Were the cats symbolic in this movie?

I always considered them soldiers of the tsar, harrassing the poor.

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They blew up Congress!!! HAHAHA!

I know exactly what you mean. I first saw it in the theater when I was about five, and watching it with my little tykes now I see that there is DEFINITELY a lot more symbolism going on in that movie than anything Disney is willing take on.

The whole thing about russian jews escaping oppression flew right over my little head back then. Also interesting is that other than the jewish immigrants escaping oppression are the italians and the irish, who also make up most of the turn of the century population in New York. So what is the symbol for oppression? Why, the cats.

Well, specifically, the cats symbolize power. The politics in the movie are as grim as they are in reality, and nearly all the cats are corrupt and self-serving. Save for Tiger, of course, who has the heart of a mouse himself...but he is quickly exiled from the cat's inner circle once he starts looking out for Feivel's best interests and befriending him.

Aside from that, part of the key I figured this out to was that the microcosm that the mice live out mimics the truth behind what the humans are doing in the same scenes. We all noticed this when we see giant humans coming off the boat and becoming citizens, the mice do the exact same thing. So the scene where we see Feivel sold into a sweatshop and it zooms out to see women working on sewing machines....well, that certainly made me think, "So is that a sweatshop those women are working in? They aren't there willingly and getting paid well?" That certainly didn't cross my mind as a kid.


...Or maybe people have a tendencies to seek out patterns in everything and I've gone too deep.