Cat Napping

Cat Napping is a 1951 one-reel animated cartoon and is the 62nd Tom and Jerry Short directed by William Hanna and Joseph Barbera and produced by Fred Quimby.

Plot
Jerry is snoozing in a hammock, until Tom walks out with a drink, a radio, a pillow and a newspaper and tries to sit on it. He spots the mouse and slides Jerry off the hammock and into the water; Jerry shortly wakes up after realising he cannot breathe. In retaliation the mouse flips the hammock over, so Tom falls to the ground and swallows his drink glass.

After Jerry sits down to sleep, Tom shakes out the hammock such that Jerry is thrown into the air, but by pure fortune the mouse falls into a bird's nest. It stretches along with his weight and then throws the mouse onto the tree branches, through the truck and right back onto the hammock before Tom can lay down. When he hears Jerry snoring again, Tom spots him and is dumbfounded. In response, he scoops up the mouse and drops him on top of a marching ant army. Jerry wakes up at this jostling, but before he can understand what has happened, he bumps his head on a steel sprinkler. Knowing who is responsible for this, Jerry redirects the ants such that they march onto the hammock, causing the strings to snap and roll the hammock up with the cat inside.

In the next scene, the broken strings are tied back together, and Tom keeps a lookout for Jerry while taking a refreshing drink. Meanwhile, Jerry walks onto a lily pad behind a bullfrog and kicks it into Tom's drink. Despite the splashing noise, Tom sees nothing extraordinary and drinks the drink - and the frog. The cat goes to sleep, but is awoken by the frog's croaking and leaping inside his body, who causes the cat to act like Luxo Jr. as he lurches Tom all the way back to his home pond. Sopping wet, the feline recovers and sees Jerry, who is stealing his drink to boot. Tom bolts after the mouse, who flees in fright but soon sets a lawn mower after his opponent. Tom, fearing the loss of his fur, runs away in terror until he gets tied up into the hammock and sheared into paper dolls.

Later, Tom goes to sleep with a baseball bat in the repaired hammock, but without disturbing the cat, Jerry hooks up the hammock to a rope connected to a well, cranks it as far as it goes, and then cuts the line. Tom is catapulted into the air, still asleep and still holding the bat in the same position, to the music of "The Daring Young Man on the Flying Trapeze". Tom wakes up when he sees and hears an airplane, but it is not until a seagull awakes him for a second time that he becomes suspicious and looks below, to see nothing but ocean below him! Tom screams in terror at this realisation, but cannot do anything as he hits the ocean so hard that he breaks into 15 pieces.

Meanwhile, Jerry lures Spike onto the hammock with a bone, knowing what is about to happen: the cat is predictably irate and storms back faster than a speeding bullet to catch Jerry in the hammock. Without even looking, he wraps up the hammock and whacks it progressively harder each of seven times with the baseball bat. Tom reaches in and pulls out a dog collar, and pictures whose it could possibly be. He immediately discredits Jerry as he's too small and won't need a collar. Tom is frightened when he gets it right on the second guess, Spike! He gulps in fear as Spike appears from the wrapped up hammock, very mad and sporting several lumps. Tom puts his dog collar on him and tries to flee. The furious dog snaps his collar and beats up the cat off-screen. Spike is now taking a nap and continually kicking Tom, who is waving a leaf at a sleeping Jerry.

Availability

 * Tom and Jerry's Greatest Chases, Vol. 3
 * Tom and Jerry Spotlight Collection Vol. 1, Disc Two