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Catch as Cats Can is a 1947 Merrie Melodies short directed by Arthur Davis.

Title[]

The title is a play on the term "catch-as-catch-can."

Plot[]

An emaciated canary, singing like Frank Sinatra, is getting on the nerves of a pipe-puffing parrot, who speaks like Bing Crosby. The parrot spots Sylvester, foraging through the trash. Telling Sylvester he needs more vitamins, which the canary has been swallowing in bulk, he lures Sylvester inside to snare the canary.

The straightforward approach fails (the canary bops him in the eye instantly). After Sylvester gives up instantly, the Crosby parrot stops him and forces him to continue "to get the vitamins he needs". Sylvester employs the following tricks to eat Frankie, all of them ending in failure;

  1. He carves a female canary from soap, lures Frankie there; the birds slide down a greased counter, into the sink, and down the drain, but only the soap bird goes through the pipe and down Sylvester's throat.
  2. Sylvester creates a trail of birdseed into the garage. This technique seems to work, but Frankie jacks Sylvester's mouth open.
  3. Sylvester laces the vitamins with buckshot; like all cartoon magnets, his attracts everything metal in sight except his prey.
  4. Sylvester uses the vacuum cleaner to suck up Frankie. After opening the vacuum bag, the canary turns Sylvester's vacuum cleaner against him, with a crash in the fireplace giving Sylvester a hot-stomach; as he buries his head in the sink, the bird adds Foamo-Seltzer to the water; Sylvester rockets off, crashing into a wall.

Just as the Crosby parrot is about to give an injured Sylvester a new plan to eat Frankie, the cat finally realizes the portly parrot is a better meal. The canary sees Sylvester sitting on the parrot's perch, imitating his mannerisms.

Caricatures[]

Availability[]

Streaming[]

Censorship[]

  • According to the podcast Cartoon Logic, the ending in which the Sinatra canary discovers that Sylvester ate the Crosby parrot and begins acting like him had a scene cut before its theatrical release where the camera pans to the backyard showing a tombstone that reads, "Came In Before His Horse," a joke about Crosby's poor luck at betting on horses. Versions of this short shown on domestic and international television, as well as home media (including its recent addition to the first volume of the Looney Tunes Collector's Choice Blu-ray set), and on Boomerang Streaming Service, end on the scene of Sylvester, as the Bing Crosby parrot, saying, "Ah, there's nothing like vitamins..."[3][4]

Notes[]

  • This short is one of three non-Bugs Bunny cartoons from 1947 not to be reissued. The others were "Mexican Joyride" (a Daffy Duck cartoon) and "A Pest in the House" (a Daffy Duck/Elmer Fudd cartoon).
  • Songs sung by "Frank" include: "As Time Goes By", "It Can't Be Wrong" and "A Little on the Lonely Side".
  • This one of the only two shorts featuring Sylvester to be directed by Arthur Davis, joining "Doggone Cats". In contrast to the former short, where Sylvester didn't talk and had an orange, unnamed feline partner, "Catch as Cats Can" has Sylvester speaking, albeit with a dopey voice (that sounds like an early version of the voice Mel Blanc would use for Barney Rubble on The Flintstones) and no lisp. Coincidentally, both cartoons were released in 1947.
  • This is the only Sylvester short made in 1947 to not be reissued.
  • This is the first Merrie Melodies short to use the 1947-48 color rings in both the opening and ending titles.
  • MeTV aired this short in November 2021 as part of their Toon In with Me block. The MeTV airing of this short was unrestored.
    • As of November 8th, MeTV began airing the restored version of this short from the Collector's Choice Blu-ray release, replacing the unrestored one.
      • This is the first, and so far only, short to have its MeTV copy upgraded from an unrestored print to a restored one.
  • The Bing Crosby parrot from this cartoon would later reappear in "Curtain Razor" two years later, albeit redesigned and given the name "Bingo".

