Eek! The Cat (1992)
First episode title: Misereek
How familiar with the show am I?: I don't think I had heard of it before.
Eek seems to be the unluckiest cat in the world. In the title sequence alone, his superheroic attempt at saving a girl cat from a burning building turns out to be a dream, and he proceeds to get blown up, hit by a plane, and electroshocked, before finally falling and hitting the title itself. If the first episode is any indication, the title sequence is very accurate!
As the episode begins, Eek - who is purple and has a blue tongue - is sleeping on a windowsill outside a house, and begins to dream. Given that the opening also started with a dream, I wouldn't be surprised if this was one of those things that happens every episode.
In the dream, he's riding a giant cat bowl through a land made of food. There's milk, fish, turkey... He crashes the bowl into a pile of hamburgers, and scampers over to a humungous turkey, before spotting a swarm of flying tins of tuna. The concept, his movements, and the accompanying music were all making me think of the Land of Chocolate sequence from the Simpsons episode "Burns Verkaufen der Kraftwerk", which aired nine months earlier.
He leaps towards the cans, but at that moment, he wakes up to find that he actually has leapt off of the windowsill - he promptly falls out of the sky, of course. Then, one of those cartoon wispy representations of scent drifts over and prods him - when that doesn't stir him, it punches him in the face instead! The smell makes his stomach rumble, so he goes to the window of the house to see food laid out for dinner, and a boy and a girl eating it.
Eek: Ah, my loving family! They'll feed me!
Also seen in the kitchen is a TV showing an ad for "Kablamo, the cereal that pops in your head and not in your hands", at which point the advertiser's head explodes. I don't even know how to react to that but I had to mention it.
So Eek starts jumping up and down next to the table, trying to get the kids' attention so they'll feed him:
The general situation with animal speech in this cartoon seems to be that animals can talk to each other (which we hear as English) but they can't talk to humans. You know, like Garfield. So Eek then resorts to various mimes trying to convey to the girl (do these kids have names?) that he wants food, as she guesses all sorts of incorrect things that he could mean - when he actually puts on a chequered napkin and get out a knife and fork, her guess is "lumberjack"!
Then the girl slurps up all the spaghetti on her plate of spaghetti and meatballs in one go, sending one of the meatballs flying - Eek ecstatically races towards it as it bounces across the kitchen and out of the window, and he ends up catching it by hooking his tail to the windowsill and reaching out his hand. He's just about to eat it, when the window comes slamming down on this tail, causing him to let out a huge pained yell as we fade into the first ad break oddly early (just over 3 minutes into a 21-minute show).
The pain makes Eek drop the meatball and it starts to bounce along the street, and Eek chases after it. It goes across a road, and Eek stops to look both ways before following it, resulting in my favourite joke in the episode:
Eek: Always remember to look both ways when crossing the street, because you might get hit by a car. [gets hit by a plane]
When the smoke clears, Eek is in a mailbox (or a rubbish bin? hard to tell from what's visible), and the expression on his face as he sticks his head out indicates that he's spotted the meatball somewhere. He dashes out and grabs it, before noticing that... it's on top of an American football and he's in the middle of the pitch. The transition is achieved with a simple change of shot so it's unclear what the geography of the situation is, and how he could see the meatball from the street!
A player runs over and, in attempting to kick the ball, kicks Eek (still clutching the meatball) so hard that, judging by the next very wide shot, he goes all the way from North America to Europe! This is ignored by the rest of the episode, which still very much seems to be set in the USA.
So Eek lands in a tree, and the meatball falls out of his hands and lands in a nest containing three eggs. He's about to eat the meatball when the eggs hatch - the chicks immediately start jabbering that "We're born!" and Eek wishes them a happy birthday. Aww! Then the chicks declare that they can fly and leap from the branch, before realising that they can't do that yet, so Eek dives after them to try and save them. I appreciate that some of the messes Eek gets into are out of a sense of goodwill to others - if he was more selfish he could have just stayed in the tree and eaten the meatball.
By the way, when he sees the birds jump from the tree, he exclaims "Kumbaya!" This is how he expresses surprise throughout the episode, so I assume it's his catchphrase. I've only ever known it as the title of the famous religious song, and it doesn't seem to have any other use as an interjection as far as I can see. The show doesn't seem to otherwise be religious either. So, it's an interesting choice! Especially for someone whose actual name is already an expression of surprise.
