaming on Tubi unofficially, the show has yet to resurface on streaming services and home video officially.

References

External links
 
 
 Fraidy Cat at Don Markstein's Toonopedia. Archived from the original on July 30, 2016.

1970s American animated television series
1975 American television series debuts
1975 American television series endings
American children's animated comedy television series
Animated television series about cats
Television series by Filmation
Television series by Universal Television