A Mouse Divided


A Mouse Divided is a 1953 Merrie Melodies animated short directed by Friz Freleng. The short was released on January 31, 1953, and stars Sylvester. The title is a pun on Lincoln's House Divided Speech.
In the film, Sylvester and his wife receive their first son from a drunken stork, and this son is a mouse. Sylvester struggles between his desire to eat the mouse and his protective feelings about his son.

Plot

The short begins at a party at a stork club from which a drunken stork leaves to deliver a baby. Elsewhere, Sylvester shrugs off his wife's desire of wanting a baby, even mocking her brief depression over his objection. Meanwhile, the drunken stork arrives in their neighborhood and, exhausted and unable to continue to his intended destination, drops the bundle off at the nearest house- theirs. Sylvester's wife, despite being surprised at the stork's public drunkenness, graciously receives the package.
Sylvester, despite his earlier objection, is nonetheless excited at the prospect of being a father - until he learns the baby is a mouseling, at which point he tries to eat it. His wife, who immediately becomes endeared to the mouse after the baby calls her "Mama," quickly stops Sylvester twice Later, when she goes out, he tries again, but stops after the mouse calls him "Daddy", which causes Sylvester's heart to melt.
Sylvester's attitude toward the mouse changes entirely from this point on, becoming a doting father and deciding to take his false son for a walk in a baby carriage. Unfortunately, the neighborhood cats are not as enamored of the mouse, forcing Sylvester to run back into the house. Several cats try to steal the mouse, only to be foiled each time by Sylvester, who for once is on the winning end of the same traps and tactics by which he usually ends up getting foiled. These include climbing through a window, posing as a rapidly talking vacuum cleaner salesman, a teenage babysitter disguise, cutting a hole in the floor beneath the mouse's cradle, a Santa disguise and simply using a tree trunk to try and break the door down.
The drunken stork, meanwhile, returns under direct orders to retrieve the mouse and deliver him to his actual parents by fishing him out with a piece of cheese. Sylvester, believing it to be another cat, quickly stops the mouse and is pulled up instead, with the stork thinking he is the mouse. A later scene reveals a married mice couple walking a disgruntled Sylvester with the wife telling her husband, "Well, nothing like this ever happened on my side of the family," before he looks at the audience in bewilderment as the cartoon irises out.

Voice Cast