Scaredy Cat

Scaredy Cat
Merrie Melodies (Sylvester the cat and Porky Pig) series
The title card of Scaredy Cat
Directed by	Charles M. Jones
Produced by	Edward Selzer
Story by	Michael Maltese
Voices by	Mel Blanc
Music by	Carl Stalling
Animation by	Lloyd Vaughan Ken Harris Phil Monroe Ben Washam
Layouts by	Robert Gribbroek
Backgrounds by	Peter Alvarado
Distributed by	Warner Bros. Pictures The Vitaphone Corporation
Release date(s)	December 18, 1948 (USA) June 2, 1956 (USA reissue)
Color process	Technicolor
Running time	7:25
Language	English

Scaredy Cat is a 1948 Merrie Melodies cartoon, directed by Chuck Jones and produced and released by Warner Bros. Pictures. It was the first of three Jones cartoons which placed Porky Pig and Sylvester the cat (in a rare non-speaking role as Porky's pet) in a spooky setting where only Sylvester was aware of the danger – the other two films being Claws for Alarm (1954) and Jumpin' Jupiter (1955). This was also the only cartoon in the trilogy in which Porky Pig does eventually realize the danger they are in.

Porky Pig purchases a new home from a real estate agent, which turns out to be an old Gothic-style house: the sort featured in murder mysteries and ghost stories. His cat Sylvester is frightened of the creepy-looking place, but Porky finds it "quaint" and "peaceful", and looks forward to his first night in the place. Before long, Sylvester learns that the house is overrun with mice; killer mice, in fact (one wearing an executioner's hood and carrying an axe, the rest looking like the Chuck Jones-created characters Hubie and Bertie), who are just in the process of carting off the previous owners' cat (resembling a grey-furred version of Sylvester) to the chopping block.

Throughout the rest of the short, Sylvester is forced to dodge various knives, projectiles, trap doors, and other obstacles intended to kill him and his master. Porky, however, is completely unaware that anything is wrong, and is embarrassed that Sylvester is acting like such a coward. At one point, Porky is interrupted in his sleeping and scolds Sylvester who then explains what went on downstairs, but Porky orders him out, insisting that he sleeps in the kitchen. Because the mice have taken up primary residence inside the kitchen, where Sylvester does not dare to tread, the frightened Sylvester tries to shoot himself in the head with a gun, but Porky disarms him and tells him to cut it out. Having no choice, Porky allows Sylvester to sleep with him.

Eventually, the mice are about to drop an anvil on Porky, but Sylvester stops it, resulting in an annoyed Porky who wakes up and sends him into the kitchen. Porky finds Sylvester unconscious (after Sylvester got hit by a bowling ball which was landing on Porky himself) and leaves him on a basket in the kitchen, but without notice, Sylvester is lowered down into the mice's lair while in the basket and a while later comes up to Porky who tells him to take off what Porky thought was make up, but the disguise was actually just Sylvester turning white from the aforementioned experience. Porky, sick and tired of Sylvester's 'foolishness', decides to show Sylvester what a coward he is by going into the kitchen himself. After a few seconds of silence, Sylvester peers into the kitchen. Sure enough, the mice have Porky bound, gagged, and on his way to be decapitated. The gagged Porky holds up a sign as the mice carry him away, which reads "YOU WERE RIGHT, SYLVESTER".