Baby Puss is a 1943 one-reel animated cartoon and is the 12th Tom and Jerry short directed by William Hanna and Joseph Barbera and produced by Fred Quimby, Baby Puss was released to theaters on Christmas day, 1943 by Metro-Goldwyn Mayer.
This is the first Tom and Jerry short to be animated by Ray Patterson, who arrived from Walt Disney Productions after working on The Old Army Game, a Donald Duck cartoon also released in 1943. Except some time spent at Walter Lantz Productions in the 1950s, Patterson would continue to work for Hanna and Barbera into the 1980s.
Plot
As the cartoon opens, we see a girl named Nancy scolding Tom, who is hiding under some furniture. She is around eight years old (we only see her shoes clad in white socks and Mary Jane black shoes, her pudgy legs and yellow skirt). Nancy is role-playing as a mother, and she has Tom, apparently her family's pet this time, dressed up as her baby with a bonnet, booties, mittens, and a diaper.
Baby Tom and Nancy
She drags Tom out by his tail and threatens to spank him with a hairbrush. Tom is resentful over his treatment and feels humiliated. She carries him to his little bassinet, tucks him in, and shoves a bottle of milk in his mouth. She then warns Tom to stay in bed while she (as a part of her role-playing) goes downtown to buy a new girdle or else she will spank him again. Tom gets a good taste of milk and begins to enjoy it. He decides to live up the baby lifestyle. He even resorts to making baby noises while enjoying his milk.
Jerry peeks from behind a doll house and sees Tom acting like a baby. At first he can't believe what he is seeing and then decides to make fun of Tom by playing a "Rock-a-bye Baby" record on the turntable and crying and acting like a baby himself. This starts a chase between the two and Jerry hides in the doll house, claiming "Measles". Tom then peeks into the window of the doll house where Jerry is seen in the bathtub with a scrub brush and then he screams like a woman when he sees Tom. Jerry then runs through the doll house into the bedroom where there is a little doll in the bed. Jerry then puts on the doll's dress and attempts to walk out of the house. But while doing this, he steps on the dress and it comes off. He then runs back into the house which makes Tom mad, so Tom rips the roof off the doll house. Then, little Nancy returns and scolds Tom for not being in bed. This time the girl warns Tom if he gets out of bed again, she will hold his nose and make him eat Castor oil. Tom goes back to his baby lifestyle and Jerry emerges from the doll house to the window where he gets the attention of Tom's three alley cat friends, Meathead (first seen in Sufferin' Cats!), Butch and Topsy. They come to the window and see Tom in his baby outfit and they all start to tease him and make fun of him. This makes Tom angry and red in the face. Butch stuffs Tom's head in his diaper and shoves him away.
The three cats rock his bed very rough, drink his milk, and toss him like a ball causing him to land in the fishbowl, resulting in a wet diaper. They then capture him and change his dirty diaper with powder, oil, and lots of soap and water, resulting in a bath as well as a diaper changing, and continue the teasing by tossing the goldfish into Tom's rubber pants. The cats then sing Carmen Miranda's Mama Yo Quiero.
Jerry looks from the window and laughs, but all the music stops when Nancy shows up, seeing Butch using Tom's diaper as something to make music with the song. The other three cats flee the scene, leaving Tom to take the heat. Tom is, as promised, punished by being forced to take a spoonful of Castor oil. At first Tom resists, but with a little help from Jerry (squeezing a nutcracker on Tom's tail) he eats the Castor oil which makes him sick to his stomach, and he rushes to vomit over the windowsill. Jerry wins and starts to laugh again but not for long, some of the Castor oil spills over Tom's high chair and into Jerry's mouth causing him to be sick to his stomach as well, causing him to join Tom over the windowsill.