Anyway, the birds are falling, but Eek is falling faster, and he plunges headfirst into the ground. He rights himself in time to see the birds falling screaming towards him, and he gets out a big baseball glove in order to catch them. Thankfully, they're all okay. But then a bigger bird, presumably the mother, swoops down and picks Eek up! As he's being flown around, Eek says that he can see his house from here, so we've apparently already forgotten that we switched continents, unless the bird is just that fast.
The bird drops Eek. Cut to an area filled with scary-looking containers with labels like "Broken Glass" and "Toxic Waste" - luckily, Eek lands in an ordinary trash can nearby. He pops out of it with a whole dead fish on his head! Finally, food! He's about to take a bite... and a mouse grabs the fish from him and whacks him with it, sending him flying again! That's one tough mouse, and I didn't even know they ate fish!
Eek lands in a street, where another visible stream of scent grabs his attention. He looks over a fence to see a house where a roast turkey (not the size of the one in the dream, but still hefty) is placed on the windowsill. The door opens, and an old lady with glasses comes out, carrying a cat.
The cat is wearing mittens, and the woman addresses him as Mittens as she tells him to be back home in time for dinner. She's holding him kind of upside down and he doesn't look very comfortable - then she tells him the meal will be a six-course turkey dinner, as she pets his head so hard that she pulls the skin back and the skull is visible. Getting mixed messages here!
As soon as the old lady re-enters the house, Mittens desperately runs out of the gate. Eek, apparently only registering the food, tells Mittens how lucky he must be to be so loved and well-fed - Mittens proceeds to tell him to take his place, as he skips off down the street rambling about how much he's had to eat, and claims to have a bus to catch! Surely Eek should take Mittens' behaviour as a warning sign...
But no, he just thanks Mittens, as the old lady comes back out and picks him up, addressing him as Mittens, apparently unable to tell the difference. She carries him inside and plops him down in a chair in front of a table covered with food. He looks happy and picks up a knife and fork ready to eat, but then the woman seems to notice something is wrong. She says "Mittens?", and takes off her glasses, revealing... no eyes at all?
It turns out all she's noticed is that he's "lost" his mittens. She says that means he won't get any pie, but it turns out she's only joking. Through all this, Eek is smiling quite nervously now!
Anyway, the old lady suddenly decides that "Mittens" needs to wash up before eating - why did she put him at the table then?? - and drags him off to the kitchen, saying that she's putting him in the sink while actually putting him in a pot on the stove! She turns it on with the knobs while under the impression she's operating the tap, before declaring that the water must be cut off, as Eek sweats and cringes in pain from the heat. She goes to get a jug of water, and the "soap" - but she actually grabs the butter, knocking the actual soap to the floor in the process. So Eek ends up... well, "cooked in butter" is the best phrase for it!
She then dries him with a hairdryer so powerful that he flies across the room, grabbing a drawer full of knives on the way, causing knives to fly across the room towards him! I would say he's lucky that they all miss him, but "lucky" is hardly a word to describe Eek at all.
He lands back on his seat at the dinner table, but the old lady says there's still one more thing to do before he eats - taking his medicine. She feeds him two pills almost as big as his head (which she claims are smaller than the ones he used to take), and pumps him full of eardrops from a similarly oversized dropper. Where is she even getting medicines like this? And the next one she reveals is even worse - some sort of autonomous wheeled contraption covered in pinchers and things that doesn't seem like it could be about to do anything comfortable - and Eek just straight-up screams at that one.
Luckily for him, the phone rings at that moment. The old lady goes over to answer it, and immediately manages to yank the wire out of the wall (we're in the days when phones were all physically connected up, folks). While the old lady begins repeating "Hello?", a crack in the wall (caused by the wire being yanked out) starts to spread, loosening several shelves of identical cat statues, which are about to land on the woman! Well, I interpreted them as statues on first watch - it's just occurred to me that some people keep their cats' ashes in cat-shaped containers, and given how she treats her current cat...
Cut to Eek, who was just about to take a bite of turkey. Obviously he has to go and save her, even if his stomach will hate him for it. At this point we see the worst threat to the old lady - a "National Knitting Champion" trophy, on the top shelf, shaped like an anvil! The oblivious old lady is still talking to no-one on the phone, claiming she can hear breathing and demanding to know who it is, as Eek zooms up to the top shelf and stops the trophy from falling.
