CatDog

"Twice the pet and none of the mess!"


CatDog was an animated series that first aired on Nickelodeon in 1998 and ran for three seasons.

The story revolved around CatDog, two conjoined twins who were a cat and a dog respectively. Cat was the sophisticated one, being into things such as the Opera and cleanliness. Dog, on the other hand, is much more laid back than his brother and enjoyed going on adventures and eating. The episodes revolved around Cat and Dog's daily adventures of living with each other and trying to avoid harassment from a gang of three dogs named the Greaser Dogs and their neighbor (who lives in one of the walls of their home) Winslow, a blue mouse.

Tropes used in CatDog include:
  • Abnormal Ammo: Due to how CatDog's digestive system works, if Cat eats several small items, Dog can shoot them out of his nose with machine-gun force. They mainly use candies for this.
  • All Just a Dream: In "Shriek Loves Dog", Cat plans to make Dog and Shriek fall for each other, hoping that the Greaser Dogs will thereby leave him alone. The rest of the episode is Cat's dream of what the consequences are: Dog marries Shriek, which causes the Greaser Dogs to move into their house and generally making Cat's life a living hell.
  • Alternative Continuity: The movie ignores some of the events and continuity of the show.
  • Ambiguously Gay: Eddie the Squirrel
  • Art Shift: The episode where CatDog dream of themselves as separate animals.
  • Asshole Victim: The Greaser Dogs
  • Attack Pattern Alpha: Cat-Dog Wheel!
  • A Wonderful Half-Life: A well-named example of a subversion. Instead of imagining a world without themselves, they imagine a world without each other.
  • Bad Future: Accidentally created when Cat made fun of Winslow for being small and puny, resulting in his distant descendant becoming an Evil Overlord. Disproportionate Retribution much?
  • Berserk Button: Eddie & Rancid Rabbit in Let The Games Begin
  • Be Yourself: Tough-acting tomboy Shreik tries to make herself "a real woman" so that Dog will take notice of her. It backfires when every guy except Dog ends up hitting on her.
  • Big Eater: Dog. Though Cat has put a lot of fish away at times.
  • Biological Mashup: CatDog
  • Biting the Hand Humor
  • Carnivore Confusion: Deconstructed. Dog goes insane after realizing that all the meat he's been eating has been living people that he hangs out with all the time.
  • Cartoon Creature: Mr. Sunshine. Lampshaded on several occasions where no one is sure what kind of creature he's supposed to be.
    • Word of God states he was originally meant to be a monkey.
  • Catch Phrase: Several:
    • Cat: "Bee-yoo-tee-ful!", "It just doesn't get any better than this!", a sarcastic "Terr-riffic", and "MY BODY MY BODY MY BODYYYYAAAGH!!!"
    • Dog: "Hi-ho-diggety!" and "Two heads are more than one!"
    • Winslow: "What are you, nuts?", and "Sheesh Louise!"
    • Rancid: "What, what, what?!" and "Leaping lumbago!"
    • Lola: "Hola, I am Lola!" and "Unbelieveable!"
    • Randolph: "And I love it!"
  • Canada, Eh?: Mervis and Dunglap.
  • Cats Are Mean: Cat fits this trope, although he's usually not overtly cruel or vicious. He's just kind of a jerk. Then again most dogs and mice in the show aren't much better.
  • Chaotic Stupid: Cat will make anyone mad when the town has a crisis, even the police.
  • The Chew Toy: Played as straight as can be with Cat. Nearly every character has the odd bout of extremely bad luck however.
  • Cloudcuckoolander: Dog.
  • Cold Turkeys Are Everywhere: When your girlfriend looks like a pizza, maybe you should stop for a snack...
    • To make preparations for a dancing contest, Cat puts an overweight Dog on a diet so he will be fit enough for the competition. This was often met with many setbacks because Dog kept hidden stashes of food which he ate while exercising. Eventually, under threat of disqualification, Dog relents and loses enough weight for the competition. This backfires where a starving Dog starts to hallucinate his surroundings as food (he envisions his dancemates as pizza pies and drum sticks as chicken legs). Dog finally breaks and proceeds to devour not only the buffet, but his dance mates and the entire theatre!
