In ‘Tom and Jerry,’ who is the cat and who is the mouse? The classic American cartoon, explained

Tom and Jerry is an American comedy series that was created in 1940 by William Hanna and Joseph Barbera. The original series featured 161 theatrical short films that are beloved by fans for the funny rivalry between a cat and a mouse with the two characters constantly trying to outwit each other.

Because of its popularity, quite a few spin-offs were created from the original series, including the TV show The Tom and Jerry Show in 1975, The Tom and Jerry Comedy Show from 1980 to 1982, Tom & Jerry Kids from 1990 to 1993, Tom and Jerry Tales from 2006 to 2008, and the very latest spin-off series is The Tom and Jerry Show that ran from 2014 to 2021.

There were even a number of animated movies made! The first feature-length film, Tom and Jerry: The Movie, came out in 1992, and 13 direct-to-video movies were made since 2002.

A hybrid live-action/animated movie was released in 2021, and a musical version of the series, called Tom and Jerry: Purr-Chance to Dream, came out in Japan in 2019 to celebrate Tom and Jerry‘s 80th anniversary. That’s a lot of Tom and Jerry!

So, why is this show so popular? Well, it follows two funny characters who engage in constant, funny battles with each other, with the plot often being about Tom always trying to catch Jerry and the chaos that ensues.

Viewers love that Tom, who is the scheming cat, rarely manages to catch Jerry, the lucky and clever mouse. However, the series has heart.

Sometimes on the show, the cat and mouse lay down their arms and enjoy a genuine friendship with each other, and even care about each other’s well-being.

Sometimes, they even work together to help others, like in stories in which a baby escapes its babysitter and Tom and Jerry follow the baby to keep it safe, in the shorts Busy Buddies and Tot Watchers.

Despite their constant, violent attacks on each other, Tom and Jerry routinely save each other’s lives when they are in actual danger.

While the show has wholesome moments, Tom and Jerry is famous for creating violent comic gags: when pursuing Jerry the mouse, Tom the cat uses hammers, axes, firecrackers, firearms, explosives, and poison to try to kill Jerry.

To protect himself, Jerry fights back with even more violence than Tom, like decapitating Tom, slicing him in half, slamming his head and fingers in a door, shoving Tom’s tail in a waffle iron, electrocution, sticking matches in his paws and lighting them, and more.

Tom the cat is a gray and white domestic shorthair breed, with the name Tom being a common, generic name for any male cat. Tom is often shown as a spoiled pet who is living the good life, while Jerry is a clever, brown house mouse.

While Tom the cat is bigger than Jerry and very enthusiastic about catching him, Jerry the mouse often outwits him. Jerry is also unusually strong for a mouse, lifting anvils and other heavy objects which he uses as weapons.

Although cats typically chase mice to eat them, it is quite rare for Tom to actually try to eat Jerry — but only to hurt or compete with him as usual in a more intimidating strategy to just taunt Jerry (even as revenge), and even to obtain a reward from a human (including his owner) for catching Jerry, or for generally doing his job as a house cat. By the final “fade-out” of each cartoon, Jerry usually gets the best of Tom.

There are exceptions: in some shorts, Tom wins but doesn’t eat Jerry so they can fight another day.

Both characters seem to love battling each other, but sometimes they stop fighting long enough to bond over a shared mission or experience. Sometimes, they work together to fight against a third character that is a shared enemy, only to forget their friendly cooperation when the threat is gone so they can fight each other again.

While Jerry seems to lead a bachelor lifestyle, Tom is a romantic. He does not settle down with anyone and has a number of different love interests. Some of Tom’s kitty girlfriends include a feline named Toots and another named Toodles Galore.

Did you know that it’s not always Jerry the mouse that’s in danger, but that sometimes Tom the cat gets killed in the series? Five of the comedic shorts show Tom apparently being killed, but he always returns in the next cartoon.

In one episode, Tom seems to die in a series of explosions in the episode “Mouse Trouble” and is later shown to have made it up to Heaven, and in another episode, his head is cut off in an offscreen guillotine incident. For a children’s show, it gets pretty dark!

In fact, in the comic short called “Blue Cat Blues,” the dark humor goes so far as to show both Tom and Jerry sitting on train tracks together, intending to get run over as a train whistle announces the approaching train and the feuding animals’ impending doom.

The musical score is very important in this series, underscoring the action and adding emotion. The music includes elements of classical, jazz, and pop music, and Tom and Jerry have limited dialogue aside from gasps and screams.

While Tom and Jerry are the main characters and rarely speak (Tom does some singing when he woos his feline love interests), the supporting characters on the show do have some dialogue.

For example, Spike is a male bulldog who, in later episodes, had quite a bit of dialogue (which was modeled after comedian Jimmy Durante’s voice and speaking style).

Spike and his son Tyke chase and try to attack Tom and Jerry, but only because the cat and mouse are always bothering the two bulldogs. After an annoying prank that Tom and Jerry pull on Spike, he assumes that Tom is to blame and gives chase, while Jerry schemes and attacks Spike, and Tyke joins the fray.

Butch is Tom’s romantic rival and a black, cigar-smoking alley cat. He is Tom’s most frequent enemy and he has a lot more dialogue than either Tom or Jerry.

Nibbles is a small, grey mouse that never seems to understand the danger he lands himself in with the cats, and Mammy Two Shoes is a controversial character — a Black woman who must deal with all of the chaotic animals and their bad behavior.

Tom and Jerry remains a popular series that has now expanded into video games, comic strips, and even a musical.