The old lady finally decides it was a kid pulling a prank, and wanders off again, saying they should start eating. As she passes through the kitchen, she steps on the soap. It's typical of this episode that no harm comes to the old lady here - if Eek had stepped on soap he would have gone flying, but instead, she walks on unimpeded as the soap just goes flying from underneath her foot, shooting into Eek's mouth and sending him tumbling to the floor, where he finally gets crushed by the trophy.
Eek staggers into the kitchen, his mouth covered in pink foam from the soap. The old lady declares that his rabies have "returned again" - one wonders what she has mistaken for rabies in the past - and says she'll need to take him to the vet, but not before making sure he's nice and warm by completely swaddling him in clothes.
She puts him in her car (uh oh) in a baby seat in the back, and fastens the seatbelt on his tail, making him scream again. You have to feel sorry for this poor kitty. She refers to the car as an "old jalopy" as she starts it, and we see for the first time that it's a flashy-looking sports car as it bursts through the closed door of her garage. Eek is sitting there sweating, and the old lady looks at him instead of the road while she's driving, commenting on his "fever", as people run out of the way of the car ahead of her.
Cut to a police car containing two policemen:
Cop: You're perfect, my sweet. I've been looking for a beauty like you all my life.
But in case you thought for a second that these police officers are gay, nope - he's talking to a doughnut. Obviously!
The cops see the out-of-control car and start chasing it, and Eek starts trying to scream for help, but the old lady reassures him they're almost there, not having noticed the loud siren at all! The cop that isn't driving has apparently been making coffee, and passes a cup to the driver, which would be pretty bad while driving, but not in comparison to the old lady!
She inadvertently leads them through a petrol station, where they crash into petrol pumps, tanks of propane, and a big container of nitro-glycerine (what??), all without getting harmed at all. Then on their way out they back into a gum machine, which explodes! The cops, blackened by the explosion, comment that they should call for an air strike and that they'll need more coffee, before... er... crumbling completely into dust. Oh. OK then.
Tiny detail to appreciate: the brand of gum is Kablamo, the same as the cereal advertised earlier!
Apparently the cops were able to call for an air strike, because the next thing we see is a helicopter pursuing the old lady's car. The pilot is aiming his weapon and preparing to fire at her, while the woman continues to obliviously nearly run pedestrians over (I'm pretty sure some of them were the same ones as last time!). Somehow at least able to tell that Eek is distressed, she tries to put some music on, but instead of the radio, she presses a "trunk release" button that fires some kind of grappling hook right at the helicopter?? So now they're attached to a vehicle that's actively firing at them, while the old lady complains that all this "rock and roll" (i.e. the missile shots) sounds like noise to her!
The car is now heading towards a tunnel, the helicopter is about to crash into a cliff, and the pilot screams into the second ad break.
Eek: Kumbaya! That pilot's in trouble!
The ad break is apparently supposed to be enough to make us forget how securely Eek was trapped in his seat, as he now climbs out of the car to help. He edges around it, into the boot, and starts trying to untie the rope, but the lid slams down on him! It springs back up, and when he does succeed in untying the rope, he doesn't let go in time - the helicopter pulls him straight up (and out of those ridiculous clothes).
The pilot ends up inadvertently dragging him through Uncle Pricker's Cactus Farm (ouch), Big Buzzy's Bee Farm (he ends up with a cracked-open beehive on his head, covered in honey, and being chased by bees), and the "Chickens 'R' Us" chicken factory. That doesn't seem as bad, but anyway, now he's still hanging from a helicopter with a beehive on his head and holding a chicken.
The pilot then almost crashes into a circus tent, stops in mid-air, but Eek keeps going and bursts through the roof of the tent. He grabs a trapeze that's somehow already swinging towards him, and now he's flying right towards a hot dog salesman walking through the audience - remember, Eek is still desperately hungry - and Eek tries to take a bite of a hot dog but the guy pulls it back out of reach.
Then he swings back the other way and the same thing happens with a candy floss salesman. On the way back from that, he gets grabbed by a performer on another trapeze, who flings him into the air, and Eek and the chicken both fall down into a cannon (although Eek has shed the beehive in the process). The cannon is yet another object labelled "Kablamo"! What doesn't this company make?
