Has it really taken me this long to get to Chuck Jones? Granted, there are any number of important animation artists and topics that I have yet to touch on. But Chuck Jones? Chuck Jones, the creator of so many beloved animated characters? Chuck Jones, winner of numerous awards for his work, including a Lifetime Achievement Oscar? Chuck Jones, director of no less than four of the top five films in the prestigious list of the 50 greatest cartoons of all time? Chuck Jones, the man who….
Wait. Let me back up for a minute.
Though Chuck Jones is undeniably a very important figure in the history of American animation, it is still possible to give him too much credit. I have seen people mistakenly attribute the creation of everything from Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck to the entire Warner Brothers library of animated shorts to Jones. Jones did not create either Bugs or Daffy. He was one of many directors to work on the Warner Brothers shorts and his peers included such animation luminaries as Tex Avery, Bob Clampett, and Friz Freleng. Like most studio animation, each cartoon the Jones directed was a team effort. On Feed the Kitty, the short we will be looking at today, Jones was joined by story artist Mike Maltese, layout artist Robert Gribbroek, background artist Phillip de Guard, composer Carl Stalling, and animators Ken Harris, Phil Monroe, Lloyd Vaughan, and Ben Washam. On a typical Warner Brothers short, the director would draw the keyframes, the animators would create breakdown drawings between the keyframes, and uncredited inbetweeners would do the rest of the drawings required to create the illusion of a complete movement.
Even without misinformation and exaggeration, Chuck Jones’s list of accomplishments is more than impressive. Jones worked on dozens of short cartoons during his time at Warner Brothers, many of which are now regarded as classics of the medium. Like most of his colleagues, Jones adapted the studio’s star characters to fit his own particular style and sense of humor. Among the characters he did create are Pepé Le Pew, the Road Runner, Wile E. Coyote, Marvin the Martian, and the golden-throated amphibian later dubbed Michigan J. Frog. He enjoyed a fruitful collaboration with celebrate children’s book author Dr. Seuss that resulted in, among other works, How the Grinch Stole Christmas. His early experimentation in The Dover Boys helped to inspire UPA’s limited animation style. This is only a partial list of Jones’s achievements, but a comprehensive one would take all day to read and we still have a cartoon to get to.
The cartoon in question is Feed the Kitty, released in 1952. It’s a perfect example of Jones’s particular style featuring all original characters. Since only one of the three characters in this short actually talks, it also highlights Jones’s masterful use of expression and posing to convey emotion and tell a story. The short features a wonderful balance between humor and genuine emotion, making the audience truly care about the characters and their situation even as it elicits laughs.
Incidentally, although this cartoon could generically be referred to as one of the Looney Tunes, the titles show that it was released under the banner “Merrie Melodies.” The two designations for a Warner Brothers cartoon were completely interchangeable by 1952 (though prior to 1943, they did indicate two different types of cartoons, as pop culture sage Mark Evanier explains). The “Blue Ribbon” designation was given to cartoons that were re-released in theaters. In case you were wondering, the names “Looney Tunes” and “Merrie Melodies” were indeed derived from Disney’s Silly Symphonies. For a time, many animation studios had a library of shorts with a name consisting of an adjective suggesting zaniness or light-heartedness and a noun relating to music. Warner Brothers just happened to hold on to theirs the longest and now “Looney Tunes” is synonymous with Bugs, Daffy, Porky, and their various costars.
The short begins with a pair of scary looking eyes on a back background, accompanied by ominous music. The camera pulls back to reveal that the dark background is the inside of a discarded can of salmon and those threatening eyes are in fact the baby blues of the world’s cutest kitten. Just in case anyone in the audience isn’t going “Awwww!” by this point, the soundtrack switches to an instrumental version of “Ain’t She Sweet,” a tune that serves as the kitten’s theme through the rest of the short. The kitten never acquires a name and its gender is a matter of some dispute. A later line of dialogue refers to the kitten as “he,” but later writing, including that of Jones himself, indicates that the kitten is female, so that’s what I’m going with. The models sheets for this cartoon call the character simply “Kitten.” Later documents refer to her as “Pussyfoot” and occasionally “Cleo” (likely short for “Cleopatra” to further link her with the bulldog she will be paired with). But her name is unimportant. Her job in this cartoon is to be cute and innocent, a job that she pulls off with ease from her first moment onscreen.
