Original Air Date: January 12, 1964
Starring: Ray Walston, Bill Bixby, Bernie Koppell, Dub Taylor, Moyna MacGill
Also Starring: Orangey (as Rhubarb)
Directed by: James Komack
Cat Out of the Bag Alert! This review contains some spoilers for this episode!
Synopsis: Tim (Bill Bixby) writes a filler piece about a woman who bequeathed the sum of her estate, $650,000 in total, to her pet cat Max (Orangey). Martin (Ray Walston) finds this intolerable and sets out to make sure the money is going where the woman originally intended it to go, especially when word of a second will emerges. This means further investigations and a heart to heart conversation with Max.
Cinema Cat: Orangey has a really nice guest turn in this episode as the poor little rich cat, Max, who inherits the money from his deceased owner. The executors of the will and the caretakers for Max are the woman’s sister, Aggie (Moyna MacGill) and her husband Charles (Dub Taylor.) Max explains to Martin that he hid the other will bequeathing the money to an orphanage because his mistress forgot to sign it and he didn’t want people to think she was scatter-brained.
Orangey does a neat trick where he retrieves the will from behind what we assume is supposed to be a portrait of Max as a kitten. There’s also a running joke where Martin talks to Max in hip talk, explaining that Max is a “hip cat” (originally he says “hep cat” but Tim explains that term is archaic). Later Tim, Martin and the attorney Morton Beanbecker (Bernie Kopell) hold a seance to convince Aggie to do the right thing.
Final Mewsings: Hip cats don’t dig money.
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