The Cat Concerto

The Cat Concerto is a 1947 animated short film starring Tom and Jerry as a pianist and a musician who lives inside the piano, respectively. Tom is a concert pianist who plays Franz Liszt's Hungarian Rhapsody in C# minor, arranged for solo piano and orchestra. Jerry, who lives inside the piano and is apparently sleeping, is rudely awakened by Tom, and the two clash comedically for the remainder of the film. Ultimately, Jerry wins by wearing Tom out.
==Plot==
Tom Cat is a celebrated pianist who is about to perform Franz Liszt's Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2. After bowing to a off-screen standing ovation, he sits down and starts to play. Before he does, though, his shirt slides off, and he has to adjust it. Ultimately, Tom starts to play.
While Tom is playing, the screen cuts into a scene of a bedroom and a mouse, Jerry Mouse, sleeping. The scene then widens, revealing that the "bedroom" is actually a cave carved into the piano. Tom's off-screen fingers tread along the keys in a scale; the felts and the hammers strike along, carrying an unaware Jerry and his bed to the other side of the piano. Tom then ends this scale by playing a repeated note on B4, rudely waking Jerry and briefly stunning him. In retaliation, Jerry mocks Tom by "conducting" him using his finger. An irritated Tom flicks Jerry off the ledge. Enraged, Jerry exits from the piano via through a piano key, intending to get even with Tom, but that key is the key that he will play a trill on, striking Jerry numerous times in the head. Jerry then attempts to flee the piano, leaving a flourish of music behind, but Tom bangs on the keys, hindering Jerry's efforts. Tom then proceeds in his performance, ending with another trill. Jerry, seeing a chance to get revenge on Tom, holds the trill by manipulating the hammer inside the piano. A suspicious Tom looks over the edge of the keyboard and, after a short pause, knocks Jerry unconscious with a tuning rod. In another retaliation, Jerry slams the open keyboard cover onto the piano, flattening Tom's hands.
By this time, Jerry has become an expert at annoying Tom. Jerry attempts to snip Tom's finger using a scissor, but Tom's hand moves more quickly than expected. An enraged and exhausted Jerry finally finds the easiest and most convenient way of fooling Tom: he takes two keys out and replaces it with a finger trap. Tom then furiously gropes for Jerry, striking the correct notes in the process, and climbs onto the piano, playing with his toes, when Jerry once again disappears over the open piano cover. Tom's finger then extends unrealistically to play a high note, and while he is doing this, Jerry once again irks Tom by modifying the piece to a similar tune, "On the Atchison, Topeka, and the Santa Fe," a comic technique also used previously by Walt Disney in his Mickey Mouse short The Band Concert. Anyhow, Tom throws Jerry inside the piano chair so that the latter won't cause any more trouble, but the clever mouse still finds a way to irritate Tom by adjusting the height of the chair. 
Tom, now angry beyond expression, stuffs Jerry between the keys and begins to play one of the hardest and brutal parts of the piece. Jerry is first bonked further into the hammers and then swished by it into another set of hammers, and the comic sequence repeats. Then, two hammers correspond with each other to crush him, then squash him, and then repeat this until one of the keys stays up in the air and shakes Jerry up. Then, Tom plays a few glissandos, sliding Jerry across the inside of the piano and smacking him in the face, eventually turning him into some sort of gingerbread mouse. Jerry then regains his shape and dances around for a few seconds, dizzy from the trauma. 
After regaining his consciousness, he enragedly thinks up of his last and grandest trick of all: he rips a few hammers off and begins striking the strings with them to the tune of the coda and hardest section of the Rhapsody, the dreaded eighths. He continually increases the tempo as a bonus. The camera then shifts to an exhausted Tom completing the part, relieved. However, Jerry repeats the section; Tom's neat fur untangles, and the exposed part of his tuxedo sleeves fall off; Jerry repeats the section yet again, ripping the sleeves of Tom's tails and rendering Tom unconscious, ending the concert for good.
==Reception==
The Australian magazine The Age said, "In conception and animation I think that short reaches the highest level of screen fantasy and humor."
The film is often said to be one of the best Tom and Jerry cartoons ever made.
==External links==
*The Cat Concerto on IMDb
*The Cat Concerto at The Big Cartoon DataBase