A tiny clown lights the fuse of the cannon, and Eek and the, er, now-cooked chicken fly up out of the tent again... and Eek somehow lands back in the back seat of the old lady's car, crashing through the back window! She has just driven through the entrance arch of what we can all see is a zoo, and, on seeing Eek's beaten-up state, she decides he's even more ill than she thought!
She picks him up and carries him through a gate with a sign over it.
What she reads the sign as: "This is the vet's office. Please come in."
What it actually says: "Danger, staff only, do not use this entrance"
How is this woman still alive??
She tells Eek to wait with the "other kitties" as she shoves him into a cage containing a lion, a tiger, and other big cats! Then, looking for the vet, she wanders over to a door with a big "DO NOT OPEN GATE" sign and proceeds to open it, causing a stampede of all sorts of animals (including an elephant and a giraffe) to burst out! (Are doors gates?)
Back to Eek, who is in the cage with all these snarling beasts advancing on him. He tries to get out through the bars of the cage, and, with his legs stuck on the bars, cartoonishly elongates the rest of his body towards a nearby tree, which he grabs. His legs then finally slip through, catapulting him forward out of the tree. Eek sure does end up flying through the air a lot!
This time he lands in the "Petting Zoo" area. A bunch of cute animals, that almost look like they're from another cartoon entirely, start begging Eek to pet them all. It looks like there are sheep, alpacas/llamas, rabbits, kangaroos, and... I'm not sure what that thing on the end is meant to be, actually:
Eek says he'd be glad to, but unfortunately, the first animals to come forward for pets are a pair of porcupines. We cut briefly to the old lady following a sign saying "Deadly animals this way", before the two porcupines walk away from Eek, almost completely stripped of their quills, which we see are in Eek's hand as he waves goodbye to them.
Then, Eek looks shocked to see the old lady walking in the direction indicated by a sign that says "Poison nocturnal bug exhibit". Is "nocturnal" meant to make them sound scarier? It's daytime, they should be asleep! She walks into the "Bug Hut", through the door marked "Exit", and Eek rushes in after her. Once again, he could just get away at this point - this is his sense of heroism getting him into trouble.
So he enters, trying to sneak past all the dangerous-looking creepy-crawlies, as the old lady obliviously walks through the place without getting harmed. She reaches a light switch - one thing that she can see - and decides that, since this place is empty, there's no point having the light on! She turns it off and we just see Eek's eyes as all the insects in the place get him! He flees the place and runs... straight into a swimming pool!
Unfortunately, the old lady is also heading for the pool. She's about to obliviously step into it, onto one of those strings of buoys that divide the sections of the pool, so Eek holds it taut to stop her falling in - as a result, he gets his head stepped on!
All of a sudden, a dolphin stunt show is starting in the pool, and Eek has somehow ended up holding on to a handle attached by rope to a dolphin, like he's water skiing. No seriously, he just suddenly gets pulled under the water as soon as the old woman is past him and now he's inexplicably attached to a dolphin.
Anyway, they're approaching a ramp that's pointing over a tower of flaming rings. The dolphin continues to swim forward as Eek is forced up the ramp, with some painful-sounding squeaky sounds as he slides up it. As he reaches the top of the ramp, he lets go of the handle and flies up, managing to grab hold of a diving board. We see that it is occupied by "Larry the diving mule", who also looks like he doesn't match the style of this show. You might be expecting the mule to jump from the diving board and for this to somehow result in Eek falling, like it hits him on the head or something.
Nope. The diving board just cracks and they both fall instead, in a hilarious bit of animation:
Eek ends up hanging from the mule's legs as they fall. The mule speaks in an Elvis voice.
Larry: Hey buddy, relax. We got this thing here, it's called a parachute, and it's gonna save our lives.
The mule pulls the cord on his parachute, and it inflates, saving his life! And Eek loses his grip on him and falls. So much for that plan... he falls straight through the tower of fire, ow ow ow, and lands in the water. The crowd cheers at this, apparently thinking it's all part of the show!
Then a dolphin pops up to carry him, and just as he's thanking the dolphin, it starts playing with him, and bats him out of the pool with its tail! The dolphin comes up to the same edge of the pool, where a handler feeds it a fish, and it seems as though he might feed Eek too...