Gallery[]

References[]

ā† Doggone Cats Sylvester Cartoons Back Alley Oproar ā†’
Sylvester Cartoons
1945 Life with Feathers ā€¢ Peck Up Your Troubles
1946 Kitty Kornered
1947 Tweetie Pie ā€¢ Crowing Pains ā€¢ Doggone Cats ā€¢ Catch as Cats Can
1948 Back Alley Oproar ā€¢ I Taw a Putty Tat ā€¢ Hop, Look and Listen ā€¢ Kit for Cat ā€¢ Scaredy Cat
1949 Mouse Mazurka ā€¢ Bad Ol' Putty Tat ā€¢ Hippety Hopper
1950 Home, Tweet Home ā€¢ The Scarlet Pumpernickel ā€¢ All a Bir-r-r-d ā€¢ Canary Row ā€¢ Stooge for a Mouse ā€¢ Pop 'Im Pop!
1951 Canned Feud ā€¢ Putty Tat Trouble ā€¢ Room and Bird ā€¢ Tweety's S.O.S. ā€¢ Tweet Tweet Tweety
1952 Who's Kitten Who? ā€¢ Gift Wrapped ā€¢ Little Red Rodent Hood ā€¢ Ain't She Tweet ā€¢ Hoppy Go Lucky ā€¢ A Bird in a Guilty Cage ā€¢ Tree for Two
1953 Snow Business ā€¢ A Mouse Divided ā€¢ Fowl Weather ā€¢ Tom Tom Tomcat ā€¢ A Street Cat Named Sylvester ā€¢ Catty Cornered ā€¢ Cats A-weigh!
1954 Dog Pounded ā€¢ Bell Hoppy ā€¢ Dr. Jerkyl's Hide ā€¢ Claws for Alarm ā€¢ Muzzle Tough ā€¢ Satan's Waitin' ā€¢ By Word of Mouse
1955 Lighthouse Mouse ā€¢ Sandy Claws ā€¢ Tweety's Circus ā€¢ Jumpin' Jupiter ā€¢ A Kiddies Kitty ā€¢ Speedy Gonzales ā€¢ Red Riding Hoodwinked ā€¢ Heir-Conditioned ā€¢ Pappy's Puppy
1956 Too Hop to Handle ā€¢ Tweet and Sour ā€¢ Tree Cornered Tweety ā€¢ The Unexpected Pest ā€¢ Tugboat Granny ā€¢ The Slap-Hoppy Mouse ā€¢ Yankee Dood It
1957 Tweet Zoo ā€¢ Tweety and the Beanstalk ā€¢ Birds Anonymous ā€¢ Greedy for Tweety ā€¢ Mouse-Taken Identity ā€¢ Gonzales' Tamales
1958 A Pizza Tweety-Pie ā€¢ A Bird in a Bonnet
1959 Trick or Tweet ā€¢ Tweet and Lovely ā€¢ Cat's Paw ā€¢ Here Today, Gone Tamale ā€¢ Tweet Dreams
1960 West of the Pesos ā€¢ Goldimouse and the Three Cats ā€¢ Hyde and Go Tweet ā€¢ Mouse and Garden ā€¢ Trip for Tat
1961 Cannery Woe ā€¢ Hoppy Daze ā€¢ Birds of a Father ā€¢ D' Fightin' Ones ā€¢ The Rebel Without Claws ā€¢ The Pied Piper of Guadalupe ā€¢ The Last Hungry Cat
1962 Fish and Slips ā€¢ Mexican Boarders ā€¢ The Jet Cage
1963 Mexican Cat Dance ā€¢ Chili Weather ā€¢ Claws in the Lease
1964 A Message to Gracias ā€¢ Freudy Cat ā€¢ Nuts and Volts ā€¢ Hawaiian Aye Aye ā€¢ Road to Andalay
1965 It's Nice to Have a Mouse Around the House ā€¢ Cats and Bruises ā€¢ The Wild Chase
1966 A Taste of Catnip
1980 The Yolks on You
1995 Carrotblanca
1997 Father of the Bird
2011 I Tawt I Taw a Puddy Tat
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