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Thomas Jasper "Tom" Cat is a fictional character, the main protagonist/anti-hero and half of the Academy-Award-winning Tom and Jerry cartoon cat-and-mouse duo. He is a blue/grey anthropomorphic cat who first appeared in the 1940 animated short Puss Gets the Boot. Tom was originally known as "Jasper" during his debut in that short, however, beginning from his next appearance in The Midnight Snack and onwards, he is known as "Tom" or "Thomas". In Tom and Jerry: The Movie, He was voiced by Richard Kind, and serves as the main protagonist. He is occasionally the antagonist in most of the shorts.
Appearance
Tom is a mute, Russian Grayish-Blue cat with green eyes and yellow in the whites of the eyes. Tom has a white torso and white hands and feet. The tip of his tail is also white. The rest of his body is gray.
History
Tom was born to two stray cats, near a ally in 1995. After the parents died, Maria finds the hungry, lost, scared baby kitten near a bin, names him Tom and takes him in her mansion in Vice City. Tom spends his childhood with Maria and his resident baby friends. It maybe known that Maria either kept Tom or had given him to Mammy Two Shoes.
Background
His full name "Tom Cat" is based on the phrase "tomcat" which refers to male felines. He is very rarely heard speaking with the exception of a few cartoons. Although occasionally, he would make yawning noises and "Ouch!" noises if he is hurt. As well as saying "Don't you believe it?" in a low, monotonous voice.
Personality
An example of Tom chasing Jerry
Tom is potrayed as a normal cat that continously chases after Jerry, for whom he sets traps, many of which backfire and cause damage to himself rather than Jerry. Tom rarely sets out to eat Jerry, only to hurt or compete with him, going to great lengths in order to torment Jerry. However, Tom is shown to get along with Jerry sometimes. Multiple times the story will start with him having nothing against Jerry, and is mearly chasing him out of fear of recieving abuse at the hands of his owner if he doesn't do his job as a cat.
Tom changed his personality remarkably over the years, especially after the first episodes. For example, in his debut, he was quadrupedal and had normal cat intelligence. However, over the years, he has become almost completely bipedal and has human intelligence. As a slapstick cartoon character, Tom has a superhuman level of elasticity. When acting as the antagonist of Jerry, Tom is usually beaten at the end, although there are some stories where he outwits and beats Jerry.
Movies
Tom was one of the main protagonists in the film Tom and Jerry: The Movie alongside his usual enemy Jerry. Tom and Jerry started out as enemies, but upon meeting new friends Pugsy and Frankie, a dog and flea respectively, the two try and start a form of friendship, but it's a rocky start. Tom imprisons Jerry in a pot to get food and is confronted by a gang of alley cats, upon fleeing he and Jerry, still not the best of friends yet, meet a little orphan girl named Robyn Starling who ran away. They accompany her back to her home, escorted by an officer and quickly after getting into a scuffle with the dog Ferdinand over food and finding out about Auntie Figg's evil plans, they are sent to a pound. They escape along with the other animals and reunite with Robyn, all of whom eventually end up at a carnival on an island. After the carnival owner, Captain Kiddie, sees the reward for Robyn, he attempts to hold her hostage, but they escape to Robyn's hideout where her father would be. Her father finds and rescues them as the house begins to burn. At the end of the movie they revert back to chasing and antagonizing each other heavily.
In a series of direct to video or dvd releases following the original movie, Tom often served as a protagonist along with Jerry, though there were antagonistic tendencies between the two throughout most every one of the movies.
Trivia
- He is also evil and battles Jerry.
- He sometimes has a happy ending in some episodes but when Spike has a happy ending, Jerry will have a happy ending aswell.
- In the debut cartoon, Puss Gets the Boot, he was called Jasper instead of Tom.
- Richard Kind provides the voice for Tom in Tom and Jerry: The Movie.
- Judging from how Jerry easily outsmart him and destruction that both he and Jerry caused over the course of their appearance, Tom's main weakness while competing with Jerry was his tendency for being reckless. This was shown where everytime he chases Jerry, he often hit/step on objects around him and damaged them by process albeit in accident, and also often, if not always, accidently insults Spike, which made the bulldog often beat him into pulp.