The Ship's Cat

**The Ship's Cat** is a 1992 MGM cartoon directed by Tex Avery and Preston Blair.

## Plot

"Adrian" is the mascot aboard a cruise ship and is warned by the captain that Adrian will be replaced if a mouse on board the ship. A mouse arrives and sees that the ship is headed towards Hawaii, tries to board the cruiseline unaware that the captain has a strict "No Mouse Policy". The mouse is immediately kicked out by Adrian, and the mouse slams into a tree and is squashed by a coconut. After getting the coconut out of the way, the mouse continues to board the ship unsuccessfully until boarding on the anchor of the ship. He then ties Adrian's tail to a lifesaver ring and makes fake cries for help. Adrian throws the ring and as a result he is thrown off the ship.

Adrian somehow gets back onto the ship, wet, furious and seeking retribution. The mouse lounges on a recliner, Adrian comes across and mistakes him for a passenger, a few seconds later and Adrian (literally) freezes in embarrassment when he realizes the "passenger" is actually the mouse from earlier, he leaps in to catch the mouse but the recliner snaps him in half.

As Adrian chases the mouse, the mouse makes a big brain move and decides to make the black cat slip on a bar of soap while Adrian briefly salutes a captain that walks by him as he is thrown off the ship once again. He emerges once again wet and furious and onto the stern. Adrian sees the mouse in the pool, and so he dives in the pool but the mouse quickly gets out of it and drains the pool while he's still in the air and so Adrian slams head first into an empty pool and in classic Avery fashion he breaks apart in a million pieces.

The mouse then rushes to the ship's funnel whistle, Adrian chases after it and the mouse pulls off the boiling water on the cat's behind. The scene transitions and the mouse is now playing with a ukulele, as Adrian tries to push him off the ship with a shuffleboard, the mouse outsmarts him and pushes him off the boat for a third time. Adrian (somehow pulls back up again) is now really enraged this time and attacks the mouse. Another chase scene starts as the mouse flees to a booby-hatch which Adrian proceeds to trap him in there with a dynamite stick. Having heard no sound from the inside, Adrian briefly opens to check, where it is revealed that the mouse is merely standing behind the door. The mouse then kicks Adrian downwards, locks Adrian inside with the TNT and runs off, Adrian explodes in the booby-hatch and the door comes off and reveals the cartoonic aftermath of such situation.

## Trivia

* Robert Gentle is the background artist for this cartoon instead of John Didrik Johnsen.
* This short coincidentally shares it's name with a 1977 book by Richard Adams, although the book and this short have nothing in common besides the name.
* The unnamed black cat from "Bad Luck Blacky" is named Adrian in this short, he's not given this name in any other short.
* This and The Cuckoo Clock are the only cartoons that doesn't pair Adrian with Spike (Butch).
* The mouse is similar in appearance to Bingo from Marty Cannicci's *Bongo and Bingo* series.
* This cartoon is about Adrian in a ship going to Hawaii, three years later, he would actually go there.
* This is the only cartoon to have a directorial pair of Tex Avery and Preston "Pressie" Blair.
* The "Dive in the pool" gag is reused from Wags to Riches.
* This is the second time characters break the fourth wall and watch a cartoon in a theater within a cartoon, the first was in Northwest Hounded Police (1986)
* Adrian would later be renamed Bob in his last appearance in Next Door Nuisance (1995)