Puss n' Toots

Infobox Hollywood cartoon
cartoon_name = Puss n' Toots
series = Tom and Jerry


caption =
director = William Hanna
Joseph Barbera
animator = Pete Burness
Irven Spence
Jack Zander
George Gordon
Billie LittleJohn
voice_actor = Lillian Randolph
musician = Scott Bradley (uncredited)
producer = Fred Quimby
distributor = Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
release_date = flagicon|US May 30, 1942
color_process = Technicolor
runtime = 7' 48"
movie_language = English
imdb_id = 0035226
preceded_by = "Dog Trouble"
followed_by = "The Bowling Alley Cat"

"Puss n' Toots " is a 1942 one-reel animated cartoon and is the 6th "Tom and Jerry" short. It was produced in Technicolor and released to theatres on May 30, 1942 by Metro-Goldwyn Mayer.

Plot

The cartoon opens with Tom watching Jerry as his runs around an empty fishbowl. Jerry tries to escape the bowl but Tom pushes him back in. Then the doorbell rings and Mammy Two Shoes goes to answer it. Tom then puts the flowers back in the bowl, grabs Jerry, and hides him in a filing cabinet under the letter "M" for mouse.

Tom now has to hide under the cabinet as Mammy comes directly towards him, and she answers the door to receive a cute female cat to take care of temporarily. Mammy sits her up on the couch as Tom sees her and instantly falls in love. The cat is struck by Cupid's arrow and dresses up by smoothing down his hair, curling his whiskers and tail, and putting on hair gel. He then proudly walks over to her and she smiles back. He offers her a goldfish and a canary, but she is not hungry for either.

Seeing a chance to humiliate Jerry, Tom instead goes over to the filing cabinet to release him. Jerry escapes and runs away, but Tom takes his time looking through a magazine to shake him off his tail before giving chase. Tom catches Jerry by his tail just before he runs through his mousehole, releases him, and sits on the couch. As Jerry runs toward him, Tom holds out his arm for Jerry to climb, and Jerry climbs it and is then caught between the cat's fingers.

Tom then holds Jerry in his hands, blows into them and makes Jerry disappear like a magician, although the camera shows that he is holding Jerry by his tail. Tom pokes his fingers into the bow around the girl cat's neck and reveals Jerry. This makes the cat smile as she apparently begins to fall for Tom.

Tom rolls up his hands, grabs a box of chocolates and opens it to reveal Jerry is sitting in the middle of it. Tom then grabs a handkerchief and stuffs Jerry into it before throwing the handkerchief in the air, and Jerry parachutes down to the couch. The cat quickly covers Jerry, then hides him fast enough for the girl not to notice. Then, he opens the handkerchief and Jerry has "disappeared", though of course, Tom is actually sitting on Jerry.

Underneath the cat's rear, Jerry tries to escape, but he can't, so he grabs a ribbon which pulls part of a hat with a hat pin in it into the mouse's reach. Jerry grabs the pin and sticks Tom, allowing him to escape. The mouse leaves the pin out for Tom to (almost) stick himself on on the fall, and then runs over to the desk and quickly raises the telephone to call for help. Since there is no response, Jerry then runs inside a record player, but Tom turns on the turntable, causing the mouse to go nowhere fast. Tom then presses the button to change records, but forgets he is sitting on one. Jerry flops himself to get off the turntable just before Tom falls onto it and is "played" by the turntable due to the record on his tail. The girl cat now wonders where her beau is and peeks at the developing scene.

Jerry, inside a phonograph needle container, digs himself out only to see he has been impaled repeatedly with the needles. After shaking them out of him, Jerry avenges himself by causing the records to change again, and it hits Tom's head, causing the cat to assume a Zen Buddhist caricature as the table spins. (For more on this, read Censorship.) Happy with himself, Jerry dances to the Oriental music, then changes the record to a Spanish tango, which causes Tom's rear to gyrate in time, supplemented by Jerry kicking it. The mouse continues to dance to the music, but accidentally sits on the Stop button, freeing the cat. Tom is eager for revenge of his own and pounces at the mouse, but Jerry takes stock of the situation fast enough to restart the player as Tom jumps through the record passer, causing "Tom" to be lodged in it. Now, the cat tries to escape the turntable, but is forcibly slapped back onto it by the needle whenever he does, and is then planted directly on the record and smacked by the reader as he makes the revolutions. Jerry then presses the start button to stop Tom and get him running on a record again. Jerry then starts pressing random buttons and waves at the helpless girl cat as records fly at her and then continually break over Tom's head, except for one that doesn't. Eventually, with help from the needle holding Tom into place, the last record knocks Tom out as it breaks and Tom is thrown through the player as it self-destructs.

Jerry then goes over to the mirror, cleans himself up, kisses the girl cat and walks proudly into his mousehole.

Trivia

*This was the first cartoon to feature a love interest for Tom.
*In the DVD release of this cartoon in the Tom and Jerry Spotlight Collection Volume 2, the blue MGM lion title card is replaced by a later black Gene Deitch-era MGM cartoon title card (the one with the current lion). The music track's lion roar doesn't time well with the current lion's roar. However, European TV showings retain the blue title card rather than plaster the black card over it.
*The female cat Tom had a crush on later appeared in The Zoot Cat and became his girlfriend in The Mouse Comes to Dinner.

Censorship

*There is a very short scene when an upside-down golden record disc lands on Tom's head, Tom squints as if he is blind (also, his whiskers straighten downwards in the form of a Chinese moustache), making him appear Chinese. This is cut from a number of stations in the US due to racial censorship. In the United Kingdom, the scene remains intact.