Cats and Bruises is a 1965 Merrie Melodies short directed by Friz Freleng and Hawley Pratt.
Title[]
The title is a play on the phrase "cuts and bruises".
Plot[]
Sylvester spies on the Cinco De Mayo festival, where Speedy Gonzales and his friends are dancing and partying. Sylvester then dons a mouse disguise consisting of only a pair of mouse ears, and gatecrashes the festival. When two of Speedy's friends mistake Sylvester in the mouse disguise as a giant mouse, Speedy points out to them that it's a cat (el gato), not a mouse, and all the mice then retreat and run for their lives.
Speedy then lures Sylvester to the dog pound, where the cat gets attacked by numerous bulldogs. Sylvester escapes from the dog pound and continues chasing Speedy. When Sylvester successfully catches Speedy with a net, Speedy continues running inside the net, dragging Sylvester along until the cat crashes into a pole.
Later, Speedy is serenading his girlfriend on a boat on the lake, singing the popular Mexican song "Cielito Lindo". Sylvester goes after Speedy in an inflatable raft, but Speedy throws a dart into the raft, puncturing it and causing Sylvester to sink underwater into the lake.
Next, Sylvester drags a box, a plank and a 500-pound weight to the point at the base of the apartment building that is in a direct vertical line with the window where Speedy and his girlfriend are. He supports the plank with the box in the middle, stands on one end of the plank and heaves the weight onto the other end. This propels him up to Speedy's level and enables him to snatch the mouse. However, as he runs off, the weight lands hard on his head.
Finally, Sylvester builds himself a hot rod racing car and chases Speedy with it. As the chase continues, Sylvester realizes that he forgot to put brakes on the car, and drives off a cliff and into the lake in the middle of the desert.
With Sylvester out of the way, Speedy tells his friends that the party continues. Speedy's triumph is however short-lived, as an injured Sylvester in a wheelchair then chases Speedy at slow speed, so slow that Speedy lightly jogs away saying, "This is the only way to run."
Availability[]
Streaming[]
Notes[]
- This cartoon contains reused animation from "Canary Row", "Dog Pounded", "A Pizza Tweety-Pie", "Here Today, Gone Tamale", and "The Pied Piper of Guadalupe".
- The mouse ears Sylvester wears at the start of the cartoon are the same ones as in the end of "Here Today, Gone Tamale", except here they are all black, resembling those of Mickey Mouse's ears from Disney.
- Interestingly, in the cartoon's old Latin Spanish dubbing this Mickey Mouse reference in that scene is made more obvious, where when one the Mexican mice commented about Sylvester's mouse disguise, instead of saying "He's the biggest mouse I've ever did seen" as in the original version, in the old Latin Spanish dub the line has been changed to "Ese ratón es más grande que Mickey Mouse" which translates as "That mouse is bigger than Mickey Mouse" in Spanish. [1][2][3]
- This is one of the last pairings of Speedy Gonzales and Sylvester ("The Wild Chase" would be their last pairing, not counting Sylvester's cameo in "A Taste of Catnip") and the last cartoon in the Golden Age of American Animation where Sylvester speaks; in his final two appearances, "The Wild Chase" and "A Taste of Catnip", Sylvester does not speak.
- This is also last Sylvester/Speedy cartoon to have both characters speak, although while Sylvester remained mute for the rest of his final appearances from the Golden Age of American Animation, Speedy resumed having speaking roles when paired against Daffy Duck.
- MeTV+ aired a previously unreleased restored print of this cartoon on Sunday Night Cartoons. It is the first short to be restored for the Sunday Night Cartoons block. This restoration was later made available on Warner Bros. Discovery RIDE.
- The restoration on the titles has a brief error where the abstract lines do not fully disappear before the title card, an error that also occurs with the "Mexican Mousepiece" restoration.
- This is the only cartoon where Sylvester defeats Speedy in the end.
Goofs[]
- When Sylvester starts chasing one of Speedy's friends, his mouse ears disappear from the shot permanently.
- During a brief shot showing the bulldogs in the dog pound, the bulldogs' mouths do not move to the barking sounds.
- When Sylvester is driving his racing car to chase Speedy, one of his arms is missing.
- Sylvester's neck becomes black and white in different shots.
Gallery[]
TV Title Cards[]
Speedy Gonzales Cartoons | ||||
---|---|---|---|---|
1953 | Cat-Tails for Two | |||
1955 | Speedy Gonzales | |||
1957 | Tabasco Road • Gonzales' Tamales | |||
1958 | Tortilla Flaps | |||
1959 | Mexicali Shmoes • Here Today, Gone Tamale | |||
1960 | West of the Pesos | |||
1961 | Cannery Woe • The Pied Piper of Guadalupe | |||
1962 | Mexican Boarders | |||
1963 | Mexican Cat Dance • Chili Weather | |||
1964 | A Message to Gracias • Nuts and Volts • Pancho's Hideaway • Road to Andalay | |||
1965 | It's Nice to Have a Mouse Around the House • Cats and Bruises • The Wild Chase • Moby Duck • Assault and Peppered • Well Worn Daffy • Chili Corn Corny • Go Go Amigo | |||
1966 | The Astroduck • Mucho Locos • Mexican Mousepiece • Daffy Rents • A-Haunting We Will Go • Snow Excuse • A Squeak in the Deep • Feather Finger • Swing Ding Amigo • A Taste of Catnip | |||
1967 | Daffy's Diner • Quacker Tracker • The Music Mice-Tro • The Spy Swatter • Speedy Ghost to Town • Rodent to Stardom • Go Away Stowaway • Fiesta Fiasco | |||
1968 | Skyscraper Caper • See Ya Later Gladiator | |||
1979 | Fright Before Christmas | |||
1980 | The Chocolate Chase |