It’s amazing to consider that there was a time when you’d just, you know, drown kittens. Before the surgeries that let you just prevent cats from having kittens. I’d note, though, that male animals have been surgically altered that way for thousands of years; the Romans even preferred eating capons, which are castrated roosters. It’s got to be easier to do to a cat than a chicken. Sure, the odds were against a female cat’s survival, but oxen were definitely a thing well before germ theory, so animals had to survive the operation pretty regularly. But, no, let the cats keep breeding and then drown the kittens, it seems?
Anyway, Pluto’s out on a snowy day and hears a strange noise coming from a bag on an ice floe. He investigates and discovers that it’s a kitten someone has thrown in the river. He loses interest immediately, but the kitten follows him home. Mickey (still Walt!) takes a shine to it, and Pluto’s shoulder devil (John Dehner in his last Disney days) points out that the kitten’s getting affection that should be Pluto’s. Eating Pluto’s food and sleeping in his bed, even. Pluto’s attempt to get the kitten in trouble ends in his getting kicked out. The kitten then follows a ball out the pet door and endangers itself all over again.
Is the kitten the same level of semi-sentient that Pluto is? Impossible to say. It doesn’t seem so, but also it is a kitten, so maybe it’s just too young to have the same level in the way that you wouldn’t expect a two-year-old to be on an emotional level with an adult. I’m not sure which version of it is weirder, honestly. If the kitten is a normal animal, that makes it creepier for Mickey to have a semi-sentient pet. If the kitten is a child, which of course it is regardless but go with me, here, someone tried to drown a child and Pluto’s hoping to get one thrown out into the snow again.
I’m not sure where the shoulder angel/devil trope started. I could take the time to do the deep dive, and maybe at some point I will. (Future article? You can pay me to do the research by supporting my Patreon or Ko-fi!) But this is not Disney’s earliest; there’s an appearance in “Mickey’s Pal Pluto,” of which this is a remake. It’s one of the only with Pluto to have them, and I can think of at least one incidence of Donald’s having them. I don’t think Mickey or Goofy ever have, but their personalities are not ones too conducive to the subject. Though of course the most famous character to have one is Kronk.
This is yet another “sure, that’s a cartoon” cartoon. I’m not excited about it, but we’ve seen worse. The money from it went to the TailWaggers Foundation, which among other things provides life-saving treatment to rescue pets in the hopes of getting them homes instead of euthanized. So that, at least, is pretty amazing. Especially given that the studio was flirting with bankruptcy at the time. I’d rather we have that than another goddamn Donald Duck, Aquatic Sociopath, you know?
