Plot
Porky Pig purchases a new home from a real estate agent, which turns out to be a dilapidated old house. His cat Sylvester is frightened of the creepy-looking place, but Porky finds it "quaint" and "peaceful", and looks forward to his first night in the place. Before long, Sylvester learns that the house is overrun with mice; killer mice, in fact (one wearing an executioner's hood and carrying an axe, the rest looking like the Chuck Jones-created characters Hubie and Bertie), who are just in the process of carting off the previous owners' cat to the chopping block.
Throughout the rest of the short, Sylvester is forced to dodge various knives, projectiles, trap doors, and other obstacles intended to kill him and his master. Porky, however, is completely unaware that anything is wrong, and is embarrassed that Sylvester is acting like such a coward. At one point, Porky is interrupted in his sleeping and scolds Sylvester then his cat explains what went on downstairs, but Porky orders him out. Sylvester tries to shoot himself in the head, which alarms Porky, who tells Sylvester to cut it out.
The mice have taken up primary residence inside the kitchen, where Sylvester does not dare to tread. Porky finds Sylvester fainted (after Sylvester got hit by a bowling ball which was landing on Porky himself) and leaves him on the basket, but without notice, Sylvester has been lowered down into the mice's lair while in the basket and a while later comes up and Porky tells him to take off what Porky thought was make up, but the disguise was actually just Sylvester turning white from the aforementioned experience. Porky, sick and tired of Sylvester's foolishness, decides to show Sylvester what a coward he is. Sylvester feels humiliated and Porky goes into the kitchen. After a few seconds of silence, Sylvester peers into the kitchen. Sure enough, the mice have Porky bound, gagged, and on his way to be decapitated (Porky holds up a sign as the mice carry him away, which reads "You Were Right, Sylvester") Eventually, This is because that was the first cartoon with Sylvester's name.
Sylvester, in fear, scrambles out of the house. As he rests to catch his breath, his conscience appears and indicates he is a coward, reminding him of how Porky raised him from a kitten, showing him the "comparative sizes" of a cat to a mouse, and demanding that he get back in there and "FIGHT!". Suddenly bursting with courage, Sylvester, who's changed from the scaredy cat to a real hero, grabs a whole tree for use as a weapon, races back into the mice-infested house, fights at full power and sends the hordes of murderous rodents running for their lives.
Having got rid of those mice, Porky graciously thanks Sylvester for saving his life, but one leftover mouse (the executioner) pops out of the longcase clock with a mallet behind Sylvester. Seeing this, Porky warns Sylvester to look out, but too late, as the mouse clobbers Sylvester on the head, knocking him unconscious, much to Porky's shock. The mouse then yanks off his hood, revealing a Napoleon army hat, and declares (in a Lew Lehr voice), "Pussycats is the cwaziest peoples!" and chuckles.
Read more about this topic: Scaredy Cat
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“The plot was most interesting. It belonged to no particular age, people, or country, and was perhaps the more delightful on that account, as nobody’s previous information could afford the remotest glimmering of what would ever come of it.”
—Charles Dickens (1812–1870)