TriStar Pictures
Starring: Chevy Chase, Jack Palance
Directed by: Michael Ritchie

Cat Out of the Bag Alert!  This review contains some spoilers for this film!

Synopsis: The Robberson family lives in an idyllic suburbia but their worlds are turned upside down when the police decide to hold a stake out in their house to catch a dangerous crook living next door.

Featured Feline: The Robbersons own a female tabby cat named Caruso who is featured in a scene early in the film. Norman Robberson (Chevy Chase) agrees to the stake out without consulting his wife, Helen (Dianne Wiest). Norman sneaks officers Jake Stone (Jack Palance) and Tony Moore (David Barry Gray) into the house but they are close to being caught. Norman shoves the policemen into a closet and when Helen asks what the noise in the closet is Norman says it is their cat. He further explains the cat was bad and he put her in the closet to train her to behave. Just then their teenaged daughter Cindy (Fay Masterson) walks down the stairs holding the cat.

Norman walks over and picks the cat up by the scruff and carries her to the closet, saying now she’s a very bad cat. He then tosses her into the closet where she starts to screech and scream. The cat he throws in the closet is obviously fake.

Kitty Carnage Warning!  After Helen and Cindy go back upstairs, Norman opens the door of the closet to find Caruso has attached herself to Jake’s leg. Jake stuggles to pull her off. This is done with a combination of real and fake cat, filmed to look more violent than it really is.

Pulling the (fake) cat free, Jake throws her aside. Caruso is seen running away. Jake then accosts Norman and warns him, “Don’t ever throw a cat on me again!”

Caruso is later seen with the Robberson’s oldest son Kevin (Jason James Richter) who sneaks beside the neighbor’s house to roll himself a cigarette from Jake’s tobacco. Caruso appears and walks around him.

Kevin then sees the neighbor, a dangerous counterfeiter named Osborn (Robert Davi) shooting a watermelon with a gun. Osborn hears a noise at the window but when he looks up he just sees Caruso.

Throughout the film Caruso is seen in the background of several scenes.

But the cat isn’t featured again until the final seconds when the family and the police gather together for a photo, which includes Jake holding up Caruso.

Final Mewsings: Throwing an angry cat at a policeman is assault with a deadly weapon!

Many thanks to Nick Wale for letting us know about the cat in this movie!

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