But now the old lady has somehow made it onto a diving board. There's a bell, and a sign that says "Ring bell to feed man-eating whale", but she reads it as "Ring bell for receptionist"! Seriously?
She rings the bell, the whale eats her, and now Eek, who had almost finally got some food, willingly runs away from it to rescue the woman. Let yourself eat for once, Eek! He swims to the bottom of the pool and forces his way into the whale's mouth.
Inside, the old lady, as oblivious as ever, thinks there's a blackout because it's so dark. Eek lights a match, and here's where it's really clear that he can't speak in English to the humans - he starts calling out "Meow? Meow?", then switches to "Me-OW!" as the match burns his fingers and he drops it.
Then he turns on a torch (flashlight if you're American), and sees the old lady, on a skateboard (plausible enough for the whale to have swallowed), underneath a piano dangling from a rope hanging from the top of the mouth (pure rule of funny). And the rope is about to break! Eek tries to save her by pushing her out of the way, but the whale starts swimming, and what actually happens is that the old lady rolls away on the skateboard, and Eek's dive just takes him into the "wall" - when he gets free, the piano falls on him!
Anyway, then he sees the stairs that lead up and out of the whale's blowhole, which is a porthole with an "EXIT" sign on it - yes, pure rule of funny again - and he rushes out, looking for the old lady. We see Eek somewhere in the zoo popping up all over the place, calling out "Lady?" At one point, the stampede of animals she let out earlier goes by in the background!
Ah, here's where the old lady is! Walking on a broken bridge right over a "reptile pit" full of huge animals that might as well be dinosaurs! Eek hurriedly runs over and stretches his own body across the gap, and gets hurt again by the woman walking over him! And... then he falls into the reptile pit.
As the monsters advance menacingly, Eek's reaction is to start praying, although we can't hear the actual words. And then an arm reaches down to grab him! ...It's a zoo employee. Eek is pleased to be saved by him, until he tells him there's an old lady that's been looking for him, at which point Eek looks a lot less pleased, and starts struggling as he's handed over from the worker to the old lady.
Old lady: So how is my little monkey boy Mittens?
Zoo worker: Gee, lady, the little guy looks okay to me.
Old lady: Oh, you hear that, Mittens? You're all better! Come on, come on, come on, let's get you home for that turkey dinner!
Evidently she still thinks she's at a vet's office, and the zoo worker just looks baffled as the old lady carries Eek away!
So now, Eek is back at the old lady's house, he's finally sitting in front of that feast again, he has his knife and fork in hand, and he's ready to eat!
Old lady: Now, you just go ahead and start, Mittens. I just want to stuff this tuna with your favourite ice cream!
Things are looking up... and then the doorbell rings, and the old lady tells "Mittens" to get it. Oh dear. Eek goes to the door to find... the actual Mittens! Before Eek can even react, Mittens is shaking Eek's hand while stepping into the house and forcing Eek out, rambling about how harsh the outside world is and that you have to appreciate what you have. Wow, what did he go through that made living with that old lady preferable?! He does ask "enjoy your din-din?", so he clearly doesn't know that Eek never got to have that meal, but still, it seems pretty harsh of him to just slam the door on Eek!
Eek looks in the window to see Mittens gobbling down that meal, while Eek's own tummy is still rumbling. Poor Eek! I want to hug him. He starts trying to see the brighter side of everything - that he has a family that loves him, and that he got to meet a very nice old lady (he's really reaching). But then he spots something that genuinely cheers him up - a bunch of posters asking if anyone has seen the missing Eek!
Eek: Kumbaya! It looks like my family really noticed I was gone!
Wow, how long was he gone, again? And apparently, his family lived across the street from the old lady this whole time!
His family have left a hamper full of food outside the door, and when he reaches it and starts eating all he can, the girl comes out of the house and is delighted to see Eek! She didn't give off the impression of loving him that much earlier, but now we see how she really feels.
Mittens comes out of the old lady's house, annoyed that Eek has left (it was you that shut him out!) because he hasn't had a chance to offer him an "after-dinner" mint. Also he somehow knows Eek's name. He sees Eek being taken into his own house, gets offended, starts to walk away... and gets trampled by that stampede of animals from earlier!
Wow, I guess if there's anyone unluckier than Eek, it's Mittens!