Headscratchers / The Aristocats

• Why do Napoleon and Lafayette refer to Edgar as "She" and "Her"?
  • I read somewhere on Disney Wiki that there was a deleted character, Madame Bonfamille's maid, who would have formed a Big Bad Duumvirate with Edgar. Perhaps the dogs are referring to this maid character, but the creators forgot to edit those lines after erasing her from the movie.
  • At what point does this happen? If you're referring to Napoleon's 'I got her wide open!' line, that's just another way of saying 'I am making this vehicle go very fast' (ie. the clutch is wide open) so he's referring to the fact that he is pushing the side-car as fast as he can.
• Why was Duchess speaking in rhyme in the "She never felt alone" moment?
  • Because it's a reference to a deleted song.
    • That's the out-of-universe answer. Maybe an in-universe answer could be that Duchess was feeling poetic so she thought it would be appropriate to speak in rhyme, or that she was even writing a poem (because if the cats can write songs on the fly, who's to say they can't write poems, too?).
• Why does Napoleon think he's the "leader"?
  • Why not? He's bossier and seems to be the elder of the two.
  • Obviously because of his complex.
  • It's also a bit of Fridge Brilliance concerning the relationship between the real Napoleon and Lafayette. Essentially, Lafayette was a huge annoyance to Napoleon for various reasons and Napoleon was the leader, with constant concerns that Lafayette was undermining him.
• With all the O' names, why didn't the Alley Cats guess that Roquefort was talking about O'Malley?
  • They seemed to have a strict policy not to trust anyone who claimed to be sent by someone they didn't know. They were probably making sure he wasn't making it up or sent by a stranger.
  • Even if Roquefort hadn't been able to remember O’Malley’s name, would it not have been enough for him to mention Duchess and the kittens, like he does later? The Alley Cats would know who he was talking about since they met them the previous night. Not to mention that every single name for O’Malley that Roquefort guessed was “O’-something”.
    • As far as Roquefort not mentioning Duchess and the kittens, he didn't know that the alley cats knew Duchess and her family; as far as he was aware he'd just been sent to contact O'Malley's friends who would help for his sake but had never met the others.
• How come O'Malley initially wants Duchess not to hang out with his friends because they're "not exactly [her] type" and he was presumably referring to their use of slang, yet he used two slang words himself to describe them (namely "buddies" and "swingers")?
  • He may have been referring to their overall breeding, not just their use of slang—Duchess and her kittens are "proper," wealthy cats, while O'Malley and his gang are streetwise and on the rough side. O'Malley probably thought that Duchess wouldn't appreciate being with a bunch of noisy, freewheeling cats in a jazz club with her small children, and thus tried to dissuade her.
• Who's going to take care of the cats now that Edgar is gone?
  • Given that Madame Bonfamillie said she plans on creating a home for alley cats, she's probably decided to go the philanthropic route with her money, which means she's going to need a group of people to staff the charity. Presumably she'll hire some younger cat lovers/musicians who will become the furry family's new caretakers.
• Did Edgar really never consider waiting until Madame Bonfamillie died before he tried getting rid of her cats? If he had waited until then, it would be much less of a risk for him as Madame evidently reported her missing cats to the police. (It even appears in the newspaper.) Plus, one might also consider the possibility that she might adopt another cat and leave her fortune to that one instead.
  • It would probably be even more suspicious if the cats were to disappear so suddenly after they had been publicly declared the inheritors of the old woman’s fortune, especially since it would be harder for Edgar to deny that he had any motive if questioned at that point. As I recall, the movie is kicked off by him overhearing the inheritance discussion rather than being intentionally made aware of it.
    • plus the movie opens in the Paris 1910, the previous year there had been a recession and 4 years later The great war begins and lasts until 1918. In the off chance that Madame died near the beginning or during said war, even if Edgar and the cats somehow make it through the war in one piece doesn’t necessarily mean Madame’s fortune would. Although Madame is clearly a kind woman who treats Edgar as well as she treats her cats (by ensuring that he still has employment after her passing) there was very little in the form of pension or retirement benefits for domestic servants, and there was no wealth-fare system back then period to help those too old to work. To Edgar obtaining the madame’s wealth is like winning a massive jackpot in the lottery today and he wants to be able to freely enjoy it, which he wouldn’t get to do if Duchess and her kittens were still around as George, or the lawyer who’d be succeeding him, would be keeping a close watch to make sure that the bulk of said funds are spent on the cats.
• How do we know Madame's last name?
  • The credits, presumably. Failing that, BTS material and suchlike.
  • When Edgar sneaks the cats out of the house in the middle of the night, a sign next to the door he uses reads "Bonfamille Delivery Entrance".
  • Her name is clearly printed in the newspaper article about the catnapping Edgar shows off.
• What was going on with Waldo? Did he drink the white wine that they tried to baste him in? Or was he just insane?
  • The former, implicitly. Or possibly the reverse — he snuck in to drink the wine, and then the human staff caught him and went "oh you like wine, do you? well we'll have basted goose for dinner, is that wine enough? grrr!".
    • judging from the commotion we see when we first meet Waldo, he snuck into the cafe after closing hours and was caught drinking the white wine by the cook who decided to cook Waldo for his dinner (and the cook clearly has no knowledge of how to correctly dispatch a goose).
