For real, though, rats are a huge problem. The thing this one cuts his way through early in the short is actually designed to make it harder for rats to climb onboard ships when they’re in port, because there is little more destructive to ecosystems and human agriculture. Multiple species have been driven to extinction by rats; it’s actually suggested that rats’ eating their eggs was a bigger problem for the dodo than humans eating, you know, them. Hawaii’s ecosystem was not prepared, and huge numbers of Hawaiian birds were wiped out by rats.

This is in Pluto’s Coast Guard days. Pluto was helping the war effort. Here, the entire crew of the ship is allowed to go ashore on leave, and Pluto must stay aboard to keep an eye on things. He thinks he sees two men in a lifeboat conspiring, but it turns out to be his bone supply. So okay. He takes one of the bones and curls up in a corner with it. However, a rat gets onboard, and Pluto attempts to chase it off the ship.

I’m not here to argue against shore leave, goodness knows, but you don’t want to leave the entire ship deserted except for a single dog, no matter how anthropomorphized. How long are these people going ashore? What’s going to happen if Pluto falls asleep? He’s a dog. Even a watch dog might fall asleep, because the average dog cannot be instructed on the importance of staying awake. Most of the time, when you see guard dogs in the media, you see guard dogs, plural, and there’s just one of Pluto.

Frankly, everyone concerned is lucky there was just the one rat. That’s seldom the case; a wharf would likely be swarming with them. It’s a little grim. No one talking about the entertainment practices of the past can be unaware of the history of having dogs fight rats. Dogs were routinely killed by rats. Oh, Pluto has the opportunity to run in a way that a dog in a fighting pit wouldn’t, but all in all, he’s lucky this one just wanted a sandwich.

Once again, we’re left with a short that doesn’t have much going on. In a way, the closest parallel you get to the Pluto shorts in the Warners canon is the Roadrunner shorts, inasmuch as neither the Roadrunner nor Wile E. Coyote talk. However, the Pluto shorts are more frequently forgettable. It’s true that you may not remember which specific short any given gag is from with the Roadrunner, but at least you remember that all the shorts have gags.

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