A Dog Ate My Homework

**A Dog Ate My Homework** is the first episode of *CatDog* and its first season. In this episode, Dog keeps getting blamed for eating children’s homework, which causes the Education God to become furious. It’s up to Cat to get to the bottom of this mayhem!

## Plot Synopsis

### Act One

It’s the first day of school, and Pam and Lola are going over everything Pam needs for the day. She has her crayons, paper and pencils in her backpack; a banana, pretzels, cheese and apple juice in her lunchbox; and is wearing her red shirt, blue skirt and pink sneakers with white socks. As the two begin their walk to preschool, Lola warns Pam about the beaver near the huge lake: his name is Dagget, and he does **NOT** like anyone who is not a beaver! Pam becomes frightened and hides behind Lola, but Lola assures her that there’s nothing to worry about, as Dagget only ever comes out of his dam on Friday 13, the day of bad luck.

Meanwhile, Cat is reading one of his many books on one side of the kitchen table, while Dog is chewing on his squeaky toys on another. Winslow comes out of his mouse abode and points out how the two of them are polar opposites, yet always work great together. As he prepares his breakfast, Dog asks Cat what preschool will be like for Pam; Cat tells him that Pam will be fine, since her mom has been friends with the teacher for a while.

At preschool, the strict Ms. Grock introduces herself to the class as Pam walls through the door with an apple in her hand. Grock’s mood quickly becomes more positive as she is handed the apple. The class then introduces themselves, and Pam begins playing with the building blocks. As she builds a castle, a mean girl in a princess outfit named Susie comes by and destroys it, making the poor mouse cry in Ms. Grock’s arms. The teacher promply scolds Susie for what she did and tells her to go to the time-out corner.

As the next few days pass by, school goes great for Pam and her friends, but on Friday, Ms. Grock’s apple is suddenly missing. At first, fingers are pointed towards Susie, but she proves she didn’t do it by retelling what she ahd for breakfast. Susie then says she recalls seeing a dog eat her apple before school started; this turns into mayhem as other schools start saying student’s homework has gone missing, all pointing to one suspect: Dog!

### Act Two

Cat and Dog are soon locked away in a prison cell located in a planetarium in outer space, with only a telescope and some peanuts. Cat tells Dog not to worry, for he will solve the case and get everything back to normal. Just then, two agents come by and tell them that the Education God wants to see them; the Education God turns out to be a living t-rex skeleton, and he is furious at what has happened with all the Homework going missing. Lola and Pam come by and prove that Dog is innocent.

With Dog’s innocence proven, the four begin investigating as to who *actually* ate the homework. They first ask a music teacher named Mr. Grieg as to what date it was when the homework got eaten; Mr. Grieg tells them it was Friday 13 when it happened. Pam then notices a patch of brown fur lying on the desk. Lola identifies it as beaver fur, and after Cat and Dog find more beaver fur across the schools they investigate, that leaves one individual left to confront: Dagget Beaver!

The four then make their way to Dagget’s dam, but are stopped by Rancid Rabbit, his acquaintance/butler. He tells them that only forest animals are welcome to the beaver dam, so Pam decides to call a few “friends” over. As it turns out, they are the animals that got kicked out of the area of the beaver dam by Dagget, and they want revenge! As Dagget realizes that he’s in big trouble, he tries to flee, but is stopped by the agents of the Education God and is taken away to be locked up.

Cat and Dog start returning everyone’s homework to the correct schools and classrooms while Lola and Pam walk home from preschool. As Pam unpacks her backpack, she tells Lola that she got to take home building blocks for the two to play with. Proud that Pam was on her best behavior, the two build a city out of the blocks and play “Hollywood” as the episode ends.

## Cast (in alphabetical order)

* Jack Angel as Mr. Zookeeper
* Harvey Atkin as Rancid Rabbit
* Jim J. Bullock, S. Scott Bullock and Jim Cummings as forest animals
* Ruth Buzzi as Ms. Grock
* Candy Candidio as the Education God
* Nancy Cartwright as Pam Squeak/Susie/prechoolers/forest animals
* Christine Cavanaugh, E.G. Daily, Grey Griffin, Richard Steven Horvitz, Janice Kawaye, Lara Jill Miller and Jill Talley as preschoolers
* Charles Fleischer as Winslow T. Oddfellow/Eddie the Squirrel/Agents 1 and 2
* Nika Futterman as Lola Caricola/Susie’s singing voice/preschoolers/forest animals
* William Hanna as Cat
* Tom Kenny as Mervis/Biff/cooking teacher/forest animals
* Sid Raymond as Dog/Dunglap
* Billie Mae Richards as Dagget Beaver
* David Ogden Stiers as Mr. Grieg
* Tara Strong as Squeak/forest animals
* Frank Welker as Mr. Sunshine/Bartholomew/forest animals/special vocal effects

## Differences from the rest of the series

The pilot episode was made and recorded in 1996, so it has many differences to the rest of the series.

* Some of the characters are voiced by different actors. For instance:
	+ Dog and Mervis (named Dunglap here) are both voiced by actor Sid Raymond. Raymond would voice the characters a couple more times after this episode.
	+ Charles Fleischer voices Winslow and Eddie rather than Carlos Alazraqui and Dee Bradley Baker, respectively. After this episode, Fleischer left to continue his standup comedy career.
		- However, Fleischer would voice Winslow one last time in *Quest for the Golden Hydrant*.
* Harvey Atkin and Billie Mae Richards are not given starring credits for their roles of Rancid Rabbit and Dagget Beaver, respectively.
* The Greasers are preschoolers and have different names.
	+ Cliff (known here as Biff) is even voiced by Tom Kenny, who would go on to replace Will Ryan in the third season.
* Lola speaks with a Brooklyn accent and not a Spanish one. This is because it was not decided that Lola would be of Spanish heritage until the week after production had concluded for this episode.
* Mervis and Dunglap have their names switched. Also, Mervis is colored orange and is slightly chubbier.
* The character animation is noticeably less fluent than the rest of the series and has been considered “two-and-a-half steps ahead” of Hanna-Barbera’s work in the 50’s and 60’s.
* While the music is still composed by J.A.C. Redford, a banjo is noticeably missing from the soundtrack.