The AristoCats Comes to Life?

The AristoCats

Attractions: none
Eateries: none
Shops: none
Ambiance: none
Meetable Characters: none
Shows: none

There’s not much to talk about here.  The AristoCats gets virtually no love at Disneyland and I can’t say I disagree with that decision.  You can buy a Marie plush in the shops but that’s about where it ends. However, Marie along with her brothers Belioz and Toulouse do appear as meetable characters in some other Disney Parks but no such sightings have been recorded in California.

While even my all-inclusive imagination couldn’t begin to conjure an attraction, eatery or shop I could imagine the Everybody Wants to be a Cat sequence getting slotted in Fantasmic!  Think about it: the show is about a mouse’s “nightmare” and the psychedelic jazz number could receive an even trippier makeover and fit right in a la King Louie and Kaa and/or Dumbo’s Elephants on Parade.  With that being said, the show is already as close to perfect as you could get and, if it isn’t, The AristoCats wouldn’t make it so.

Perhaps we could just go with something simpler.  How about we add a few cat figures to a rooftop in either Fantasyland or New Orleans Square to mirror these somewhat iconic scenes? Along with that, how about a very subtly placed motorbike with sidecar leaning against a tree or a building alluding to Edgar the Butler?  But really, it’s no surprise that Disney’s first animated feature based on nothing also inspires nothing.  Oh well… 
 
But wait!  Maybe Disneyland’s famed Feral Cats are representative of the movie!  No, of course they aren’t but they are at least worth discussing and this provides as a good a chance as any.  Cats have been living in Disneyland as far back as 1955 when they found them lounging about the then hollowed out rafters of Sleeping Beauty Castle.  And, they are still roaming the park to this day! Some estimates even have the number of cats as high as 200!  And, what began as a one-sided relationship has now been reciprocated by Disneyland – they realized that the cats help eliminate and maintain any rodent problems and have thus decided to make the park their home.  Disney has spayed and neutered all of the cats as well as providing any other kind of medical attention they need.  They have also set up five feeding stations around the park for when they run out of mice and rats to eat.  Although I don’t know for sure where those stations are, I mostly see the cats hanging around the woodsy area back behind Stromboli’s Wagon where the old Fantasyland Skyway Station resides and near the Hungry Bear Restaurant – basically anywhere you have some foliage, be on the lookout for kitties!