Enter the bulldog. His name, we will later learn, is the imposingly classical “Marc Anthony.” Like the eyes in the dark being revealed as nothing more fearsome than an adorable kitten, the introduction of Marc Anthony utilizes misdirection and our knowledge of cartoon clichés to create humor. The stereotypical cartoon setup is that dogs and cats are mortal enemies. Bulldogs in particular are commonly cast as big, surly, tough guys. If our protagonist is the sweet little kitty, than surely the bulky pooch eyeing her with menace must be the villain. Our fears seem to be confirmed and the dog charges at the helpless kitten, snarling and growling.
This is where the standard cartoon script goes out the window. The kitten is shockingly unperturbed by Marc Anthony display of viciousness, merely mewing at her would-be attacker and returning to the task of washing her feet. Marc Anthony is just as baffled by this turn of events as we are. He shoots the camera a look of utter bewilderment before resuming his attempt to terrorize the kitten. No more impressed than she was before, the kitten calmly walks though the dog’s open jaw, climbs up his arm, kneads his skin with her paws, and makes herself comfortable on his back. World’s bravest kitten? Sort of. She isn’t so much brave as naïve, an innocent baby blissfully unaware that anything can harm her or that anyone would want to. She has no fear, but only because she doesn’t know enough to be afraid.
So when does Marc Anthony go from possible villain to potential protagonist? It’s right around the time when the kitten starts to knead his back. It’s not that this is a pleasant sensation, as the bead of sweat n his face and his cringing expression show. But Instead of trying to remove the kitten from his back, he is enduring the discomfort. Marc Anthony is not a truly mean dog. Even at his worst, he was only trying to scare the kitten with his growling (presumably because that is what dogs are supposed to do), not to physically harm her. Once that fails, he is completely at a loss for what to do. Confronted with a creature totally unafraid of him who purrs and casually curls up on his back as if it’s the most natural place in the world for a kitten to be, Marc Anthony does was most of us would: he gives in to the cuteness. Chuckling to himself, he leans over to kiss the kitten and is rewarded with a tiny lick. His mile-wide smile and series of rapid blinks convey his pure joy. The “dog vs. cat” narrative is now completely gone, replaced with the tale of a proud papa and his newly adopted baby. Totally smitten with kitten, Marc Anthony head for home with slow, careful strides so as not to disturb the little one’s slumber.
The traditional dog and cat story has been ditched and Marc Anthony has gone from threat to protector. So what’s the conflict? What will fill out the nearly six remaining minutes of the cartoon?
Enter the lady of the house. Since Marc Anthony has now been established as the protagonist of the short, his mistress is only seen from the shoulders down at the most. As with most cartoons about domestic animals, the human characters must be kept at a distance. It’s not unlike the never-seen adult characters whose speech is represented by horns. If any of these adult characters becomes a fully visible character, fully present in the story, the narrative is reduced to the concerns of children or pets. The more active the adult characters are in the story, the more we expect them to understand what is going on, take charge of the situation, and keep everyone safe. Keeping the one human character’s face offscreen link the audience with Marc Anthony’s point of view and further emphasizes his inability to directly communicate with her, a problem that is about to become even worse.
The lady of the house is a typical 1950s housewife, primarily concerned with cooking and cleaning. When we first meet her, she is surveying the various items that Marc Anthony has left scattered around the house. When the dog returns home, his head just peeking in from the hallway, his mistress sternly informs him that he is not to bring anything else into the house. Now we have our conflict. Like a child, Marc Anthony does not realize that their might be a difference between his mistress’s anger over the junk he leaves around the house and her willingness to accept his new kitten. Since he can’t talk, his ability to explain his situation to her is already limited. And now he additionally feels he must keep the kitten a secret from her. The shape of the narrative has changed once again. Marc Anthony is still the kitten’s loving protector, but we’re learning more about his place in the hierarchy of the household. When we first met him, Marc Anthony seemed to have all the power, albeit power that could be swayed by the charms of a tiny kitten. In the environment of a suburban alleyway, Marc Anthony is at the top of the food chain. But once he gets inside, he is at the mercy of the lady of the house. So Marc Anthony becomes the kid who isn’t allowed to have a pet, but has nonetheless snuck one into the house and now must work to keep his new pet concealed.
