Sylvester is sneaking to the doghouse in a bush. He tries to steal a bone outside the doghouse, but the Barnyard Dawg grabs the paw and looks inside the bush to see Sylvester with a flower in his mouth and several more flowers on his head. After Sylvester deliberately whacks Barnyard Dawg on the head with his dog food dish, Barnyard Dawg gives chase and chases Sylvester on the wall and jumps over a branch, only to get caught by the leash and hangs from the branch by the leash. Sylvester is about to cut the leash with an axe, but Foghorn grabs the blade and Sylvester whacks too hard and vibrates as he goes by the fire wood, and the branch breaks and Barnyard Dawg gets hit on the head and walks off. Foghorn lectures Sylvester to "Bury the hatchet-I say bury the hatchet, but not in anyone's head, boy!" when Sylvester is trying to speak, Sylvester angrily yells "Ah, SHUT UP!" and whacks Foghorn on the head with the bladeless axe and leaves as Foghorn sees stars and still holds the blade. Henery says to the audience "I'm not sure, but this might be a chicken." and drags him as Foghorn asks "What's the gag-I say what's the gag son? GAG that is! Where are we taking me, boy? Speak up!" after Henery tells Foghorn that he (Foghorn) is a chicken, Foghorn convinces Henery that Sylvester is a chicken. Foghorn sticks Henery in an egg and places it under Sylvester. Sylvester wakes up, thinking he's laid the egg and has become a mother, sings "Rock A Bye Baby" to it then hides the egg when he sees Foghorn coming and Foghorn congratulates Sylvester for laying the egg and Sylvester realizes that "HEY, Tom Cats can't be Mothers! Cats don't lay eggs! There's something screwy here!" and attempts to detach himself from this egg that suddenly follows him and attaches itself to him and that literally scares Sylvester out of his wits when he thinks the egg is possessed by a ghost. He runs from it and literally does all sorts of things...including running into the dog house belonging to the Barnyard Dawg. The dog pulls the cat out and stomps all over him and walks off. Henery, still in the egg, runs into the dog, which causes the dog to trip and fall over. The dog looks at the egg and then at the camera and ponders "I just takes a step and presto, I lays an egg!" the scene fades to a mother duck, with her ducklings, who says to herself "Presto, and he lays an egg. And to think for fifteen years, I've been doing it the hard way." The egg/Henery finally discovers Sylvester's hiding spot (a barrel), and he starts to attach himself to Sylvester's skin.
Reaching a breaking point, Sylvester comes close to literally smashing the egg with a mallet...just as the egg is about to be smashed, Henery pops out and hollers "STOP!!" to which Sylvester, in a classic scene, literally yanks his head up and down by his ears and grabs his tail and literally yanks on it, causing his head to literally pop up and down on his shoulders because he himself thinks he's crazy. Henery, seeing enough, clobbers Sylvester with a mallet and drags him off. Sylvester wakes up and asks "Say, what's the big idea?!" and Henery warns the "chicken" to not give him any trouble and Sylvester realizes that he's been part of a trick and he leaps up and shows Henery that the actual chicken, "A ROOSTER in fact!", is Foghorn himself. "Rooster? If I'm a rooster-I say if I'm a rooster, I hope to be struck by-" bellows an offended Foghorn, but is interrupted when he almost literally gets struck by lightning and decides "Well, let's put it in another way. WAY that is" and an argument arises between Sylvester, Foghorn, and the Dog as they accuse each other of misleading Henery Hawk. Finally, Henery decides the only way to settle the matter is to see who crows at dawn, and they all agree with an "OKAY!" with Foghorn alone "OKAY, THAT IS!" The scene fades and it's dawn the next morning...a sun pops up...and rooster crowing is heard...but from who? Sylvester has his mouth open because he typically always has his mouth open, looking dumbfounded...but Barnyard Dawg thinks Sylvester is crowing and walks off after hearing enough and Henery mistakes this for the sound of the rooster and he drags Sylvester away. Foghorn crows...out the side of his mouth...holding up a how-to book on ventriloquism. Foghorn says "You gotta-I say you gotta keep on your toes. TOES that is!"
DVD - Looney Tunes Spotlight Collection: Volume 6, Disc 1
Streaming - Boomerang App
Censorship
When this cartoon aired on The WB, the scene of Barnyard Dawg hanging from a tree branch by his leash and Sylvester, armed with an axe, is about to swing it at him, was cut, jumping from Barnyard Dawg chasing Sylvester to Foghorn telling Sylvester, "Let's bury the hatchet, but not in anyone's head".[1]
Notes
This cartoon is the second to feature more than two stars in one cartoon. The first being "A Corny Concerto".
This is the only cartoon in the Golden Age of American Animation which Sylvester shares the screen with any of the three other stars. Sylvester and Foghorn Leghorn did appear in "The Yolks on You" (1980).
This is one of the few cartoons where Foghorn Leghorn wins out against another character. Sylvester is the loser in this case.
This cartoon was long believed to be in the public domain, however, the cartoon was in fact renewed on August 5, 1974 by United Artists (which then owned the pre-1948 Merrie Melodies catalogue), incorrectly spelled as "Growing Pains."[2]
It is featured on the Looney Tunes Golden Collection: Volume 6 with the original opening Color Rings and credits restored. As a result of the opening title restoration, this is the earliest Foghorn Leghorn cartoon to survive with its original technical credits intact, surpassing 1948's "The Foghorn Leghorn" (which inherited the "title" in 1998 from "Henhouse Henery" when its credits were restored for its 1998 dubbed version release. that same dubbed version was present on the DVD release) - "Walky Talky Hawky" (from 1946), on the other hand, exists only as a Blue Ribbon reissue, with the original ending card.
Foghorn's line "Open the Window, Richard," when he puts Henery in the false egg, may be a reference to a popular 1947 song.[3]
This is Sylvester's first appearance in a Robert McKimson-directed cartoon, and Sylvester's second appearance in the Looney Tunes series.
On the original issue, there is a short sequence where Henery Hawk says "I'm a chickenhawk and I'm gonna get me a chicken today! I am so!" just before the opening credits. This sequence has been cut when the short was re-released into the Blue Ribbon Merrie Melodies program. This sequence has been restored since the Looney Tunes Golden Collection: Volume 6 DVD release came out in 2008.
This cartoon was re-released into the Blue Ribbon Merrie Melodies program in the 1954-1955 animation season, and original closing and music was kept on the reissue. However, both American and European Turner prints erroneously replace the end title card and ending music to those of Merrie Melodies. Recent airings of the USA dubbed version print of the cartoon on Cartoon Network and Boomerang since 2011 had corrected the problem by restoring the original ending music (albeit still using the Merrie Melodies dubbed version end card intact).[citation needed]
