Pickled Puss

A bubble-blowing mouse feeds a pursuing cat pickled herring (labeled ninety proof). The cat is a very genial drunk.

this is an amusing cartoon from the brief period when Henry Binder and Raymond Katz -- Leon Schlesinger's old henchmen -- were running Columbia's cartoon department. Columbia didn't have much in the way of series characters except for the Fox and the Crow, so this is clearly a one-shot, but care was taken with its construction, including some very nice point-of-view shots early on.

Despite a first-rate staff, no producer of Columbia cartoons had stuck around for more than a couple of years since Charles Mintz had died. With no steady hand to provide an imprimatur to the cartoons, the division had floundered, despite some promising starts. Eventually, Harry Cohn would close down the division and toss everything to UPA, who would produce a series of cheap and stylish cartoons.