Baby Puss

Baby Puss is a 1943 one-reel animated cartoon and is the 12th Tom and Jerry short directed by William Hanna and Joseph Barbera and produced by Fred Quimby, Baby Puss was released to theaters on Christmas day, 1943 by Metro-Goldwyn Mayer.

This is the first Tom and Jerry short to be animated by Ray Patterson, who arrived from Walt Disney Productions after working on The Old Army Game, a Donald Duck cartoon also released in 1943. Except some time spent at Walter Lantz Productions in the 1950s, Patterson would continue to work for Hanna and Barbera into the 1980s.

Plot
A little girl named Nancy is playing house, and pretending to be the mother and has also dressed Tom, apparently the family pet, up to be her baby. She scolds Tom, who is hiding under some furniture. She drags Tom out by his tail and threatens to spank him. Tom is resentful over his treatment and feels humiliated. She carries him to the bassinet, tucks him in, and shoves a bottle of milk in his mouth. She warns him, under threat of more spanking, to stay in bed while she goes downtown to buy a new girdle. Indignant at first, Tom gets a taste of milk and quickly accepts his lot, cooing like a baby and drinking from his baby bottle.

Jerry peeks from behind a dollhouse and sees Tom. Incredulous at first, Jerry proceeds to mock him by playing "Rock-a-bye Baby" on the phonograph and pretends to be a baby himself. Tom is furious and chases Jerry into the dollhouse and puts a sign that reads "Measles" and Tom looks in the window to see that Jerry is in the bathtub with a brush, humming the melody of "How About You?" and he screams and hits him with the brush and he goes downstairs to the bedroom and goes to bed followed by a doll saying "Mama!" and he uses the doll's clothes to be in disguise as a girl holding an umbrella, but his shirt fell off of him leaving with his shoes on his feet and white pants that goes under it and Tom opens the dollhouse roof until Nancy returns and scolds Tom again. Tucking Tom back in bed, she threatens to feed him castor oil if he gets out again.

Tom goes back to playing. Jerry emerges from the dollhouse and runs to the window to get the attention of Butch, Topsy, and Meathead (first seen in Sufferin' Cats!), Tom's three alley cat friends who are outside. When the trio see Tom, they begin to make fun of him. When Tom confronts the other cats, they continue to tease and humiliate him, tossing him like throwing a ball, causing him to land in a fishbowl, resulting in a wet diaper. They then capture him and change his dirty diaper with a fresh diaper, a safety pin, baby oil, baby powder, and a tight frilly pair of girl's rubber pants over the new diaper and Topsy throws the fish from the fishbowl into his pants and they sing Portuguese-Brazilian Carmen Miranda's "Mamãe Eu Quero" with Jerry joining in. A few minutes later, the whole song stops as Nancy returns and demands to know what is going on. The other cats flee three as Nancy prepares to scold Tom. She then takes Tom to a highchair, forcing him to eat castor oil. Jerry then squeezes a nutcracker on Tom's tail to make Tom yell in pain and therefore eat the spoonful of castor oil. He gets sick and rushes to a windowsill to vomit. Jerry laughs at Tom's misfortune, but the castor oil bottle, having turned over after Tom ran off the high chair he was sitting on, spills a dose of castor oil into Jerry's mouth, which results in Jerry joining Tom at the windowsill.

Availability
DVD
 * Tom and Jerry's Greatest Chases, Vol. 2
 * Tom and Jerry Spotlight Collection Vol. 1, Disc One
 * Tom and Jerry Golden Collection Volume One, Disc One