Since the dawn of the green baize, there have been animals playing billiards:  Johnny “Scorpion” Archer. Alex “The Lion” Pagulayan. Jeanette “Black Widow” Lee. Horace “Groundhog” Godwin. Steve “The Whale” Melnyk. The zoological roll call of billiards monikers can go on and on.

But, nicknames aside, animals have throughout the years picked up the cue stick to entertain. For example, costumed monkeys were shooting pool in an uncredited film from the 1930s. Far stranger is the 1957 French film, The Secret of Magic Island, in which real rabbits play pool (along with a picture-snapping dog and a motorbike-riding frog). Mister Ed, that famous TV Palomino, pocketed a shot in the eponymous 1964 episode “Ed the Pool Player.”  Today, it seems every animal even wants its 15 fifteen minutes of fame; YouTube  is rife with homemade videos of dogs, cats, and squirrels shooting stick. 

Well, this billiards menagerie better make some room. In the television episodes and short film below, there’s an international vivarium of dogs, chickens, toads, badgers, weasels, pigs, tigers, wolves, and bears ready to pot some shots.

Mad Dogs

Throughout the UK – and splattered across the internet – are kitschy paintings of dogs playing pool in pubs. This canine camp provided the perfect inspiration for the creative trio at Gadzooks Animation. Released in 2019, their film Mad Dogs is a seven-minute, stop-motion, animated film in which a nonet of regional British dogs discuss the quintessentials of British culture while drinking beers and shooting pool in a pub. Mad Dogs was created in response to Article 50, an open invitation to artists, commissioned by Sky Arts, the British 24-hour television channel, to define who the British are as a nation. It is available to watch here. 

The pint-drinking pack includes an English Foxhound, Afghan Hound, West Highland Terrier, English Bulldog, Old English Sheepdog, Scottish Terrier, Welsh Terrier, English Bull Terrier, and a Welsh Corgi. Each speaks with a specific regional accent. The dogs’ personalities are wonderfully distinct, and the dialogue hits the right mix of pride and pretense. 

My only gripe with Mad Dogs is after the English Bull Terrier takes its shot and rips the baize! How this faux pas doesn’t incite the crowd to a heightened level of rabble-rousing rabidity is the real unanswered question.

Chicken Stew

Cartoon history is replete with famous rivalries: Roadrunner and Wile E. Coyote. Tweetie Pie and Sylvester the Cat. Bugs Bunny and Elmer Fudd.  To this list, add the chicken trio (Uncle Wattles, Free Range, and Small Fry) and weasel duo (Slim and Glutton) of the Chinese animation series Chicken Stew. 

First aired in 2009, Chicken Stew focuses on the weasels’ harebrained schemes in hapless pursuit of an elusive chicken dinner. In the 2011 episode “Blame It On Billiards,” available to watch (in Chinese) here, Uncle Wattles and Free Range are competing in a friendly, albeit dishonest, game of billiards. Tables are tilted, pockets are relocated, but it’s all in good fun, until Slim and Glutton try to weasel their way into the game. While their disguises work, their plans fall apart. Bombs go off, flying nunchaku come out, cue sticks are brandished, and poor ol’ Glutton gets a multi-billiard ball ass-whupping.¹

Wind in the Willows

Noone likes to be told he’s a “social calamity,” least of all Mr. Toad, whose failure to understand the game of bridge leads him to purchase a billiards table, “a game no gentleman’s residence should be without.”

That’s the setup for “Champion of the Baize,” the 1987, Season 3 episode of Wind in the Willows, a British stop-motion animated series based on Kenneth Grahame’s classic children’s novel of the same name. The full episode is available to watch here.

https://youtu.be/IPDY7TQv0KU

While this dapper amphibian certainly has the means to buy the table, Mr. Toad is too proud to admit he has no idea how to play the game. This leads to some fairly jovial banter with Mole and Rat, who attempt to explain what a rest is, how to chalk one’s cue (or “pole”), and why the object of the game is not to bounce the ball off as many “things” as possible.

But, when two weasel passersby hear the “sound of ivory on ivory,” they challenge Mr. Toad to a game of snooker, and that’s when his vainglory becomes more of a problem. Flattered by the weasels, Mr. Toad is hustled into wagering his motorcar, which he quickly loses to the more skillful opponent. However, in a scene reminiscent of the Fresh Prince episode “Banks Shot,” Mr. Toad’s elderly friend Badger requests a match, feigns ignorance about the required sequence to pot the snooker balls, and then proceeds to hustle the weasel in a 7-0 run, promptly winning back the auto. 

For all its British formality, “Champion of the Baize” is a wonderfully enjoyable television episode that shows a great appreciation for snooker. A considerable number of minutes is devoted to the matches, in which backspin features prominently and the shots are at least somewhat realistic in their execution.

Masha and the Bear

“That’s Your Cue” is a seven-minute billiards episode from the Russian animated television series Masha and the Bear. Join 11.6 million other viewers (!!) to watch the Season 3 episode on YouTube.

First aired in July 2018, “That’s Your Cue” begins with Whiskers n’ Stripes, a Siberian Tiger, visiting his circus friend, a retired Kamchatka brown bear, in the forest and surprising him with a billiards table.  They decide to hold a billiards tournament, and quickly enter the forest to source players.

While they’re gone, three-year-old Masha enters the bear’s house and innocently swaps the billiards balls with a set of numbered blocks. When the tiger and bear return, along with six additional competitors – a Himalayan black bear, two gray wolves, a she-bear, a cat, and Rosie the pig – they are startled to find the balls missing. But, the tiger is undeterred and convinces his furry brethren to improvise and use the blocks as balls instead.  

So begins the elimination tournament that ultimately ends with Rosie pocketing cubes one through seven in a single break and then sinking the eight-cube to beat his gargantuan opponent, the Himalayan bear. 

That rounds out our billiards animal kingdom. To the best of my knowledge, no animals were harmed in the shooting of these billiards sequences…though more than a few had their egos bruised.

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1. For other cartoon nemeses battling on the baize, check out Tom and Jerry (“Cue Ball Cat”) or Woody Woodpecker and Buzz Buzzard (“Cue the Pool Shark”).