  • Conjoined Twins: CatDog of course.
  • Conspicuously Light Patch: In the taco restaurant in the episode "All You Can't Eat" where CatDog crawl under the floor tiles and you can see the path they take outlined on the tiles, for example.
  • Corrupt Corporate Executive: Rancid Rabbit usually holds this position no matter where he is.
  • Crapsack World: Nearburg, probably because of Rancid.
  • Crazy Prepared: Cat is the only person in the entire town who has a Species License.
  • Critical Research Failure: in "Smarter Than the Average Dog", Cat becomes a "genius" and proundly exclaims that "Circumference = Pi * Radius Squared." Anyone who passed elementary math would know Pi * Radius Squared is the area of the circle, not the circumference.
  • Dark Horse Victory: CatDog and Mindy Wonderful are climbing a mountain, and the first to the top will have the mountain named after them. The winner is Dunglap.
  • Deadpan Snarker: Winslow
  • Depending on the Writer: Is Cat a Jerkass that deserves his Butt Monkey treatment, or just a mildly sarcastic and cynical guy who gets unfairly tortured by the rest of the universe?
  • Deranged Animation
  • Diabolus Ex Machina: One of too many examples: CatDog accidentally create an extremely delicious candy that gives them worldwide fame and fortune. At the very end, it's revealed that it also has the unintended side effect of making people go bald, and everyone hates them again.
  • The Ditz: Lube and Dog
  • Dogs Are Dumb: Dog fits this trope perfectly.
  • A Dog Named "Dog": And a cat named Cat.
  • Downer Ending: Quite frequently, though Cat ends up suffering the most with these types of endings.
  • Dumb Is Good: Cat is intelligent and a bit of a Jerkass, and acts as the show's key Butt Monkey. Dog for the most part is well intentioned but causes twice as much chaos via accidental stupidity and is a walking Karma Houdini (that said, there are times where Dog gets away with being a genuine Jerkass).
  • Ears as Hair: The Better Bottoms rabbit wears his ears in a sleazy ponytail style.
  • The Eeyore: Mr. Sunshine
  • Elephant in the Living Room: Eddie dosn't even look like a Squirrel.
  • Episode Title Card
  • Expository Theme Tune: "One fine day with a woof and a purr..."
  • Expy: The Odd Couple's 1975 Animated Adaptation The Oddball Couple also featured the adventures of a neatnik cat and slovenly dog, albeit as separate entities.
  • Fantastic Racism: If the constant beatings Cat receives from dog characters primarily for his species doesn't count then one episode's upper class cult of cats with Nazi-esque plans to exterminate dogs certainly does.
  • Fantastic Voyage: Done in several episodes where Cat eats several objects, Winslow- and a fish named Veronica and has to venture inside Dog to get her.
  • Fat Bastard: Rancid Rabbit.
  • Fat Idiot: Rancid Rabbit (again).
  • The Fool: Dog frequently causes multiple catastrophes and Amusing Injuries with his stupidity though more often than not fate is on his side and leaves him unscathed (and then punishes Cat twice as hard for the both of them).
  • "Gift of the Magi" Plot: Happened in the episode "Brothers Day", then subverted when Dog sold Cat's Gift after buying it to buy something for himself. More specifically, Dog gave up his pool of mud that he and Cat wrestled in to buy Cat a loufa case. Cat sold his loufa to get Dog a mud wrestling costume. Dog reveals that he sold the loufa case and got Cat a mud wrestling outfit as well, because "I looked up the recipe for mud, and it's really easy to make!"
  • G-Rated Drug: Whatever Eddie had to make him go hyperactive.
  • Getting Crap Past the Radar: This exchange between Rancid and Lube:

