Puss 'n' Boats

Puss 'n' Boats is a 1966 Tom and Jerry cartoon directed by Abe Levitow and produced by Chuck Jones. It is the first Tom and Jerry cartoon (both regarding Tom and Jerry cartoons produced by Chuck Jones, and Tom and Jerry cartoons produced altogether) with Carl Brandt as the music composer. The title Puss 'n' Boats is a play-on-words of the phrase "Puss in Boots".

Plot
A crate is loaded onto the ship that contains cheese, according to the stamps on the outside in Spanish, French and English. The smell drifts into a mousehole. Jerry, sleeping in a hammock with a sailor's hat on, is woken up by the smell. The smell seems to have a life of its own, as it drags backwards and takes a sleeping Jerry with it. The yellow stream opens one of Jerry's eyes to reveal he is dreaming of cheese, and then bops Jerry on the head. Jerry lazily opens his eyes and sees the crate of cheese. Jerry salutes the stream, wakes himself up, and runs toward it, but soon runs into the stream holding out a "hand".

It points out that Tom is guarding the boarding ramp. Jerry slumps until he sees Tom salute the captain ascending the ramp. Jerry goes into his hole and takes out duplicate clothes. Tom is puzzled to see a second captain, but all the same must salute as Jerry-captain prances up the steps. As soon as Jerry is up on the ramp, Tom investigates the situation. He notices the captain is moving slow, there is an empty space where his head should be, and then spots the body of the mouse poking out from under the uniform. He immediately thinks that Jerry has gone stark raving stupid.

Tom smirks and pushes the ramp aside such that Jerry falls into the water. Only the captain's hat is seen for a few seconds, and then a shark pops out of the water and almost eats the mouse. Jerry is stark white and frantically runs into his hole and shuts the door. Tom is laughing himself silly until he sees the real captain falling off the edge of the ship because the ramp is not there. Because there is no time to put the ramp back in place, Tom dashes over and holds his hands up, ready to catch the falling officer, but he only squashes the cat through a hole in the wood. The shark then pops out and attacks Tom, but Tom pushes himself through the pier and escapes the large fish.

Tom's head is stuck in the board, but he is safe. Jerry then proceeds to twist the board like a helicopter propeller and Tom lifts off. The cat stops the board's rotation and unravels his neck, and then frees himself from the board. Tom sighs in relief until he sees that he is falling toward the sea. He grabs the board again and uses it to actually fly like a glider. He dives after an unsuspecting Jerry, and when Jerry spots him, Tom chases him into a vent pipe. However, Tom is squeezed through the hole in his board and bounces around through the pipe. Tom crawls through successively shorter widths of pipe in order to reach the mouse, and when the chase exits the plumbing, Tom is compressed into a cylinder with legs barely a centimeter wide, forming himself in some kind of a walking stick. When the cat realizes this, he takes a deep breath and uncompresses himself.

Tom grabs a large hose and dashes after the mouse. Jerry has opened the crate of cheese and is munching away at it when Tom thrusts the hose in his face. Jerry braces for the deluge, but when Tom opens the hose, nothing comes out because it is not turned on. Tom rattles the hose cluelessly and Jerry turns it on. The stream of water and the hose blast the cat around randomly until the hose forms a rocket and Tom blasts off into the stratosphere. An astronaut doing a spacewalk from the Gemini spacecraft waves at him.

Tom then points the hose upward, and then soon sees he's about to fall. He then stops the water flow, but this causes the hose to inflate to a gigantic size. Tom grins innocently and then the hose bursts. The cat falls to the water down below. Tom panics, and then soon sees a lifesaver ring. Tom coasts down, confident he will be saved; however, this was an elaborate trap set up by Jerry, who threw out the ring. Jerry whistles and the shark pops out, confused, but then sees the cat and swallows him. Soon, however, the shark luckily cannot stomach the cat, and spits him out, as misfortune would have it, into the ship's furnace.

Tom cries out in pain as he runs out of the furnace: his tail is on fire. Tom knows that the shark is waiting for him in the water, but as the fire on his tail grows larger, Tom has no alternative. The shark chases him through the water and out of sight. Jerry takes his place as the "guard" of the ship. He blows a whistle, salutes the captain, and then does a jig.

Crew

 * Animation: Ben Washam, Ken Harris, Don Towsley, Tom Ray, Dick Thompson
 * Layout: Don Morgan
 * Backgrounds: Philip DeGuard
 * Design Consultant: Maurice Noble
 * Story: Bob Ogle
 * Music: Carl Brandt — Ed Bogas
 * Production Supervised by: Les Goldman
 * Produced by: Chuck Jones
 * Directed by: Abe Levitow