Tom and Jerry - Suffering

Tom and Jerry is one of the most popular cartoon series to ever exist. Alongside Looney Tunes, it is safe to say almost everyone has heard of the cast of Tom and Jerry - especially the titular cat and mouse duo which made the show what it is.

I've watched every Tom and Jerry cartoon imaginable, even a few most people probably never even heard about - there is one episode however not even I have seen, an episode that was never aired. Now I bet you're asking "Well then, how do you even know about this episode?".

The answer is quite simple, my cousin claims to have seen it due to links with online piracy and so forth (which I can not condone but, hey, I can't very well control the actions of my cousin can I?).

The following story is what my cousin told me and to be frank you can take from it what you will... maybe he was making it up or maybe there was some truth in it... at any rate it will likely raise a few eyebrows, it sure did when I told it to my friends...

It began, my cousin claims, one night when he was on the computer - one of his friends sent him a pirated version of a supposedly unaired Tom and Jerry episode named "Suffering": my cousin was skeptical of this and played it expecting a hoax.

Instead what he got was the traditional Tom and Jerry intro, which cut to a red screen with the text Suffering printed in bold.

The screen faded to show Tom sitting alone in what appeared to be an abandoned house, looking rather ill and dejected - he just sat there for a few minutes in silence before he got to his feet and slowly made his way over to a nearby wall.

Tom stared at the mouse hole in the wall for a few more minutes as the camera shifted, zooming into the mouse hole and revealing Jerry in his little matchbox "bed" - the camera zooming in on the mouse, who lay motionless with his eyes closed as if asleep.

Jerry's fur was lighter than usual and everything was silent - in stark contrast to the usual chaos of the cartoon.

The camera once again zoomed out to show Tom standing outside the mouse hole, the cat suddenly breaking down on the spot as he cried bitterly and fell to his knees: banging on the wall repeatedly.

The camera zoomed back to Jerry, still laying in the little match-box bed: Tom banging on the wall outside as Jerry remained absolutely still.

The scene then faded to black and a message appeared reading:

"Life is fleeting and it is not until it is gone that friends truly understand... years of arguing come to an end... petty squabbling... pointless suffering... now it is too late... you had your chance... you are alone..."

My cousin claims that's where it ended and he felt a deep sense of despair in his heart which he says never really went away, even today he claims to feel that same sense of despair - as if someone or something had taken away his sense of meaning.

I asked my cousin to show me the episode but he said he wouldn't want me to feel the way he did and refused, in some ways that made me kind of doubtful at first... though now, looking back, I feel he genuinely didn't want to share whatever he experienced with me...

The rest I shall leave for you to decide.