Cat Man.

Hey kids (of all ages), it's Saturday Morning Cartoon time again!

Hanna-Barbera, the Big Kahuna of TV animation, was notorious for doing thinly-veiled knockoffs. Filmation, the closest thing they had to competition in the peak years of Saturday Morning Cartoons, was the opposite. They were best-known for their licensed adaptations of characters owned by others.

Since Filmation usually respected intellectual properties, it must have been a misunderstanding or oversight when they made THE SECRET LIVES OF WALDO KITTY without license from the estate of the author of THE SECRET LIFE OF WALTER MITTY.

Waldo was a mild-mannered house cat who daydreamed himself into various heroic roles from pop-culture. You'd think doing feline versions of TARZAN, BATMAN, LONE RANGER, and STAR TREK (all previously featured on this channel, by the way) would have gotten the studio into trouble. But they were all licensed to Filmation in the '70s. (Even the Caped Crusader, who managed to be licensed to them and HB at the same time!)

The widow of Walter Mitty's author filed a lawsuit. Seems the legal protections for parodies (along with the existence of Warner Bros. "Ralph Phillips" theatrical cartoons from the '50s inspired by Mitty) would've made her the loser, but there was a settlement and the show was re-titled the NEW ADVENTURES OF WALDO KITTY.

The program featured an unusual element in that Waldo and some of his supporting characters were depicted by live-action animals in the bookend segments, switching to cartoons in Waldo's imagination. Directing cats proved to be a challenge. And the mean bulldog was perhaps a bit too into his character, reportedly wanting to massacre the kitties for real.

Between the legal and live critter hassles, Filmation was probably glad this series ran only one production season of thirteen episodes. Here is the first one, from September 1975.

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