Peter-No-Tail

Pelle is a cat born without a tail on a farm in the Swedish countryside. The farmer cannot afford to keep him but cannot bring himself to drown him either, so he slips the cat into the car of a family renting a house nearby for the summer. The family find him at their home in Uppsala and decide to keep him. Because he has no tail the cats of the neighbourhood mock him, and the cruellest of them is the bully Mike. This Swedish animated film, adapted from Gösta Knutsson's children's books, takes exclusion and mockery as its direct subject. What saves Pelle is not strength but going on being kind. Mike's courting of Molly, and her preferring Pelle, build the second half of the story. Stig Lasseby's film was watched by generations in Sweden and sequels followed.