Thru the eyes of a fan and the ears of a mouse

Character Spot Light

Cheshire Cat

In the 1951 Disney movie, Alice in Wonderland, the Cheshire Cat is depicted as an intelligent yet mischievous character that sometimes helps Alice and sometimes gets her into trouble. He is voiced by Sterling Holloway and later by Jim Cummings after Holloway's death. The Disney version of the character can also be spotted during the final scene of the 1988 film Who Framed Roger Rabbit. Prior to the release of the Walt Disney animated adaption of the story, scholars observed few specific allusions to this character. Martin Gardner, author of the The Annotated Alice, wondered if T. S. Eliot had the Cheshire Cat in mind when writing Morning at the Window but notes no other significant allusions in the pre-war period

Alice first encounters it at the Duchess's house in her kitchen, and then later outside on the branches of a tree, where it appears and disappears at will, engaging Alice in amusing but sometimes vexing conversation. The cat sometimes raises philosophical points that annoy or baffle Alice. It does, however, appear to cheer her up when it turns up suddenly at the Queen of Hearts' croquet field, and when sentenced to death baffles everyone by having made its head appear without its body, sparking a massive argument between the executioner and the King and Queen of Hearts about whether something that does not have a body can indeed be beheaded.

At one point, the cat disappears gradually until nothing is left but its grin, prompting Alice to remark that she has often seen a cat without a grin but never a grin without a cat