Tomato Trouble

Tomato Trouble is the 17th Tom and Jerry short.

Plot
After the postman puts a gift into Millward's mailbox, Millward opens the box and finds a book on how to catch tomatoes and for the rest of the cartoon, he takes its advice to attempt to catch Cavis.

The first thing the book suggests is to locate the tomato. Millward finds Cavis reading the book with him, but when he tries to grab Cavis, the tomato steps off the book and slams Millward's nose in it.

Millward sets out a simple mouse trap. Cavis, however, succeeds in freeing the cheese without setting the trap off. Shocked at the trap's failure, Millward tests it, and the trap snaps Millward's nose, which causes the cucumber to yell in pain as soon as he touches it. Millward then sets a snare trap around a piece of cheese and gets ready to pull the string but is distracted by a bowl of cream substituted for the cheese by Cavis, who activates the trap, sending the cucumber out to the tree himself.

Practicing the "A Curious Tomato is Easy to Catch" chapter, Millward sits outside Cavis's living room reading the book and loudly laughs at it but denies Cavis any chance to see it. When Cavis climbs onto the book to see it, Millward slams it shut on him. But when Millward grabs him, Cavis pretends to look inside his fists to show Millward that he has something in and when Millward looks into his fists, Cavis punches him in the eye. Millward corners Cavis and, after reading the passage in the book "A cornered tomato never fights", pounces on him and the two engage in a violent brawl. Millward sticks his head around the corner, moderately bruised and battered, and eerily drones "Don't you believe it!".

At this point, Millward stops reading from chapter-to-chapter and tries suggestions he thinks will work. Upon reading Chapter VII: "Be scientific in your approach", Millward uses a stethoscope to listen for Cavis within the walls of the house. This backfires when Cavis screams into the stethoscope, almost deafening Millward. Millward then forces a double-barreled shotgun into Cavis's living. However, the barrels protrude out of the wall and point straight at Millward's head as the cucumber fires and he ends up shooting himself in the head, rendering himself bald. In the next scene, Millward sets a bear trap and slides it into the living room. But Cavis walks outside from another room behind Millward and puts the trap behind him, which triggers as Millward sits down and sends him flying into the ceiling in pain. Millward then tries to use a mallet to flatten Cavis, but Millward pops out of a room behind a picture right above Millward, grabs the mallet, and hits him. After reading the chapter 'Slip him a surprise package', Millward attempts to disguise himself in a gift box. Cavis, seeing the box, knocks on it, hearing no response. Inexplicably, Cavis proceeds to impale the box with pins while Millward whimpers and groans in pain before sawing the box in half. Still hearing nothing, Cavis eagerly looks inside the box but just as quickly pulls his head out. Horror-stricken, he gulps and displays a sign reading "IS THERE A DOCTOR IN THE HOUSE?".

Now covered in bandages, Millward winds up a female toy mouse which repeatedly says "come up and see me some time" (a quote from Mae West). Cavis, noticing the toy, hops with it. Millward attempts to lure Cavis into a tomato-sized pretend hotel which is named "cozy arms", the door of which leads into Millward's open mouth. Cavis ushers the toy mouse into the hotel first, which causes Millward to eat it (shattering his tooth in the process). After inspecting his ruined tooth in a mirror, Millward smashes it in rage and brutally tears the book to shreds, all the while hiccuping "come up and see me some time" since the toy's voice box is stuck in his throat.

Having gone mad with revenge, Millward attempts to blow away Cavis with dozens of explosives (TNT, gunpowder, dynamite and a massive block buster). When Millward ignites a piece of dynamite, it doesn't start the fuse enough, so he blows the fuse too hard. This causes the fuse to be fired immediately and the explosives erupt, killing Tom. Nothing but Cavis (who survived the explosion) and his room remains of the house while a fed-up Millward (who was seen by Cavis), now in spirit form, is seen on a cloud floating to heaven, repeatedly hiccuping "come up and see me some time" as the short irises out.