There is once last nod to the traditional cartoon animal story, one that further emphasizes that this story is quite different from most others. Marc Anthony’s first attempt to hide the kitten is to place it under an upside-down bowl. The kitten runs off still wearing the bowl and is mistaken for a mouse by the lady of the house. Marc Anthony bounds after his new little charge and finds the bowl discarded in front of a mouse hole. He is so concerned about making sure that the lady of the house isn’t watching him that he pulls out an actual mouse and sets it on his back without even noticing his error. When Marc Anthony notices the kitten eating out of his food bowl, he realizes his mistake and unceremoniously hurls the mouse back into its hole. The mouse is the last new character, if you can even call it a character, introduced in the short, but there is really no place for it in this cartoon. The kitten is too sweet and innocent to be chasing mice and the bulldog, traditionally a friend to mice or at least enemy of cats, is the cat’s protector. The mouse is better off getting out of this cartoon as soon as possible. Its odds are much better in just about any other short.
Marc Anthony’s task is to keep his mistress from noticing a very active kitten and the next two sequences deal with him doing just that. Both sequences have a very similar structure: the kitten does something cute that puts her in danger of being discovered by the lady of the house and Marc Anthony quickly comes up with a way of making the kitten look like something other than a kitten. The first one begins with the kitten playing atop a ball that starts rolling out of control and eventually runs straight into the lady of the house with the kitten still atop it. Thinking fast, Marc Anthony grabs the wind-up key from a toy car and pretends to use it to wind the kitten. The ruse works and the lady of the house only requests that Marc Anthony keep the “strange toy” out of her way. He kisses her feet repeatedly in acquiescence, much to her amusement. The second sequence comes as direct result of the first. The kitten climbs into the toy car and accidentally starts it, resulting in both car and kitten driving haphazardly around the house. Marc Anthony gives chase, which quickly attracts the lady’s attention. He finally recovers his kitten atop a vanity and manages to roll her up and use her as a powderpuff. The main purpose of these sequences, aside from entertainment value, is to establish how difficult it is for Marc Anthony to keep his kitten secret. If the audience is to get this idea, they need to see it played out and multiple examples always work best to drive the point home.
Unlike some of the animated dogs I have discussed previously – Buster from Toy Story 2 for example, Marc Anthony is a cartoon dog, sort of. He cannot speak, but he can walk on his hind legs and manipulate objects with his hands. On top of that, the lady of the house considers this perfectly normal behavior. When she is surprised by what he does, it’s because it seems out of character for this particular dog, not because it is physically impossible for a dog to do such things. Marc Anthony isn’t a human in a dog suit completely divorced from the idea of a real dog, but he isn’t a real dog either. He falls somewhere in between.
Much of the appeal of this cartoon comes from the strong poses that convey Marc Anthony’s feelings and attitude. This extends to his run, which is defined by his physical stature and his personality. Marc Anthony is built like the average cartoon bulldog: barrel chest, sloping back, short, chunky front legs, and small, slender hind legs. When he’s running full tilt, that massive chest plows straight into the floor while his hind legs are left scrambling in mid air. At one point, the curve of his back inverts his hind feet actually end up in front of his front paws. This comedic run reflects both Marc Anthony’s shape and his desperation as he races after his wayward kitten. Some cartoon bulldogs, usually those cast as the heavy, are very stiff with an emphasis on how strong and muscular they are. But Jones really plays with the loose skin of Marc Anthony’s jowls and back, solidifying his role as a big, goofy guy and heightening the comedy of his actions.
After these near misses with the missus, Marc Anthony tries to lay down some ground rule with his kitten. But since he can’t talk, he is reduced to shaking his finger and making some mildly disapproving noises. But cute wins out again. The kitten start purring and bats at Marc Anthony’s wagging finger with her paws, causing Marc Anthony to forego his lecture for some cuddle time.
When the lady of the house reappear, Marc Anthony is forced to dump his kitty in the flour bin. There are some really stellar expressions here. Marc Anthony first tries to look nonchalant as he leans on the flour bin door, legs crossed, one hand over the other, eyes looking off to the side at nothing in particular. When his suspicious mistress asks what he’s up to, he points to himself and widens his eyes in feigned disbelief; “Who, me?” As she tells him how guilty he looks, the again clasps his hands together, closes his eyes, and shakes his head, an angelic grin taking up most of the height of his face. Note that Jones doesn’t use any of the easy visual clichés in Marc Anthony’s attempt to look innocent: no halos or angel wings. It’s entirely up to expression on body language to get across what he’s trying to say.
