One night, while Jerry is having a nightmare involving Tom, he is awakened by a knocking on his door. When he gets up to answer the door, he finds nothing but a basket containing a little baby mouse named Nibbles, who wants to be fed lots of milk. Nevertheless, Jerry then decides to satisfy his young ward's needs by trying to feed him milk from Tom's bowl... that is if they can avoid getting on the cat's bad side.
Tropes:
- Attack the Tail:
- Tom catches Jerry after he moves the mousehole so that Jerry hits the wall instead. That's when Nibbles comes to the rescue by emerging from the hole with a hammer and hitting Tom's tail with it.
- Nibbles crawls under Tom's skin and stops at the tip of his tail. Tom then brandishes a gun and tries to shoot the little mouse, but when the trigger goes off, Nibbles somehow avoids being shot. However, Tom's tail isn't so lucky.
- Berserk Button: Jerry all but completely explodes when he finds out that Tom has crossed the line by swatting poor Nibbles' rear.
- Blackface: While hiding in a closet, Jerry and Nibbles apply polish to themselves in order to pass as black people and get away from Tom. Unfortunately, their cover is blown when Nibbles' diaper comes loose and exposes his unpolished bottom.
- Bowdlerization: Many television airings remove the entire scene where Jerry and Nibbles disguise themselves as black people, so the scene of Nibbles spitting milk in Tom's face skips straight to Tom crashing into a frying pan.
- Catapult Nightmare: Jerry jumps up awake from his nightmare when Tom (in the nightmare) knocks him repeatedly on the head. He looks around and sighs sweet relief until the knocking comes again, this time from his door.
- Color Failure: Tom briefly turns yellow when he panics at Jerry's rage.
- Delayed Reaction: As Jerry is sneaking up on Tom to gather some milk for Nibbles, the little mouse somehow manages to get free from the hook holding him by his diaper and go outside. As Jerry keeps tiptoeing, he spots Nibbles walking past him, but he doesn't realize it until it's too late.
- Didn't Think This Through: When Tom catches Nibbles, the latter climbs through his fur to escape, eventually getting to the former's tail. Tom's response to this is to pick up his tail and point a gun at it. It ends as well as you expect.
- Doorstop Baby: This is how Nibbles is introduced to Jerry. He is left in a basket at his uncle's door, and when Jerry notices said basket, he starts moving into his mouse hole.
- Double Take: Jerry doesn't notice the basket containing Nibbles until after he looks around and closes his door.
- Eye Pop: Jerry has this reaction when he notices the basket on the ground outside his door.
- Frying Pan of Doom: As Nibbles is running from Tom after his blackface disguise is blown, Jerry fastens a frying pan between a door and its frame, pulls on it and lets it go to strike Tom in the face. Then, before Tom chases him in circles around the door, he hands the frying pan to Nibbles, who keeps hitting his uncle with it instead of Tom until Jerry stops him and orders him to hit Tom, which he does.
- Heartwarming Orphan: Since the letter included in Nibbles' basket never explicitly makes it clear whether it was written by his parents or a stranger, Nibbles could possibly be an orphan.
- Improvised Weapon: After the outrageously epic beat-down Tom gets, Jerry is standing behind him, holding a wooden meat tenderizer while giving Tom a justified Death Glare, just DARING to give Tom more, if he should make a wrong move.
- Metronomic Man Mashing: After poor Nibbles is hit on the rear by Tom's flyswatter, Jerry takes his anger out on the cat by grabbing his tail and slamming him on the ground back and forth thrice before spinning him around and tossing him into a wall, where he delivers the final blow by repeatedly opening a trash can lid into Tom's face.
- Nightmare Sequence: At the beginning of the cartoon, Jerry has a nightmare where Tom catches him and bangs him several times on the head, at which point he wakes up and discovers that someone is knocking on his door.
- No-Holds-Barred Beatdown: Done by Jerry to Tom to punish him for hitting Nibbles.
- The Noisy Straw: Nibbles can be heard drinking Tom's milk from the combined straws.
- Pain-Powered Leap: Happens to Tom as a result of the two instances of Attack the Tail above.
- Papa Wolf: If Tom thinks he can get away with spanking an innocent baby mouse like Nibbles, he's very wrong.
- Pie in the Face: After imprisoning Jerry in a bottle, Tom chases after Nibbles, who manages to get a custard pie and hold it in Tom's path so that the cat gets a faceful of pie.
- Pint-sized Powerhouse/Unstoppable Rage: Jerry's strength goes up to Hulk-levels with his anger when Tom makes the fatal mistake of maliciously and viciously swatting Nibbles on the rear.
- Portable Hole: Tom manages to stop Jerry from going into his mousehole by pulling it aside with his finger. However, when he grabs Jerry, his tail just so happens to be near the hole's new location, and Nibbles comes out of it to clobber the cat's tail with a hammer.
- Pun-Based Title: Of the Milky Way.
- Roar Before Beating: Jerry unleashes the granddaddy of all roars before beating the ever-loving crap out of Tom for hurting his nephew.
- Rule of Three: When Nibbles first spots Tom's bowl of milk, he eagerly waddles outside Jerry's mouse hole and towards it. Jerry grabs him and places him back inside, but he simply strolls straight outside again. When Jerry brings him back inside, Nibbles is about to go out a third time, only for Jerry to stop him and place him on a hook to keep him from getting into danger at Tom's mercy.
- Spit Take: Not done out of shock, but while he and Nibbles are being chased by Tom, Jerry stops his rival to allow Nibbles to suck up some of the cat's milk and spit it in his face.
- Squashed Flat: Several times does Jerry, a mouse, get squashed with a frying pan.
- Suddenly Speaking: Jerry steps out of the closet with Nibbles, disguised as African-Americans.Jerry: [imitating a black woman's voice] Well, howdy-do, Mr. Tom! [to Nibbles] Hurry up, honey child! Land's sakes... [Nibbles steps out] Hurry up, honey child!
- Traveling-Pipe Bulge: When Tom notices that Nibbles is drinking his milk through several straws, he decides to take his end of the straws and suck Nibbles in, resulting in a bulge to indicate where Nibbles is. Jerry manages to save his nephew by gripping Tom's end of the straw and blowing Nibbles back into the mousehole.
- Violence Discretion Shot: Tom swatting Nibbles' rear with the flyswatter isn't directly shown, but it clearly hurt.
- Would Hurt a Child: Aside from Jerry, Tom also goes after Nibbles several times in the short. At two points, he tries to suck him in through several straws and tries to shoot him with a gun, though these attempts are foiled due to Jerry's intervention in the former and his own stupidity in the latter. He finally crosses the line near the end of the short when he hits Nibbles with a flyswatter, causing Jerry to go ballistic and beat the cat to a pulp.
