Claude Cat

Claude Cat
Looney Tunes character
First appearance	Mouse Wreckers (1949)
Created by	Chuck Jones
Voiced by	Mel Blanc
Information
Species	Cat
Nationality	American

Claude Cat is an animated cartoon character in the Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies series of cartoons from Warner Brothers.

Claude Cat (a pun on the homonym "clawed cat") had his origins in several other cat characters used by animator Chuck Jones from 1940 to 1945. These cats were mostly similar in appearance and temperament, with black fur and anxious personalities. For example, in the 1943 film The Aristo-cat (the character's first speaking role), Jones paired his unnamed cat against the mind-manipulating mouse duo, Hubie and Bertie.

Jones redesigned the neurotic feline for the 1949 film Mouse Wreckers (perhaps to distinguish him from Friz Freleng's popular puss, Sylvester). The short is another Hubie and Bertie vehicle, only this time, the antagonist they antagonize is Claude, drawn as he would appear in all future cartoons: yellow, with a red shock of hair and a white belly (his exact markings would vary from cartoon to cartoon). In this as in all future Claude Cat cartoons, Jones' careful attention to personality is easily evident. Claude is a nervous and lazy animal. His attempts to protect his home from the manipulative mice Hubie and Bertie prove futile as the rodents torment him by (among other things) putting upside down and sideways landscape paintings and an aquarium in the windows or by nailing his furniture to the ceiling. Jones set the mice on Claude once more in the 1950 film The Hypo-Chondri-Cat. This time, the miniature Machiavellis convince the neurotic Claude that he's dead. Claude would run afoul of the mice once more in 1951's Cheese Chasers and against another mouse duo in Mouse Warming in 1952.

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