Anyways, the lady of the house isn’t buying her pooch’s innocent act and shoos him off to his bed so that he’ll be out of the way while she bakes cookies. She reaches into the bin for a scoop of flour, and predictably…..
Up to this point, Marc Anthony’s greatest fear has been that his mistress, upon discovering that Marc Anthony has brought “one more thing” into the house, will toss his beloved kitten out into the cold, cruel world. Now a much more frightening possibility has emerged: the kitten could be hurt of even killed by the lady of the house because she is completely unaware of the kitten’s presence. What’s even worse is that the original problem makes this new problem that much harder to solve. If Marc Anthony reveals his kitten’s presence, he risks losing her. If he doesn’t, she could be hurt. As far as Marc Anthony can see, the only possible course of action is to retrieve his kitten from the cookie batter without his mistress noticing, which is no easy task.
The narrative rule of three gets quite a bit of use in short cartoons. Such films are, by their nature, short and one of the reasons the rule of three works is that three is the smallest possible number required to either confirm or break a pattern. The first instance is stand alone. It sets up the pattern, but can’t establish it by itself. The second instance establishes the pattern. Something similar has happened two times and since we’re mentally wired to look for patterns, we anticipate it happening again. The third instance can be one of two things: a confirmation and culmination of the pattern, or a wild deviation from the pattern. It is possible to have more instances in between, continuing to repeat and confirm the pattern until finally breaking it. But if time or space is limited, a storyteller will usually go with three as the absolute minimum. So that’s what we have here. Marc Anthony’s attempts to rescue his kitten form a culminating pattern. They grow progressively more desperate and more aggravating to his mistress. He tries simply reaching into the bowl to grab his kitten, but gets scolded for trying to steal the raw dough. He pulls the plug for the mixer out of the socket with his foot. But that delay is short lived. Finally, he grabs some whipped cream from the refrigerator, sprays it on his face, and starts snarling like a rabid dog. But by this point, we know that Marc Anthony isn’t dangerous and the lady of the house knows it too. She immediately recognizes the “foam” as her whipped cream and drags Marc Anthony out into the yard. These escalating events are necessary to demonstrate both Marc Anthony’s growing desperation and his mistress’s increasing annoyance. By the time she exiles him to the yard, we know that he has tried everything he could think of and she is at her wits’ end. It is neither too sudden for us to understand what has happened, nor so drawn out that it wastes precious time.
While Marc Anthony is being dragged into the yard, the kitten casually climbs out of the mixing bowl and finds a secluded spot on the counter to clean herself. This scene and the timing of it are absolutely crucial. If it had occurred just a second before, Marc Anthony would have seen that his kitten was safe and the story would have continued on as it was before the kitten ended up in the cookie dough. If it had taken place later, the lady of the house would have noticed the kitten and brought the cartoon to a premature end. If it had somehow been skipped, leaving us to believe along with Marc Anthony that the kitten is still in the mixing bowl, then nothing that happens after this moment would be funny at all. Because we know that the kitten is fine, we can laugh at the reactions of Marc Anthony who does not, secure in the knowledge that he will eventually find his kitten safe and sound.
Just about every expression in Feed the Kitty is worthy of further study. But in the interests of not keeping you here for weeks on end, I’m going to limit myself to focusing on a few. Mark Twain, who Chuck Jones frequently cited as one of his heroes, compared the difference between the right word and the almost-right word to the difference between lightning and a lightning bug and I imagine Jones felt much the same about the difference between the right drawing and the almost-right drawing. What makes the expressions in this and other Chuck Jones cartoons work so well is their specificity. Marc Anthony is almost never generically happy, sad, worried, or anything else. Because the character cannot talk, his face has to show exactly what he is thinking and feeling. A balance is struck where no small detail is overlooked and no line is wasted, from one extra crease in Marc Anthony’s wrinkled brows to the smallest fold at the corner of his mouth. Jones once wrote that the first – and only- great rule of drawing is that every line is just as important as every other line. Every single line that is in the final drawings is there because it is essential to conveying the idea of that drawing.
