The cartoon begins with Alice leaving in her car and telling the cat to guard the house against mice. Almost immediately the place is invaded by mice--and not the cute Mickey Mouse types! It's moderately funny and the animation is about average for the era--but certainly not a particularly memorable short.
Considering that Felix the Cat had debuted in 1919, I can only assume that Walt Disney and this staff were deliberately trying to capitalize on his fame by making the cat in this cartoon look almost exactly like him. "Alice Rattled by Rats" is one of many Alice cartoons Disney made before branching off with his own studio in the late 1920s. And, like the other Alice cartoons, Alice is a real child and the of the cartoon and props are all created using simple black & white animation. There are music and sound effects and these must have been added later, as such things were not used until later in the decade...and often cartoons created before then were later retrofitted with sound to make them more marketable in the post-silent age.
Considering that Felix the Cat had debuted in 1919, I can only assume that Walt Disney and this staff were deliberately trying to capitalize on his fame by making the cat in this cartoon look almost exactly like him. "Alice Rattled by Rats" is one of many Alice cartoons Disney made before branching off with his own studio in the late 1920s. And, like the other Alice cartoons, Alice is a real child and the of the cartoon and props are all created using simple black & white animation. There are music and sound effects and these must have been added later, as such things were not used until later in the decade...and often cartoons created before then were later retrofitted with sound to make them more marketable in the post-silent age.
