The Aristocats  The Aristocats is a 1970 American animated romantic adventure musical comedy film directed by Wolfgang Reitherman. It was produced by Walt Disney Productions and released by Buena Vista Distribution. The 20th Disney animated feature film, the film is based on a story by Tom McGowan and Tom Rowe, and revolves around a family of aristocratic cats, and how an alley cat acquaintance helps them after a butler has kidnapped them to gain his mistress's fortune which was intended to go to them. The film features the voices of Eva Gabor, Hermione Baddeley, Phil Harris, Dean Clark, Sterling Holloway, Scatman Crothers, and Roddy Maude-Roxby. In 1962, "The Aristocats" project began as an original script for a two-part live-action episode for "Walt Disney's Wonderful World of Color", developed by writers Tom McGowan and Tom Rowe and producer Harry Tytle. Following two years of re-writes, Walt Disney suggested the project would be more suitable for an animated film, and placed the project in turnaround as "The Jungle Book" advanced into production. When "The Jungle Book" was nearly complete, Disney appointed Ken Anderson to develop preliminary work on "The Aristocats", making it the last film project to be approved by Disney personally before his death in December 1966. "The Aristocats" was released on December 24, 1970 to positive reception and was a box office success. In Paris 1910, mother cat Duchess and her three kittens, Berlioz, Marie, and Toulouse, live with retired opera diva Madame Adelaide Bonfamille, and her English butler, Edgar. One day while preparing her will with lawyer Georges Hautecourt, Madame declares that her fortune will be left to her cats until their deaths, and thereafter to Edgar. Edgar hears this through a speaking tube and plots to eliminate the cats. He later sedates them by putting sleeping pills in a milk mixture intended for them, and drives them to the countryside to abandon them. There, he is ambushed by two hounds named Napoleon and Lafayette, losing his hat and umbrella, and the cats are stranded in the countryside, while Madame Adelaide, Roquefort the mouse and Frou-Frou the horse discover their absence. In the morning, Duchess meets an alley cat named Thomas O'Malley, who offers to guide her and the kittens to Paris. The group briefly hitchhikes in a milk truck before being chased out by the driver.