Dog, Cat, and Canary

A cat spots a canary in a cage and decides he wants to eat it. However, he must get past a dog.... and the canary has his own ideas on the matter.

Hugh McCollum, who had been Jules White's associate in Columbia's live-action shorts, was in charge of their cartoons while they were winding down, and I believe his skill shows in the neat handling of this Howard Swift cartoon. Gone are the elaborate, candy-box backgrounds, which only served to distract. Instead, we are treated to a nicely arranged series of gags, as first the dog, then the cat, and finally the canary gain the upper hand in this essentially silent series of gags.

It was too late, alas. Columbia was already settling on its contract with UPA and although they would continue to release new cartoons for a couple of years, they were ones that had already been produced.

So we've a fairly hapless cat that chases just about everything it can, but couldn't catch a cold. Until one afternoon he espies a canary in a cage in the garden next door. "I know!", he thinks. I shall sneak up on said bird and I'll have it for lunch. Good plan except the bird has his very own guard dog. Not an especially menacing hound, you understand, but one that is roped up and very noisy. Now this is one of the rare examples of cat and dog animation where there cat isn't actually as dumb or as scared of his canine counterpart, and indeed for a while your money might actually be on him to get fed. This is quite a rapidly paced animation that relies heavily on quite an international style of soundtrack, a belly dancing hose-pipe and an highly polished floor to keep it moving and I quite enjoyed it.