Felix Gets the Can is a 1925 animated short produced by Pat Sullivan and distributed by Margaret J. Winkler. In this short, Felix heads to Alaska to find some salmon to eat.
Plot[]
Felix is fishing but is not having any luck, as his only catch is a boot. Felix says “I’ll find out why they don’t bite!” and enters the lake. While he is down there, three fish walk out of the lake and eat the cat’s supply of worms. When the cat exits the lake, he finds that his worms are gone. Angry, he kicks his fishing rod into the lake and leaves.
Felix stops at a restaurant which is serving fish. When the cashier leaves, the cat sneaks into the store and grabs a fish from off of the counter. The cashier comes back, notices the cat has the fish, and orders him to put it back. Felix does and looks down at the ground, ashamed. The cashier grabs a can from off of the counter, which prompts Felix to beg for mercy. The cashier throws the can at the cat, who runs out of the store and is hit by it. Once Felix comes to, he takes a closer look at the can and notices that it reads “Yukon Salmon.” The can has an illustration of a man who has caught a gigantic fish, who comes to life and says “We get ‘em that big up in Alaska!” Felix is inspired, but does not have a clue how to get there. The cat stops at a meat shop and thinks for a while until two question marks appear above his head. He turns them into skis. Felix whistles for the hot dogs, who he ties to the skis and whips to make them run.
They venture into the frozen north until they make it to a dance hall. Felix struggles to walk in the thick snow, but he makes it and opens the door. “All thru the North they knew the bad man Dan McStew!” a title card reads, introducing a new character who spits into a spittoon. Felix enters the saloon, weak. He warms himself up by a potbelly oven, then takes McStew’s bottle of alcohol, but before he can drink it, the man shoots it, then starts shooting at the cat. He dodges every single one of the bullets, but eventually escapes the hall and enters a forest, where the snow is still very deep. He notices a sign reading “To the Salmon fisheries”, so he heads down there and spots salmon heading upstream. He jumps into the river, but struggles to swim forward and is thrown out onto dry land.
Felix then spots a fisherman out to sea hauling in a net full of salmon. The cat paces about, wondering what to do next. Once he stops, a spider comes down from the branch of a tree. Felix asks it “how quick can you weave a net?” The spider weaves a web, which Felix takes and uses it as a net in the lake. A salmon sneaks up from behind the cat and pushes him into the lake, where he gets caught in his own net. A fisherman catches Felix, along with a lot of fish, in his own net, and tosses it in the cannery.
Meanwhile, in a restaurant back at home, a waiter serves a man a can of salmon. The man opens the can, but faints when he finds that the can held Felix. The cat plucks the salmon off of the can that he was in and eats it.
Notes[]
- Dan McStew could be a reference to “The Shooting of Dan McGrew”, a poem by Robert W. Service.
