Like many of the early Aesops Fables cartoons, directed by Paul Terry, this one shows a mot of nice gags put together, in a fashion that indicates that Terry and his staff were, unsurprisingly, familiar with many of the comedy shorts of the era. This tale of a cat who eludes a street cop to prey on some mice in a house, is very amusing in its construction, even though its character design is simple and meant to be as inexpensive as possible.
What then, are we to make of the background work, which ranges from primitive and simple, like the brick chimney towards the end, to fully realized, like the stairwell a mouse emerges into, which is provided with an old, richly realized chest? Part of it can be explained in that doing the background work the animated characters moved against was the necessary scut work, and the detail work varied according to the whim of the artist doing it. Also, I think it likely that a lot of the background pictures were saved, and reused when appropriate, and the better backgrounds were more likely to be repurposed.
What then, are we to make of the background work, which ranges from primitive and simple, like the brick chimney towards the end, to fully realized, like the stairwell a mouse emerges into, which is provided with an old, richly realized chest? Part of it can be explained in that doing the background work the animated characters moved against was the necessary scut work, and the detail work varied according to the whim of the artist doing it. Also, I think it likely that a lot of the background pictures were saved, and reused when appropriate, and the better backgrounds were more likely to be repurposed.
