"A Mouse Divided" is a 1953 Looney Tunes short, starting Sylvester the Cat and directed by Friz Freleng.
A drunken delivery stork mistakenly delivers a baby mouse to Sylvester and his wife. The wife loves the baby mouse immediately, and though Sylvester initially wants to eat it, eventually falls in love with his new son as well, and then spends the cartoon having to defend his baby from hungry cats.
"A Mouse Divided" provide examples of:
- Adopt the Food: Played with; a drunken stork mistakenly delivers a baby mouse to Sylvester and his wife. While Sylvester's wife is happy to have a baby regardless if it's a mouse, Sylvester tries to eat the baby mouse at first despite his wife's objections. Sylvester soon becomes fond of the baby mouse when he calls him "Daddy", then protects him from the other cats who wants to eat him.
- Blatant Lies: Sylvester tells his wife, "Go away, I'm busy," and goes back to taking a nap on the floor.
- Chimney Entry: One cat tries to enter Sylvester's house via this method dressed as Santa Claus. Sylvester looks at the calendar on his wall and sees it's July, then sends a balloon up the chimney flue with a stick of dynamite tied to it and blows the cat up through the flue and into the sky.
- Circling Saw: A cat tries to steal the baby, cradle and all, this way. Sylvester sees it happening and replaces the mouse with a lit stick of dynamite. The cat eats an explosion and then sheepishly hammers the missing section of floor back into place.
- Delivery Stork: This one heads off to work directly from a roaring nightclub party, and drops the baby mouse off with Sylvester after being too drunk to continue.
- The Diaper Change: At one point, Sylvester is tasked with changing the baby mouse's diaper. Because he tries to eat the baby mouse at first, he pins a leaf of lettuce on him before putting him in a sandwich.
- Door Focus: After accepting the mouse as his son, Sylvester takes him for a walk on a buggy. He rounds the corner, and the camera holds for a few moments before Sylvester comes running back, followed by hundreds of hungry cats.
- Goo Goo Getup: The stork comes back to reclaim the mouse, gets Sylvester by mistake, dresses him up in a baby outfit and delivers him to the parent mice. The baby mouse's real mother then remarks "Well! Nothing like this ever happened on my side of the family!" to her husband.
- Hypocritical Humor: Sylvester angrily calls the other cats "cannibals" for trying to eat his son even though he himself had tried to eat the mouse earlier (and was called a cannibal by his wife).
- Motor Mouth: One cat impersonates a traveling salesman and rattles off his spiel so quickly that Sylvester doesn't realize that he's absconding with the mouse.
- Papa Wolf: Sylvester fends off a bunch of hungry cats with tons of fatherly violence.
- Paper-Thin Disguise: One (deep-voiced, obviously male) cat shows up dressed as a teenage girl offering to babysit for Sylvester. Sylvester slams the door in his face.
- Predator Turned Protector: Sylvester and his wife eventually let their mistakenly-delivered baby mouse into their hearts, even though Sylvester's first instinct is to eat it.
- Ridiculously Cute Critter: The baby mouse, approaching Chuck Jones levels of adorability.
- Twist Ending: The drunken stork returns to covertly take back the mouseling, and Sylvester mistakes him for another cat. This ends up with Sylvester being taken to the mouse baby's intended parents, who are bewildered and upset by this turn of events. (May double as a Downer Ending — Sylvester has no idea how to get home, the baby mouse is now protected only by Sylvester's wife, and the hungry cats are still out there ...)
- Weapons That Suck: One of the cats disguises himself as a vacuum cleaner salesman and uses his vacuum to suck up the baby mouse. Sylvester manages to save the baby mouse before the cat can eat him.
