"People are no darn good. I hate people."
The Cat That Hated People is a 1948 Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer cartoon, directed by Tex Avery and produced by Fred Quimby.As the title suggests, it tells the story of a justifiably misanthropic black cat who is fed up with the living hell that is his life with people, whose treatment of him isn't exactly the best. He eventually decides to take a rocket to the Moon and make it his new home, only to get more than he bargained for when he is greeted with several bizarre entities inhabiting it.
Tropes:
- Accordion Man: Except that it isn't actually a character contorted into an accordion. One of the many creatures the cat sees on the moon is a sentient accordion playing itself.
- Animate Inanimate Object: What many of the Moon inhabitants are. There's a tire that keeps blowing out, a fire hydrant chased by a barking dog leash, a shovel that chases after a flower to plant it (and plants the cat instead), and so on.
- Attack the Tail:
- When the cat tries to kiss a female cat that he is flirting with, he ends up kissing a shotgun instead, which blasts a bullet through his tail.
- On the moon, the cat encounters a sharpener chasing a pencil, which ends up sharpening his tail instead, turning it into a pencil. The cat then writes "Chump!" and an arrow pointing to himself on a rock with his pencil tail.
- Batman Can Breathe in Space: The cat is able to be on the moon without a space suit with no fatal effects, as well as the many strange creatures living on it.
- Be Careful What You Wish For: The cat states that if he wants to get away from the cruel humanity, he has to go to the moon to do so. He eventually takes a rocket from the Moonbeam Rocket Company and does just that, but now has to put up with the bizarre creatures living on the moon.
- A Bloody Mess: The bulldog uses ketchup to make it seem like the cat murdered him.
- Bully Bulldog: The bulldog that the cat is introduced to seems pretty friendly at first glance, but as soon as the owner turns her back and leaves, he shows his true colors and sadistically beats up the cat. When the owner overhears the commotion, the dog even gets the cat in trouble by covering himself with ketchup, putting some of said ketchup onto the axe he was hitting the cat with, handing it to him and playing dead, convincing the owner that the cat has murdered the dog.
- Cat Concerto: During his long rant about people, the cat is seen singing on a fence, only for someone to toss a boot at him, which goes through his mouth and gets stuck inside his body. He then hops away on the boot.
- Cats Are Mean: Downplayed. Yes, the cat really, really hates people, but that's the only negative trait present in him. Otherwise, he is just an average cat who is pushed around by people on a regular basis.
- Child Hater: The cat's dislike of people extends to children and babies, since their treatment of him is just as atrocious as the adults'.
- Cloudcuckooland: Upon meeting its very off-the-wall inhabitants, the cat realizes that the Moon is this.
- Deranged Animation: Porky in Wackyland would be so proud...
- The Diaper Change: While he's on the moon, the cat has a diaper fixed onto him by a cloth, a safety pin and a baby powder bottle. He starts crying like a baby and promptly has another diaper fitted onto his head.
- Dogs Love Fire Hydrants: Among the Moon's many entities encountered by the cat is an invisible dog with a collar chasing a fire hydrant.
- Exactly What It Says on the Tin: The main character of the cartoon is a human-hating cat. Enough said.
- Fantastic Racism: Due to the many complaints he has regarding them, the cat doesn't have anything nice to say about humans at all... at first.
- Hammered into the Ground: A hammer chasing a nail does this to the cat and pulls him out.
- Humans Are Bastards: Prior to his realization at the end, the cat feels this way about humans. His many complaints are as follows:
- They prevent him from getting food easily.
- They disrupt him whenever he wants to sing.
- Kids tie paper bags to his feet.
- Babies slam him back and forth.
- They hit him whenever he scratches their furniture.
- Even when they give him a new home, they want him to coexist with the family dog. The dog in question is a bulldog who holds an innocent facade whenever his owner is around, drops it to pick on the cat, and quickly frames him when the owner hears the commotion.
- They don't even bother to put him out for the night.
- They don't let him flirt with female cats.
- And last but not least, they knock him down, step on him, walk on him and kick him.
- Jerkass Has a Point: While he isn't exactly a jerk, you can't really blame the cat for hating people since they treat him pretty badly.
- Kick the Dog: Kick the Cat, actually. The last person among the many people walking over the cat doesn't step on him, but rather picks him up and punts him away.
- Kissing the Ground: The cat smooches the sidewalk when he returns to Earth.
- Literally Shattered Lives: The cat shatters into pieces like a broken vase when a woman clobbers him with a frying pan for scratching her furniture.
- Lunarians: The Moon is inhabited by bizarre creatures that drive the cat crazy.
- Meaningful Echo: One of the first things said by the cat at the beginning of the cartoon is "I hate people". What is the last thing he says at the end after learning that humans aren't actually that bad?The Cat: You know, folks. I love people.
- Metronomic Man Mashing: A baby grabs the cat by the tail and flings him back and forth.
- Mistaken for Murderer: The dog manages to avoid getting in trouble with his owner when he starts beating up by cat by making it look like as if the cat murdered him with an axe.
- No Celebrities Were Harmed: Patrick McGeehan, who provides the voice of the titular cat, uses a Jimmy Durante-esque voice.
- No Name Given: The titular cat himself.
- Pinball Gag: The cat's rocket bounces off of several stars as if it were in a pinball machine before finally landing on the Moon.
- Screw This, I'm Outta Here: During his time on the moon, the cat is finally pushed to his breaking point after his tail is sharpened into a pencil by a sharpener, so he decides to go back to Earth by bringing in a golf course background and hitting himself with a golf club to send himself back to said planet.
- Tempting Fate: When the cat is finally on the moon, he happily declares it's free of any people and noise. How wrong he utterly is when he meets the first entity on the Moon.
- Trampled Underfoot: The cat is shown being stepped on in the middle of his rant. ("They walk on ya, step on ya, walk on ya, step on ya...") When he returns from the Moon, he is still being stepped on, but doesn't mind it as much.
- Trip to the Moon Plot: The cat decides to get away from humanity by riding a rocket and landing on the Moon, believing that he'll be more at peace there, but he soon regrets it when he meets its deranged inhabitants.
- Visual Pun: During his trip to the moon, the cat crashes through the Big Dipper, causing water to pour out from it. The Little Dipper then moves to catch the water pouring out of its bigger counterpart.
