The Early Days of Felix the Cat

For my second blog on animation I will explain the beginning scenes of "Felix the Cat: Eats Are West." Made by Pat Sullivan, the early days of this animated cartoon was actually made with pictures taken of the Felix the Cat sculpture made out of paper mache, but I'll get more in depth with that later.

At the start of this cartoon, Felix is shown walking through a farm yards with his head down. It then cuts to Felix stopping in front of a tea store and he jumps up and down with a big smile on her face. He starts to walk up to the store, but then stops and pulls out his pockets, which is strange in itself because he's a cat and cats don't have pockets. When he sees that he has no money, he looks at the screen and starts shaking his help. He stats to think and a question mark is shown over his head. On a hook attached to the tea store is a tea pot. So what Felix does, is take the question mark and pushes the tea pot back so that tea will spill out and into his mouth.

Next, he walks up to a flap jack sign, which shows a waitress holding a pile of flap jacks. Felix actually reaches into the sign and takes the flap jacks as if they're real and he runs off with them. Then the waitress comes to life and starts chasing him. Felix then takes the flap jacks and suddenly they turn into wheels, as he uses them to build a little manually controlled cart. After he runs through a fence, the cart breaks and he sees the waitress catching up to him and three exclamation points. He takes the three exclamation points and the bottom of the broken cart, ties the exclamation points up and makes them into a propeller. So then he starts to fly away from the waitress. In just a couple of scenes, Felix uses what shows his emotions to help his cause. He also is able to take what appears to be fake things, such as the flap jacks in the sign, and tries to use them as what they would be if they were real.

Felix the Cat was first electronically televised in 1928 in New York and, as I said earlier, was made of paper mache. From felixthecat.com's history page: "The 13" Felix the Cat figure made of paper mache was placed on a record player turntable and was broadcast using a mechanical scanning disk to an electronic kinescope receiver. The image received was only 2 inches tall, and the broadcasts lasted about 2 hours per day."



As the picture shows, Felix was placed on a record player turntable with lights surrounding him. Pictures of Felix would be taken for almost a decade, as this was how they began Felix's life on television.