An American Tail/Headscratchers

• How do the Native Americans that appear in Fievel Goes West have all that food in the middle of a desert?
  • On a somewhat related note, in The Treasure of Manhattan Island...how in the heck are the Native Americans growing crops in an underground cave where there's no sunlight? Where do they get the huge fruits and vegetables we see them feeding Tiger?
    • As to the first question, there are numerous animals and vegetation that are capable of surviving in the desert, and there are trade routes between those who live out in the desert and those who live closer to oases.
• How did NONE of the mice realize they were building an enormous, fully functional, and completely undisguised mouse trap?
  • Maybe they all just never pay attention?
  • Same reason Cat R. Waul has no trouble tricking them again in quite a few episodes of Fievel's American Tails.
• Where did they get the idea that there were no cats in America in the first place?
  • Same way the human immigrants got their unfortunately false misconceptions about America.
    • Exactly. "The streets are paved with cheese" is a direct reference to the idea among the destitute in other countries that American streets were paved with gold. They saw America as being so affluent that they could afford to pave the streets with something so valuable, and that no one bothered to tear it up or steal it because they were all rich too. In the mice's case it's "There's so much food to eat in America that no one goes hungry and they can line the streets with the stuff." because what do they care about gold?
• Watching this movie as a kid, it really bugged me when, every five minutes, Fievel and his family would be moments away from reuniting without realizing it. It's a real Mind Screw for a seven year old child.
  • As a young child, I saw it as unfortunate coincidences keeping them barely apart until Fievel fulfilled his destined prerogative or the movie was close enough to feature-length. Rule of Drama (the poignancy of repeatedly missing them For Want of a Nail, and the Truth in Television of him missing them In Spite of a Nail) and seeing that his family was making their way okay, I think, justified the near-misses.
• When the cats capture Fievel in the first film, why do they put him in a cage instead of just killing him?
  • Maybe they were planning on sending him back to the sweat shop.
  • Offscreen Villainy. We never see a mouse actually get eaten by a cat in the entire series, it's only implied that it happens (though Fievel gets almost eaten).
  • Warren could have been planning to use Fievel as some kind of bargaining chip, perhaps.
  • For the Evulz. They wanted to mess with him some more.
• I get that humans can't understand the talking animals but do they not notice that they wear clothes?
  • Basically, no. This is a standard of this sort of cartoon. If you look at, say, Rescue Rangers, humans very rarely notice that the small animals they see wear clothes. (Larger ones either don't, wear minimal and largely unremarkable clothes, or only change into clothes when there are no humans around.) It's implied that humans simply don't notice them unless they're in close proximity with the animal and take a good close look for awhile. If you want a logical explanation, most people that see them probably immediately think "A mouse, kill it!" rather than stopping to notice that the mouse is wearing a hat.
• What is the point of the scene in the second movie where the human lady shoves the cat in her cleavage while shouting "pussy"? Like, is that supposed to be funny? It just seems so random and out of place, especially in a kids' movie.
  • It's probably just a cross between being silly (for kids to giggle at) and the "naughty" word (for adults to giggle at). Remember, it's only "out of place" in a kid's movie if you have an adult's knowledge of what "pussy" means.
• Something that's always annoyed me: Fievel's dad in the second film telling him to effectively forget about Tiger because 'He was still a cat.' despite acknowledging that he was good - But they're going to Green River where apparently cats are good, too. Why?
  • They weren't under the impression that the cats in Green River were good until after they got there, right?
  • Fievel's dad is prejudiced (of course, in this setting his prejudice has a good reason, so it's a bit of a bad message), but also has a love of fantasies about places where the grass is greener.