Title Card
The Sour Puss is a 1940 Looney Tunes cartoon starring Porky Pig.
Synopsis
Porky is sitting on a rocking chair reading the newspaper while his pet cat sleeps nearby, he spots an ad for fishing season and tells his cat about it but first he makes him guess what they'll be having for dinner tomorrow, the cat asks if it's chicken and Porky replies that it isn't making the cat disappointed. Porky then tells the cat that it's fish, hearing this the cat parades around the house bouncing off the walls and pauses to pull a mouse out of its hole and kisses it. Porky's canary sees this and declares "Well now I've seen everything!" He pulls out a gun and commits suicide. (For more information, see Censorship below.)
That night the cat is having trouble sleeping so he takes a bottle of sleeping pills which contains a mallet, then he hits himself with it knocking himself out. The next day, Porky and the cat go down to the fishing hole and spot a flying fish that is literally flying out of the pond. The cat knocks out the fish with a swipe of his claws and picks it up, then Porky says "Well Pussy it looks like we're having fish for di-di-di-supper", but the fish regains consciousness and says "That's what you think chum!" while laughing hysterically and nervously and honking the cat's nose. The flying fish skids through the water, laughing nervously all the way and dives back in. The cat looks for the fish while sticking his face underwater, but the fish punches the cat's nose like a punching bag and climbs on the cat's back playing his tail like a cello, then he taunts the cat and knocks him into the water.
The fish torments Porky and makes him think that he caught him but he goes up and down like a yoyo on Porky's fishing line. Meanwhile the cat recovers and the fish tells the audience "Hey gang, get a load of this!" and dives into the water making his fin look like a shark's. Porky tells the cat to look out but the cat saw this and picks him up only to realize he is now holding a real shark. The cat and Porky run off into the distance, the shark turns to the audience and says (in a Lew Lehr imitation) "Pussy cats is the cwaziest peoples" and laughs.
Trivia
- The flying fish character may have been intended to be a third attempt at introducing a "screwball" character in the Looney Tunes/Merrie Melodies franchise (following on the success of Daffy Duck and Happy Rabbit, Bugs Bunny's predecessor), but the flying fish was not seen again after this cartoon, likely due to it not catching on with audiences.
Censorhip
- After Porky tells his cat about their fishing excursion, the cat goes bouncing around the room happily, a display that catches the attention of a canary who proclaims, "Now I've seen everything!" and shoots himself with a gun. When this aired on Cartoon Network, the cut occurs so viewers do not see the bird doing this.