Have always been a big fan of animation, whether film, television or cartoons, and have always tried to appreciate all styles and decades of it. And with no intent of being biased towards and against studios and directors, sometimes it is not easy to do that but usually that is not an issue for me at all. Do not see any of that changing any time soon, it is just too special to me and watching it was and still is one of my ways of coping through difficult times.
My main reason in seeing the interesting but wildly uneven Terrytoons Studios output is to see as many of their available cartoons as possible, so completest sake really. That is also my main reason for seeing 'The Cat Came Back', as well as seeing Farmer Al Falfa return after being absent for a while and having found the 1944 Terrytoons output ranging generally between watchable to decent, not an exceptional standard but a more than passable one.
Of which 'The Cat Came Back' is one of the best of the 1944 cartoons in one of the studio's better years up to this point of its filmography. The premise admittedly is a very familiar one and the execution tends to lack freshness and comes over as predictable instead. There is signs of a story but it is, as is often the case for Terrytoons (although much worse in other cartoons of theirs), very slight and could have been tighter in pace at times.
Farmer Al Falfa's return was hardly wasted and it was in a way a welcome one. Didn't always find him the most likeable or interesting of characters early on, but he is amusing here in 'The Cat Came Back' in one of his better cartoons and the conflict with the hardly bland cat has the right amount of entertainment value and tension. There are numerous gags and they are well timed and amusing, some of the funnier ones of the 1944 Terrytoons cartoons. Managing to not overdo the premise and make it distasteful when it could easily have done that.
A big star here is the music score, hardly surprising as it was the most consistent best thing about even the lesser Terrytoons cartoons. It has the right amount of lushness and merriment with some tension in the mix too, adding a lot to the action and making it even better actually. The animation is colourful and neat with some affectionately done background detail, the studio at this point had come on leaps and bounds technically.
In conclusion, pretty good. 7/10