“Pluto’s Quin-puplets”

Even though Mickey never appears in this short, this is more of his neglectful pet ownership. His dogs are able to get in and out of the yard without effort. They’re able to get in and out of a basement full of hardware equipment without effort. I know this sort of thing was more acceptable back in the 1930s, but from the perspective of nearly ninety years later, it’s deeply frustrating. This sort of thing was doubtless responsible for the deaths of quite a lot of dogs, even if “dog is properly cared for” isn’t much of a cartoon.

It’s also worth noting that neither Pluto nor Fifi have been fixed; they have five puppies. They hear a grocery delivery going past the yard, and Fifi runs after it, forcing Pluto to stay with the puppies. Five puppies are a lot to chase after. He chases them around the yard for a while, and then the puppies end up in the basement. They fight with a paint sprayer; shenanigans happen until Pluto is knocked over into a wall, and a jug of moonshine falls over and spills into Pluto’s mouth.

The thing I remember most from seeing this short as a child is the painted puppies. The hose has gotten loose and is flailing all over the basement, spraying different colours of paint through varying surfaces at the puppies and leaving them in different patterns. Now, we’ve talked many times about the odd gap Pluto falls into. He’s not a fully sentient animal like the others, but he’s not as mindless as, say, the animals those sausages were no doubt made from. So I get it. There’s still no excuse for how Fifi reacts upon seeing her puppies at the end of the short.

There’s also the issue of how I don’t think the puppies were ever seen again. They mostly look like Pluto but with more rounded, Pekinese-style heads. It’s a bit unsettling. This also gets into the aspect of exactly what position the dogs fall into, because puppies of normal dogs would likely move out on their own in the wild, but puppies of, say, Goofy are expected to be treated like, well, Max. Maybe, in the tradition of Disney animals, they went to go live with an aunt or uncle.

This is, when you get right down to it, another in the genre of “father is incapable of caring for his children.” I bet me a shiny new nickel I wouldn’t have to search too long to find a summary where he’s referred to as “babysitting” his puppies. I also wouldn’t be surprised if some man watching the short grumbled about how obvious it was that Fifi should’ve stayed with the puppies and that she was emasculating Pluto. He’d hate to know that I think Pluto should be literally emasculated, I’m sure.