• Berlioz, the cat kitten, knows how to play the Piano, and is pretty remarkable at it for essentially a young child, and a cat. You think a cat being able to play a Piano would be more noteworthy.
  • There's a certain amount of Willing Suspension of Disbelief involved in any "pet animals are secretly sentient and have their own hidden hang-out spots" story, but presumably, The Aristocats is one of those which takes place in a universe where while not all human beings realize quite how intelligent animals are, they are used to animals engaging in more intelligent behaviour than they do in the real world.
• Why did Napoleon and Lafayette attack Edgar? They didn't just chase him and bark at him, they bit him several times and attacked him like he was a dreaded enemy, and Edgar was lucky that he even escaped alive. Granted, Edgar was up to no good so he pretty much deserved what he got from the dogs, but it's not like they knew that. I know they apparently like to chase vehicles, but do they attack everyone who comes through their area like they attacked Edgar? Or could they somehow sense (or suspect) that he was up to no good, even if they didn't know about the cats?
  • Maybe they only chased him at first, but after realizing the specifics to his scenario (upper class butler from Paris has a family of cats in a basket and is taking them through the countryside in the middle of the night) they saw some red flags and that was enough to set them to Beast mode.
    • This debunked as Lafayette mentioned that they had chased and attacked at least 4 motor vehicles, a bike, and a scooter already that day. In fact the read-along picture book refer to them as being “two touchy dogs who attacked anything that came into their territory” means that they’ll attack any intruder even if it’s someone on a scenic Sunday drive.
• Why was Edgar so desperate to retrieve his hat and his umbrella? The dogs took them so it's probably unlikely the police would find them anytime soon (though I understand Edgar obviously didn't know that at first). But even if they did, how would they know they belonged to Edgar?
  • Edgar is still the same one believing that the cats would really live nine lives bound to stack each other to several centuries. Let's assume he's just a paranoid wreck unable of coherent thoughts.
  • Since the cats were lost around the same territory as his items, he probably might have been worried about the possibility of the cats finding his scent on them and carrying around. In the off chance anyone found the cats and Edgar's items together and reported this, the police would connect they dots and Edgar loses his job, inheritance, and is prison-bound. Or maybe he just had his name and address on those items.
    • the 2nd of these is most likely the correct answer. Domestic servants usually have to buy their own clothes out of their own wages (Edgar’s livery being the exception) and since such wages were such a joke that they were even below minimum wage for factory workers (imagine getting £2 pay check every 2 weeks and compare that to being paid the same £2 every year) domestic servants would have their names and place of residence sewn into the inside of the items in case they accidentally misplaced them. While the umbrella can be explained away, the hat not so much, combined with if they discover the basket and the fact that Edgar went for a bike ride the night the cats went missing…yeah connect the dots.
• Ok, everything in this movie happened because Edgar was being a complete idiot who misunderstood a situation he was eavesdropping on. He thinks Madame’s cats are going to inherit her fortune and estate, and tries to get rid of them. What the heck would a bunch of cats do with a fortune and an estate? They're freaking CATS! In actuality, he DOES get the fortune as long as he takes good care of the cats, and even then he can just hire his own servants to do so. But no, he jumps to a dumb conclusion and makes stupid moves throughout this entire movie.
• Since cats can't exactly spend or manage money themselves, while it may have belonged to Duchess and her kittens in writing, the money would have almost certainly been Edgar's in function as long as he kept taking care of them (and cats aren't exactly high maintenance animals). Hell, at that point he could probably just hire his own butler to take care of them for him while he enjoyed the rest of the estate. Hence, there was no reason for him to dispose of the cats.
  • Granted, this is the very same scene in which Edger tries to calculate the years the cats have and not only falls back on the 'Cats have nine lives' myth, but treats every figure as separate numbers that stack rather than overlap, as if the cats will somehow take turns aging. The kittens will naturally outlive Duchess and, being littermates, would share their lifespan give or take some months, probably; so long as there are no more kittens added to the mix, twelve to fifteen years is all you're getting. I think it's safe to say that Edger is not terribly bright.
    • Edgar is clearly shown as being quite unintelligent and prone to overthink needlessly useless plans. Even so, a well kept cat can live up to 15-20 years, with some exceptional cats reaching 30 years. Even with the "nine lives thing" used as a figure of speech, if the kittens were exceptionally long lived, he wouldn't have time to enjoy his wealth without the responsibilities of a caretaker. He was probably concerned that as Duchess and her daughter Marie could produce more kittens down the road there would be even more cats that the Madame’s fortune would go to first which meant that by the time it was his turn to finally enjoy it either he’d be dead or the fortune would be so greatly reduced that any cut he receives would be meager in comparison to the years he’d spent looking after them. It’s like a child sacrificing their future to look after their ailing parents only to learn that everything they endured was for nothing because they weren’t their parents’ favorite who got everything.
• Scat Cat tried to kill Roquefort because he had trouble remembering O'Malley's name. That seems a bit extreme, doesn't it? Or is it because Roquefort's a mouse? Did he and the alley cats think he might be up to no good and just making up a story about being sent by a cat so they would let him go? It seems odd that a mouse would approach a bunch of alley cats asking for help if it wasn't important.