Life with Feathers is a
1945 Merrie Melodies cartoon, directed by
Friz Freleng and produced and released by
Warner Bros. Pictures. It was nominated for an
Academy Award for Animated Short Film. This cartoon marks the first appearance of the then-unnamed cat
Sylvester.
The title is a play on the longest-running non-musical on Broadway,
Life with Father (the title being the only connection between the two works). Warner Bros. would
produce a film version in 1947.
Plot
The film centers on a heartbroken lovebird's decision to commit suicide after his marriage goes sour. He recruits a black cat (Sylvester) to eat him, but the suspicious cat thinks the bird is poison and refuses. For the rest of the film, the lovebird attempts to get Sylvester to eat him by persuasion, bribery, and force. The gag of a character wanting to be eaten and the cat refusing to is later repeated in the
Hubie and Bertie cartoon
Cheese Chasers. But the cartoon ends with the bird showing Sylvester lots of food from a cook book along with a radio (the more he saw the more he gets hungrier and skinnier at a time). The bird manages to convince him to eat him but before that moment, he got a telegram that said that his wife left him and he told Sylvester that he doesn't have to eat him. But before you know it, he changed his mind not to eat him, the bird manages to escape and get back home but when he closed the door, she changed her mind and the bird then wanted to commit suicide again, while looking for the...
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