Mouse Trouble

STORY

Tom acquires a book on how to catch mice and for the rest of the cartoon, takes its advice to attempt to catch the mouse.

The first thing the book suggests is to locate the mouse. Tom "locates" the mouse, but when Tom tries to grab Jerry, the rodent steps off the book and slams Tom's nose in it.

Tom sets out the trap and tests it by snapping it by touching it with a feather. Jerry, however, succeeds in freeing the cheese from it. Shocked at the trap's failure, Tom tests it before the trap snaps as soon as he touches it.

Tom soon sets a snare trap around a piece of cheese, ready to pull the string but Jerry sneakily replaces the trap with a bowl of cream. When Tom peeks back at the trap, he sees the cream and drinks it while Jerry activates the trap, sending the cat out to the tree himself. Tom's next attempt at catching Jerry is to laugh noisily while reading the book. A curious Jerry ventures out of his hole and Tom captures Jerry by shutting him into the book. But when Tom grabs him, Jerry pulls the same trick on him with his fists. Tom inspects them only to get punched in the eye and leaving Jerry to escape. After reading in the book the fact that A Cornered Mouse NEVER FIGHTS, Tom pounces onto Jerry. But Jerry fights back and beats Tom, after this, Tom drones "Don't you believe it!".

At this point, Tom stops reading from chapter-to-chapter and skims the book, trying suggestions that he likes or thinks will work. Upon reading Chapter VII, Tom uses a stethoscope to listen for Jerry within the walls of the house. Jerry screams into the microphone, almost deafening Tom. Tom forces a shotgun into Jerry's mousehole. However, the barrel of the gun bends outwards, pointing straight at Tom's head as the cat fires and ends up shooting himself in the head, rendering himself bald. The rest of the cartoon sees Tom wearing a dodgy toupée.

Tom attempts to hide inside a large gift box before knocking on Jerry's wall. Jerry, seeing the box, knocks on it. With no response, he returns with a bunch of pins before sawing the box in half. Hearing nothing inside, Jerry looks inside the box, and in horror, he gulps and displays a sign reading "IS THERE A DOCTOR IN THE HOUSE?"

Tom, covered in bandages, reads the twelfth chapter of the book, Mice are Suckers for Dames, which makes him wind up a toy mouse. Jerry, noticing the toy, walks with it. Tom attempts to lure Jerry into a mouse-sized "hotel," the door of which leads into Tom's open mouth, but to Tom's dismay, Jerry ushers the mechanical mouse into the hotel first, which Tom swallows. He repeatedly hiccups, an enraged Tom looks at his ruined teeth in a mirror, and then destroys both the mirror and the book before Tom goes insane and gets revenge and attempts to blow away Jerry with dozens of explosives. When Tom lights a piece of dynamite, he blows the fuse too hard, resulting in all the explosives erupting and leaving Tom dead. Nothing remains of the house except Jerry, who is not blown in the explosion and still alive, and his door, while Tom's spirit is in heaven, with a harp and an arrow repeatedly hic-cupping "come up and see me some time".