Rancid: (after giving orders) "Now show some class!"
Lube: *turns around and drops his pants*
Rancid: "I SAID CLASS!

    • In "Winslow's Home Videos", the short that aired before the Rugrats movie (on the VHS and DVD only, theaters had a different short), Cat tells Dog that the tacos he's eating have to "pass through our colon."
    • The first line of the theme tune, really.
    • Do NOT call Cat a pussycat.
    • The title card for "Cliff's Little Secret" shows Cliff coming out of a closet
  • Gratuitous Spanish: Lola
  • Hidden Depths: Each of the Greasers has at least one trait they kept secret or never bothered telling anyone about.
  • Ice Hockey: Rinky Dinks
  • Idiot Hero: Cat (although, he is meant to be smart).
  • Impossibly Delicious Food: "Catdog Candy" from the episode of the same name. Unfortunately, it also makes you go bald.
  • Inexplicably Identical Individuals: Rancid Rabbit holds a different job whenever he appears? Dentist, dog catcher, fast food restaurant manager, you name it. Taken to its logical extreme where he is seen working as a teacher and a traffic cop in the same episode. Cat is absolutely stunned.
  • Interspecies Adoption: Catdog's parents are a frog and a sasquatch. They were all separated from each other during a storm. When Cat questions how they could be their parents, their dad tells them that it doesn't matter, because parents are parents, and they loved them both. Dog does notice that it seems he got his nose from his mother though...
  • Jail Bake: Subverted. A bunch of inmates receive a file, but Shriek uses it on her fingernails and then uses said fingernails to pick the lock.
  • Jerkass: Lots and lots of characters. Rancid Rabbit, The Greaser Dogs and Winslow are some of the most obvious examples. Even Cat and Dog can arguably be these depending on the episode.
  • Kafka Komedy: This is the closest Nickelodeon ever came to "Schadenfreude: The Animated Show" arguably until Invader Zim. Much of the humor is based around the misery and utterly awful life of the main characters, juxtaposing Dog's blissful, optimistic ignorance with Cat's anguished, cynical resignation.
  • Karma Houdini: Most of the cast (even Cat) has gotten away with some particularly ruthless action at least once. Dog may be the most consistent example, having constantly gotten away with destroying aspects of his twin's life or getting him in trouble (though the fact most of the antagonists are cat-despising dogs that go lenient on Dog may have something to do with). Granted however a lot of the time, Dog is merely being stupid than actually callous, though not always.
  • Keet: Dog.
  • Kids Are Cruel: Back to School
  • Killer Rabbit: Let The Games Begin!
  • Lions and Tigers and Humans, Oh My!: The occasional human pops up in a few episodes.
  • Lonely Rich Kid: Shriek Dubois.
  • Made for TV Movie / The Movie: CatDog: The Great Parent Mystery.
  • Man Child: Dog
  • May Contain Evil: Rancid Rabbit's yelling voice in CatDog Divided & Let The Games Begin.
  • Meat-O-Vision: Dog suffers this after going on a diet. See Cold Turkeys Are Everywhere.
  • Mole Miner: a mole lives under CatDog's house, claiming ownership of anything underneath it.
  • Multiple Head Case: CatDog. Subverted, as they're conjoined twins.
  • The Napoleon: Winslow and Eddie the Squirrel
  • Nightmare Fuel Station Attendant: Rancid Rabbit
  • No Indoor Voice: Rancid Rabbit and Eddie The Squirrel
  • Odd Couple: Of course.
  • Only Sane Man: Mervis & Dunglap
  • Parental Bonus: A Red Rancid Rabbit Grabs Cat while he was in Speedos in Cloud Burting.
  • Passing Notes in Class: When CatDog gets sent back to high school to get their diploma, Cat tries to pass a note to his teacher, whom he had a crush on when they went to high school together. She catches him and forces him to read the poem to everyone else, causing Cat to melt into a puddle. Dog, however, thinks the poem was beautiful.
  • Pec Flex : Dog does this in "Pumped Up."
  • Ping-Pong Naivete: Somehow Dog is smart enough to know the ethics against cheating and doing schoolwork but not to realise that dragging his conjoined twin across the street may cause slight physical harm.
  • Polar Opposite Twins: CatDog
  • Real Greasers Take Ballet: Cat finds out Cliff takes ballet in one of the episodes. Toward the end, Cliff shows CatDog and the Greasers just how brutal ballet really is.
    • That's not surprising. Many football players take up ballet to improve their balance, stamina, and flexibility.
  • Sadist Show: Very, Very, Very, Very, Very, Very, Very, Very Sadistic.
  • Serious Business: What happens to people who break the rules at Rancid's pool? He puts them in his own prison and forces them to do manual labor. On his pool.
  • Short Run in Peru: The finale didn't air until 2005, after it had been shown in other countries.
  • Shout-Out:
    • In Full Moon Fever, Cliff says, of Dog, "Gobble gobble, one of us."
    • In another episode, Cat reads a "poem" that contains the Roger Miller lyric "Roses are red, violets are purple / Sugar is sweet and so is maple syruple."
  • Small Name, Big Ego: Cat.
  • Spoiled Brat: Shriek
  • Status Quo Is God: It just doesn't get any better than this! Literally.
  • Surrounded by Idiots: Cat
  • Terrible Trio: The Greaser Dogs
  • The Tooth Hurts: When CatDog visits the dentist, they learn that whatever one does to his teeth affects the other's instead, as Cat has brushed his teeth all day which gave his brother perfect pearly whites. However, Dog ate mostly garbage which rotted out his brother's. This eventually escalates into a full-on battle, with each side trying to destroy the other's teeth.
  • This Loser Is You: Cat.
  • Those Two Guys: Mervis and Dunglap.
  • Tomboy: Shriek. The other two Greasers had to do a Double Take QUADRUPLE TAKE when she finally confirmed she was a girl.
    • Cat's occasionally hinted at, but unrequited, crush on Shriek is probably the only exception to the reactions everyone but her parents displayed at this revelation.
  • Tsundere: Shriek
  • Too Dumb to Live: Dog, The Greasers, & Rancid Rabbit.
  • Toilet Humor: Mostly happens in many Nightmare Fuel moments.
  • Totem Pole Trench: The Ingrid Twins
  • Ungrateful Bastard: Cliff & Rancid Rabbit
  • The Un-Reveal: The Great Parent Mystery. What, were you expecting biological parents?
  • Unstoppable Rage: Happens when Cat snaps at a Monster Truck Rally.
    • Could also qualify as a Crowning Moment of Awesome, as Cat pretty much clobbers everyone who's screwed him over in past episodes, especially at the end when he destroys Cliff's Monster Truck with a single punch.
    • Dog in "Pumped Up".
  • Weaksauce Weakness: Several characters refer to this trope as "Porkfat", named after the weaksauce weakness of the in-universe movie character, Mean Bob.
  • Went to the Great X In the Sky:

Shriek: You're going to that great big litter box in the sky!
Lube: (Looks up) Where?

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