While there are some good ones out there, I don't call myself a fan of the Herman cartoons and the cartoons with him and Katnip are hit-and-miss in quality. Mice-Capades in ranking is somewhere in the middle, not enough to blow the socks off but is overall one of the hits in the series.
Mice-Capades is relatively thin in terms of plot and is very formulaic with not much new. Not just for a Herman and Katnip cartoon, where the basic story(with Katnip causing trouble for the mice and Herman coming to the rescue) is pretty much the same in every cartoon of theirs, but in general as well, Heavenly Puss and Pluto's Judgment Day also deal with characters facing the prospect of going to hell for misdeeds and more imaginatively than in Mice-Capades. There's not much that is funny either and little of the material for a Herman and Katnip cartoon feels original(outside of the heaven and hell depictions and Katnip being tricked into thinking he's been poisoned), while the mice who usually bring poignancy to the cartoon don't have very much to do and the troubles they go through are starting to get tiring being very similar in most of the cartoons they feature.
The animation however is very good, much improved over the animation in Cat Carson Rides Again. It has more colour, more fluidity and more detail, the depictions of heaven and hell are very imaginatively handled and some of the most imaginative visuals of any Herman cartoon. While Mice-Capades is not original or funny as such generally it really picks up at the end(apart from it ending a bit too conveniently), Katnip realising he had been tricked did amuse and the scene had some clever animation and Katnip has rarely been more menacing. Also the delivery of Katnip's "Firey Furnace?!!" is still unforgettably priceless. Herman is amusing and Katnip is a good adversary(this is one of the few occasions where I actually did feel sorry for him as well), the two work very well together. Arnold Stang and Sid Raymond do a great job with the voice work. But the star here is the music, it was always the bright spot in the Herman cartoons and it doesn't disappoint at all. The vibrant, lush scoring and lively, energetic rhythms in distinctive Winston Sharples fashion makes for an outstanding music score that compliments the cartoon and its action brilliantly.
All in all, has a good amount to like despite being formulaic not much special or original humour-wise. 6.5/10 Bethany Cox