So now we have Marc Anthony watching through the window in horror as the lady of he house works on the batter that he believes contains his kitten. This requires a delicate balance. Marc Anthony’s reactions must be funny, appropriate to the situation, and still avoid being so pained that the audience becomes uncomfortable. Again, it is essential that we know that the kitten is actually fine. As the lady of the house starts the mixer, Marc Anthony’s ears fall to the sides of his head, his eyes rolls back, and he slowly sinks beneath the window. He returns to wince as the lady rolls out the dough, then fall over backwards in shock as she starts cutting it into shapes. He is finally reduced to a single eye just peeping over the edge of the window and disappearing down again as the cookies go into the oven.
The perfectly bland and domestic scenes of the lady making cookies are accompanied by another existing tune: the ubiquitous “Shortnin’ Bread.” The jaunty tune and festive images make a perfect contrast to Marc Anthony’s reactions and his eventual collapse into a howling, sobbing mess. By the time his mistress decides to let him back in, he is literally lying in a pool of his own tears.
There is a fine line between comedy and tragedy and this short dances all over it. I’ve probably seen it a dozen times at least. I know what happens. I know the kitten hasn’t been turned into sugar cookies. And yet every time I watch this scene, I get just the slightest bit choked up. Every single time. I’ve written repeatedly before about the need to make an audience care about what the characters are going through, particularly when the ending of the story is a foregone conclusion. Most people who have never laid eyes on Feed the Kitty before could probably tell you pretty early on that Marc Anthony and his kitty will get their happy ending, even if the don’t know exactly how. What keeps us invested is figuring out how the story will get to its conclusion, the entertaining incidents that happen along the way, and really caring about these characters and what is happening to them. Even if I know he’s going to be overjoyed to find his kitten alive and well seconds later, I still feel for what Marc Anthony is going through at that exact moment. Not so much that it’s no longer funny, but enough that there is some genuine sadness mixed in with the laughs.
Why does this work? The first place to look is the animation by Jones and his team. Again, we are presented with a very specific expression. This is not merely a sad dog. This is a dog whose long face is literally longer than normal, whose eyes are huge and soaked with tears, whose protruding lower lips is quivering with grief, whose hand shakes. This is a dog who has been through just about the most miserable experience her can imagine. Some credit is due to the ink and paint department for their careful airbrushing of Marc Anthony’s red-rimmed eyes, adding to the effect. Carl Stalling’s “sad” theme, used throughout this portion of the cartoon, is ever so slightly over-the-top, just enough to preserve the humor without destroying the emotion. And, of course, there’s the story, what is actually happening through the character. And boy, do Jones and Maltese put poor Marc Anthony through the wringer. His mistress, completely unaware of the real cause or depth of her dog’s misery, tries to cheer him up with – of all things – a kitten-shaped cookie. It even has little blue eyes. If I’m going to be honest, the part that tugs at my heartstrings is not when Marc Anthony reaches out a trembling hand to take the cookie, nor seconds later when he completely breaks down, but the moment in between where he places the cookie on his back and slowly walks a few steps, tears streaming down its face. It’s still a genuinely funny moment, but it gets to me all the same.
All right, enough of all this crying. The kitten comes out of hiding and Marc Anthony discovers what we already knew: that she was fine all along. He is understandably elated, breaking out in a open-mouthed expression of joy so exaggerated that it wouldn’t look out of place on The Ren and Stimpy Show.
Having gone through believing that his kitten had been turned into baked goods, there is really nothing left for Marc Anthony but the final confrontation. More cute gags with the kitten almost being discovered would seem dull after all that excitement and nothing could possibly top it, especially not in the short running time remaining. So now the lady of the house comes upon Marc Anthony with his kitten and starts tapping her foot, waiting for an explanation. He tries his previous tricks, winding the kitten up with the key (which appears out of nowhere and disappears again seconds later) and rolling it into a powderpuff. How do we know that this isn’t working? Because the lady never stops tapping her foot and Marc Anthony shakes his head in recognition of the fact that she isn’t buying it every time we cut back to him. He resorts to his last option: bawling. He would probably be incomprehensible even if he could talk, but his clasped hands and cradling of the kitten make it clear that he’s begging his mistress not to take his baby away.
