"The Island" is the first half of the third episode of CatDog from the first season. In this episode, CatDog cycles to the airport to go to on vacation, but wind up stuck en route.
The Island
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Episode
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Season 1, Episode 2a
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Airdate
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October 6, 1998
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Previous Episode
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Next Episode
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Written by
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Supervising Director
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Storyboard Director
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Storyboard Artist
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Animation Director
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Music
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Characters Present[]
Synopsis[]
Cat and Dog are bicycling to the airport on the highway; Dog is at the pedals and Cat is driving. But Cat is too busy looking at the brochure and thinking about what a wonderful vacation it will be to look where he’s going, and he accidentally misses the turn to the airport. Dog tries to tell Cat what just happened, but he only tells Dog “No back-pedal driving.” But then, just as Cat suddenly looks back and realizes he missed the turn, Cat swerves to avoid hitting an oncoming truck and winds up running off the highway. They go plummeting toward the ground and crash on a mound of dirt.
Taking a quick look around, Dog realizes that he and Cat are stuck on a traffic island that is surrounded by continuous moving traffic; Dog screams in agony that they are “Bike-Wrecked!” Cat however assures Dog that they will be off the island on their plane in no time, and he spots a crosswalk with a crosswalk light and pushes the button. After waiting a while for the light to allow them to cross, Cat gets impatient and pushes the Button again and again (and even begins punching it) until it short circuits and blows the crosswalk light into smithereens. With no crosswalk, Cat decides that he and Dog will cross when the traffic stops. They wait for a really long time, but the traffic doesn’t stop. Dog then tells Cat that he’s going to look around; meanwhile, Cat spots a telephone and calls Winslow for help. On the phone, Winslow informs Cat that he is having a yard sale, and Cat is enraged when he overhears Winslow selling his yarn ball collection and Winslow hangs up on him. In a fit of rage, Cat slams the receiver on the phone multiple times and grasps it tightly, causing it to crumble into many pieces and preventing CatDog from making any more calls.
Cat then looks around and gathers a bottle and some paper and writes a quick message: “Dear anybody, HELP! Yours truly, CatDog.” He puts his message in the bottle and throws it off screen, but the bottle doesn’t get very far before breaking. Just as Cat loudly admits defeat, Dog shows Cat a hut he made out of salvage he found on the traffic island, which bears heavy resemblance to the hut in Cat’s vacation brochure; he sees that Dog has been turning their predicament into the paradise they were attempting to get to. For food, Dog crosses out the word “No” on a “No Littering” sign, and people immediately start to throw food and drink out of their car windows onto CatDog’s island. Using more salvage found on the traffic island, CatDog is able to make it a very “pretty little piece of paradise.”
Later on, a large wind begins to blow and something big that seems to resemble a storm begins approaching the traffic island. CatDog wonders what it could be, and it’s eventually revealed to be a giant street sweeper heading straight for CatDog; it runs over CatDog and they end up in “the eye of the sweeper”. The Street Sweeper goes away and CatDog comes out from hiding inside a tire to find the street sweeper swept up their beautiful paradise. Time passes and both Cat and Dog grow gray beards and become weak and hungry; suddenly, they both hear something sizzling and Dog wonders if it's bacon frying (it really turns out to be their brains that are frying). Both Cat and Dog now begin to lose their minds; Cat builds a relic out of more salvage and begins worshiping it and begging it for food, and Dog is drawing himself in the dirt as a king (and claims Cat is crazy). Cat begins to hallucinate seeing a large daemon cat that tells him to eat Dog (Cat replies “Yes master”), Dog also gets the idea of eating Cat (and draws a Cat being cooked over fire and licks it); after trying to eat one another, they both agree they need to get off the island.
Using more salvage, they build a small boat, and they bend back a large pole and tie it down so that they can catapult the boat into traffic. CatDog climbs in and launches the boat onto the top of a car, which soon hits a bumpy part of the road and runs beneath an overhanging road sign, which CatDog run into and get knocked off. After a rather loony mishap in the middle of traffic, Cat and Dog finds themselves safely back on top of another truck and heading for their house. Just as they hug each other in celebration and apologize to each other for trying to eat each other, they find themselves heading straight toward a rather unusual “waterfall” of cars plummeting straight downward; CatDog is unable to escape and they too plummet to the bottom.
Later, Dog regains consciousness flat on the ground and finds Cat is still unconscious. Dog gives Cat artificial respiration and Cat spits out nuts, bolts, a muffler and a stop sign (among other bits of car related metal odds and ends) before finally regaining consciousness himself. Looking at the tropical beachfront view behind Dog, Cat happily exclaims that they finally made it to paradise; but he then takes a closer look and finds that he and Dog are really stuck on a billboard high in the sky (and surrounded by flying airplanes) that is advertising a vacation. Dog makes the best of it and imagines himself really at the tropical beach in the picture, but Cat is not amused about their new predicament one bit.
Trivia[]
- Mr. Sunshine, Cliff, Shriek, Lube, Rancid, and Eddie do not appear.
- When CatDog play golf, they hit the ball into hole 18. A later episode that is also about golf is titled "Showdown at Hole 18". However, this may just be a coincidence
- The premise may be based off of Concrete Island by J.G. Ballard.
Gallery[]
The gallery for The Island can be viewed here.