The little G and I were watching tv recently (most likely when I should have been cleaning house…) and I stopped on a kids channel because for once, it had something I wanted to watch. Much to my amazement, Cartoon Network was showing an older Tom and Jerry “movie” and Grace was enthralled with it (she likes cats and mice). I had to explain to her several times who the two main characters were (you know, the cat and the mouse) but after a while, she got it and had no problem following along.

What struck me, while watching it, wasn’t the violence (because the cartoons of my youth were definitely more violent than todays cartoons, remember Elmer Fudd vs. Bugs?) but the fact that unlike most of the cartoons today, Tom and Jerry were quality cartoons. Well drawn, for the most part, the story was better than a lot of the crud on the kids networks today and it was fun to watch. When did kids shows become mindless drivel?

It was nice watching Tom try to catch jerry with no luck at all and even more fun to watch jerry out wit Tom with whatever engraved plaques, bowling balls, bats or other implements of distruction he could get his little mouse paws on. Even cooler was the ability to connect with my eldest watching something that had me laughing for hours when I was her age.