Of course she doesn’t. In fact, she tells Marc Anthony that – joy of joys – he can keep the kitten! Marc Anthony’s jaw drops and his tears evaporate as he hugs his new pet. The journey included a good deal of stress that may have been unnecessary, judging by how quickly Marc Anthony’s mistress agrees to let the kitten stay. But no greater permanent harm was done than a batch of cookies being ruined with kitten hair and we finally have our happy ending.
Almost. Remember that this is still a funny cartoon, and one that is going to get a few final laughs in before finalizing what is actually a very sweet ending. While Marc Anthony cuddles his kitty, his mistress reminds him of all the new responsibilities that pet ownership brings. He looks back at her and nods after each reminder, but his nodding becomes less and less enthusiastic and his expression more and more annoyed. He has exactly what he wanted, but he’s only now realizing that he will be responsible for his kitten’s feeding, cleanup, sleeping arrangements, and all other care. It’s one last moment of cutting through the treacle before the cute wins out.
(By the way, the lady’s dialogue here is the one place where the kitten is referred to as “he.”)
And in the end, the cute does win out. The kitten escapes Marc Anthony’s stern wagging finger once again simply by virtue of being so very adorable. She climbs up his front leg and is soon kneading his back once again. Marc Anthony endures this uncomfortable sensation through a series of pained cringes, letting out a sigh of relief when the kitten settles in at last. This callback to the characters’ first meeting reassures us that even if Marc Anthony’s new chores may be irritating, he will grin and bear it for the sake of his kitten. The final shot shows the kitten comfortably snoozing on Marc Anthony’s back as he pulls a fold of skin over her as a blanket.
Feed the Kitty has long been regarded as a great cartoon by animation fan and professionals alike. For me personally, it’s a cartoon that I have loved since the first time I saw it. It is quintessential Chuck Jones, full of his particular brand of humor and approach to the art form. It accomplishes the difficult task of being simultaneously funny and touching, an impressive achievement from one of the great masters of animation.
All images in this article are copyright Warner Brothers. This cartoon is available on both the Loonry Tunes Golden Collection Vol. 1 and the documentary Chuck Jones – Extremes and In-Betweens, A Life in Animation.
Tags: best, shorts, warner brothers
One thing I always liked about Chuck Jones’ work is how he handles suburbia. He uses pinks and whites and greys and oranges and greens so well. Maybe it’s just the time it was made in, but I always loved the colour palette that Jones made use of.
And on the subject of Jones, probably one of my favourite things he ever did was the Ricki Ticki Tavi half-hour picture. (Similar to his How the Grinch Stole Christmas adaptation.) The scene where Nag gets shot in particular is just so effective. One of the most… destructive and striking death scenes.
I think it’s at least partly the color palette that would have been considered modern during the 1950s. But it really is an appealing color scheme. Right now, I’m looking at the screenshots where Marc Anthony is against what’s essentially a field of pink and a field of green divided by a stripe of darker green and I’m amazed that it both reads as interior house walls and doesn’t look absolutely nauseating, considering the color combination. I’m inclined to give the credit to Phillip DeGuard since he’s credited as the background artist and I don’t know how much time Jones would have spent selecting the color scheme for the backgrounds.
I’m very fond of all of Jones’s adaptations of Kipling’s stories. A comparison of Mowgli’s Brothers and Disney’s The Jungle Book would probably make for an interesting future article.
That would be very interesting to read. I’ve never actually seen the Jones adaptations of the Jungle Books, though. I should look into that at some point.
Technically you have, since “Rikki-Tikki-Tavi” was originally a short story in Kipling’s The Jungle Book. The book is mostly stories about Mowgli and the jungle animals, but there are a couple of completely unrelated short stories. “The White Seal” is another tale from somewhere decidedly not the jungle and another story that Jones made into an animated film. The only Jones film that covers the adventures of Mowgli – what most people think of as The Jungle Book is .
Well I should see all of Jones’ stuff eventually anyway.
By the way, do you have an e-mail I can use to contact you at all?
My favorite scene is when Marc Anthony puts the cookie on his back ..where is it?!?!?
It’s one of my favorites too, but I couldn’t find a good still that made it clear what was going on. I try to pick images that best illustrate the points I’m trying to make, ad sometimes, that doesn’t include the most memorable scenes.
One of my very favorites.