Mouse-Placed Kitten

Robert McKimson's "Mouse-Placed Kitten" features the common storyline of a baby with the wrong parents. In this case, a kitten ends up in the care of a mouse couple who eventually decide to deliver him to humans to raise. When they go to visit him a year later, an awkward situation arises.

The Looney Tunes had obvious passed their prime by this point - it was going to be hard to top "What's Opera, Doc?" - but it's still a mildly fun cartoon, banal though it is. One thing to note is the voice artists. Mel Blanc of course voices the cat and the father mouse. Voicing the mistress and the mother mouse is the recently deceased June Foray, best known as Rocky the Squirrel (she also voiced Granny in the Sylvester-Tweety cartoons). Her voice acting was so prominent that she even got a mention in the In Memoriam segment on the Emmys in September. As I heard it described, June Foray wasn't the female Mel Blanc; Mel Blanc was the male June Foray.

Anyway, not a great cartoon, but OK.

This is a cute cartoon, not much else; it has much charm, and the story couldn't have taken writer Tedd Pierce much effort (McKimson was the most polite and by far the least demanding of the three Warner directors).

The middle-aged mice couple, Clyde and Matilda, are endearing, as is Junior, their (temporarily) adopted cat son. One thing bugs me, though: why did McKimson and voice artist Mel Blanc have to settle for such a hopelessly moronic voice for Junior? His first reunion with his folks is quite endearing, but the voice always knocks me for a loop—a rather clichéd "dumb" voice, coming as it does from Blanc. But the ensuing hijinks are serviceable enough, although they don't constitute enough of an excuse for Junior's owner to threaten him with homelessness.

I quite enjoyed this cartoon when I was younger, and sure it won't really entertain the adult fan of looney tunes that much but I certainly enjoyed it.

Probably my favorite late 50's merry melody, (Merry melodies I consider looney tunes shorts with no recurring characters).

The Animation is quite good for my standpoint, and definitely gives you that cozy vibe. The Mouse characters can get a little slow but the Cat is a little bundle of joy.

I don't quite agree with any of the review on here (respectfully of course) so I'd thought I'd give my opinion on this cartoon.

Kids will surely enjoy it.

8.8/10.

"Mouse-Placed Kitten" (1959) offers that old Warner Bros. Merrie Melodies standby of the wrong baby being delivered to a pair of expectant parents (see "Baby Bottleneck," "A Mouse Divided," "Goo Goo Goliath"). There's no stork involved in this one, though, as we see a kitten tied up in a bag and thrown out of a car, only to land at the doorstep of a mouse couple living in a barn. After scenes of the mouse father carrying the huge kitten and trying to rock it to sleep and then trying to feed it cheese (which the kitten rejects), the mice agree that the best thing for the kitten is to place him on the porch of the nearby farmhouse and hope that the human family there will take him in. A woman does and a year goes by and the mouse couple decide to go visit "Junior" at the house. Junior, under pressure from the lady of the house to keep the place mouse-free, goes after the mice and grabs them, but then recognizes them as his Ma and Pa and greets them heartily. He endeavors to hide them and take care of them during their visit. When Pa Mouse falls into a jug of "hard cider" and gets drunk, it's all Junior can do to keep him out of view and away from the vacuum cleaner being operated by the lady of the house.

It's a cute idea and features some great voice work by June Foray (as both the lady of the house and the mother mouse), but it's never fully developed, nor is it ever particularly funny. The previous cartoons I've seen with this theme did it better.