South Park declares cats illegal after kids start getting high on cat urine. Cartman starts hiding neighborhood cats in his attic to protect them, and Kenny becomes an addict and starts having Heavy Metal hallucinations.
This episode contains examples of the following tropes:
- Art Shift: The cat-urine hallucinations put the characters into a world that resembles 70's fantasy art, more specifically Heavy Metal.
- Children Are Tender-Hearted: Cartman gets a genuine Pet the Dog moment when the town starts outlawing cats because people are getting high off feline urine. Cartman takes it upon himself to shelter all of the kitties he can find (in a clear parody of Schindler's List) and keep them safe, even going out of his way to foster more cats than he can afford because he loves them so much.
- Continuity Nod: Bebe, who wrote and read an essay on her old cat Thumper, has said cat confiscated by the DEA.
- Does This Remind You of Anything?:
- Cartman keeping cats in his attic is clearly a reference to keeping Jews in the attic during Nazi Germany; he even tells Mr. Kitty to write a diary. Ironically, he does not see the parallels of this.
- Sheila finding a cat in Kyle's drawer is obviously meant to look as if she just found her son's stash of illegal drugs.
- Do Not Do This Cool Thing: Mackay goes into great detail over the latest ways kids get high, which only inspires the kids to give it a try.
- Here We Go Again!: Kenny ends up sniffing a bunch of flowers and re-enters the fantasy world, much to his friends' dismay.
- Hypocritical Humor: Cartman, of all people, delivers a moral on not persecuting living things near the end. Kyle even questions if he notices any similarities between the events of the episode to one particular historical event.
- Kindness Ball: This episode is one of the few that features Cartman doing an unambiguously selfless deed: sheltering the town's cats in his attic.
- Misplaced Retribution: When kids start getting high off of cat urine, adults see it fit to start demonizing and confiscating cats around the neighborhood (regardless of if their owners use them for "cheesing" or not).
- No Good Deed Goes Unpunished: Kyle hides a cat in his dresser to prevent Kenny from using it. Sheila finds the cat, and thinks that Kyle is using it himself, and he gets grounded. Gerald then uses the cat, and is caught cheesing in public in front of the entire town. On top of that, Kenny still finds cats, in Cartman's attic. Ultimately subverted in that Gerald is motivated to re-legalize cats, and Kenny stops cheesing.
- Nonstandard Character Design: Everyone in the cheesing fantasy aside from Kenny and Gerald. The Large-Breasted Woman is rotoscoped footage of pornstar Lisa Daniels.
- Pet the Dog: Cartman goes out of his way to protect the cats in South Park by hiding them in his attic.
- Pun: Getting high off cat urine is called "Cheesing" because it is "FON to DUE" (sic).
- Recovered Addict: Subverted. In the end of the episode, the boys comment on how Kenny got over his cat urine addiction and that he's now "high on life" as they see him sniffing some flowers... until Kenny starts sniffing on them rapidly and obsessivily to get high.
- Retcon: Mr. Kitty is shown to be a male cat who can mark his territory in this episode, despite being female in past episodes such as "Cat Orgy".
- Scare Campaign: A news report makes cats out to be horrible creatures.
- Shared Mass Hallucination: Every guy who does Cheesing seems to see the exact same Heavy Metal world.
- Shout-Out:
- The fantasy sequences in this episode broadly reference the 1981 animated anthology film Heavy Metal in animation style, as well as many specific details:
- The Loc-Nar Trophy is a reference to the Loc-Nar, the film's central villain.
- The Large-Breasted Woman is a reference to Taarna, the protagonist of the film's most famous segment.
- Gerald's bomber is a B-17, just like the "Pacific Pearl" section of the film.
- The nose art on Gerald's plane identifies it as the "Jewish Princess".
- "Heavy Metal (Takin' a Ride)" by Don Felder plays each time someone Cheeses.
- Kenny's car is a 1979 black Pontiac Trans Am, a reference to the film's white Corvette.
- In the attic where Cartman hides the cats, there is a picture of Arthur Conan Doyle, and he tells his cat to "write a diary."
- Cartman hiding multiple cats in his attic references the The Diary of a Young Girl.
- When he goes out to let in Rufus, Cartman wears a fedora and overcoat similar to Oskar Schindler in Schindler's List.
- The fantasy sequences in this episode broadly reference the 1981 animated anthology film Heavy Metal in animation style, as well as many specific details:
- Take That!: Gerald's story line is one to former New York Governor Eliot Spitzer, who resigned after being caught in a prostitution scandal, complete with press conference. Sheila appearing at her husband's side with a dejected look on her face is a reference to Silda Spitzer, who also was by her then-husband's side and looking like she would rather be anywhere else.
- You Are What You Hate: Gerald is the one that gets the cats outlawed in South Park, then it is later revealed the reason he is so gung-ho against Cheesing is because he used to be an addict back in college.
