AHC: Oldest instance of "Tom and Jerry"?

[baltur2]

The Cat chasing the Mouse (and the Cat being occasionally threatened by the Dog) seems to be an old trope in Western Culture. For example, a poem about "Pangur Ban" written by an Irish Monk about a cat whose job is catching mice in the Cloister stems from the 9th century AD, a good 1100 years before the first episode of "Tom and Jerry" aired on TV.

How early would you date the first story, where a "Tom and Jerry"-like chase between a cat and a mouse is recorded, possibly as a funny and educational tale to children? Are the first Fertile Crescent civilizations a good bet?

 

[Skallagrim]

Egyptians praised cats as vermin-killers as early as the first dynasty (we're talking c. 3000 BC here), but I don't think there's any actual "stories" as such.

 

[Dolan]

Egyptians praised cats as vermin-killers as early as the first dynasty (we're talking c. 3000 BC here), but I don't think there's any actual "stories" as such.

Bastet (Cat-headed deity) vs Kek (usually frog-headed but has some depiction as rat-headed) could actually work.

 

[Kaze]

Aesop who lived from 620 and 564 BCE

The Cat and the Mice

But I would go with the Egyptian one.

 

[Byzantion]

The Cat chasing the Mouse (and the Cat being occasionally threatened by the Dog) seems to be an old trope in Western Culture. For example, a poem about "Pangur Ban" written by an Irish Monk about a cat whose job is catching mice in the Cloister stems from the 9th century AD, a good 1100 years before the first episode of "Tom and Jerry" aired on TV.

How early would you date the first story, where a "Tom and Jerry"-like chase between a cat and a mouse is recorded, possibly as a funny and educational tale to children? Are the first Fertile Crescent civilizations a good bet?

mayne an Neolithic engraving picturing that ?

 

[SonOfSharknado]

A neanderthal telling another neanderthal about the time he saw a big-tooth cat chase the small field mouse.

 

[P L Richards]

The point of Tom and Jerry is that the mouse always escapes and usually puts one over on/makes a fool of the cat. (Hilariously and bloodily parodied in The Simpsons' Itchy and Scratchy, of course.) The mediaeval Irish poem about Pangur Ban or 'White Pangur', also known as 'The Scholar and the Cat' is quite different. No mouse appears as a character; in it the Monk compares the work his cat Pangur does in catching mice to the work he does catching meanings and ideas in his manuscripts. Each is happy in their work and neither hinders the other. I agree it's a totally charming poem, but it's not Tom and Jerry.

What the OP is really asking is the first occurrence of 'The mouse-as-hero'. (If it's not, then I'm not sure what the point of this thread is.) Even the Aesop Fable of the Cat and the Mice doesn't really fit. I'm not sure when the first occurrence might be; in agricultural societies mice would usually be seen as vermin that raided and perhaps destroyed vital food stores. They're also not individuals as Jerry is, but usually operate in a group. Hardly the material for heroes.

My guess is (and it is only a guess) that it starts very late. Perhaps the spread of rats to Euope in the Middle Ages took the heat off the more humble mouse as they became the focus of human hatred.

 

[bpbruce]

Pierce Egan's stories of Corinthian Tom and Jerry Hawthorne were British Regency, and more like C3PO and R2D2 than like the TV cartoons. Tall classy skinny guy and short coarse fireplug guy humor. Animal analogs no doubt predate homin.