General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20266 min read

Weekend Pussy Hunt

Weekend Pussy Hunt is an American internet-only animated cartoon series created by John Kricfalusi, produced by his studio Spümcø, and starring the dog Dirty Dog and the cat Cigarettes the Cat, whom Dirty Dog relentlessly pursues.¹ Made in Macromedia's Flash format, it was one of the earliest web cartoons and is generally described as the second Flash web cartoon, after Kricfalusi's own The Goddamn George Liquor Program.² The series was intended to run for 14 episodes, but its host site, Icebox.com, went out of business with only 12 produced, leaving the story unfinished.²

Key fact	Detail
Creator	John Kricfalusi, creator of The Ren & Stimpy Show; produced by Spümcø¹^•³
Main characters	Dirty Dog, a "diabolical dog" chasing Cigarettes the Cat, who insulted him; George Liquor appears in a supporting role as Dirty Dog's master⁴
Format	Flash web cartoon, described as the second ever made, after The Goddamn George Liquor Program²
Style	A cat-and-dog serial styled as a throwback to the tension and suspense of 1930s film noir, with film noir opening credits⁴^•²
Run	Intended for 14 episodes; 12 were produced before Icebox.com folded²
Premiere	Unveiled July 22, 2000 at Comic Con International; premiered on Icebox.com on August 1, 2000⁵
Voice cast	Eddie Fitzgerald (Cigarettes, 9 episodes), Wil Branca (Dirty Dog, 6 episodes), John Kricfalusi (Dirty Dog, 4 episodes), Michael Pataki (George Liquor, 1 episode)⁶

Spoilers

Story and interactivity

The premise is a chase: George Liquor's new puppy is teased by a cat named Cigarettes, and the puppy is revealed to be Dirty Dog, a maniacal, non-stop killing machine; the story then turns into a dark film noir thriller compared by one writer to Night of the Hunter and Cape Fear.¹⁰ The serial is described as a throwback to the tension and suspense of 1930s film noir, and the opening credits are in film noir style.⁴^•²

Interactive design. The episodes used hypertextual resources to create interactivity, with instructional texts placed in the scenery telling the user what to do so the story could continue; the episodes were fully sound-tracked and voice-dubbed like a television cartoon.¹¹ While Icebox was live, the site also hosted small interactive Flash games tied to the series, including one in which the user could make Dirty Dog vomit and defecate at will.²

Development for MSN

The series began as a project for Microsoft Network (MSN). MSN initially approached Kricfalusi about producing online cartoons for its entertainment site, and the production company working on the project described it as billed "the world's first interactive web-based cartoon," slated for launch in late fall 1997, with 5 to 7 minute fully animated episodes built in Flash from Spümcø artwork.⁴^•⁷ MSN backed out of the deal, which Kricfalusi attributed to negative reactions from focus groups, and the network ultimately pulled out of being a content provider altogether; due to restructuring at MSN, the series, by then retitled the more consumer-friendly Comic Book, was unlikely ever to reach the net.⁴^•⁷

Production at Icebox

When Steve Stanford, an agent at the William Morris Agency who had funding to start an Internet cartoon network called Icebox, launched Icebox.com, he asked Kricfalusi to contribute a series, and Spümcø picked up Weekend Pussy Hunt where it had left off and began producing it in earnest.⁸ Kricfalusi unveiled the series at Comic Con International on July 22, 2000, and it premiered on the Icebox site on August 1, 2000; Garry Levine, president of Icebox, welcomed Kricfalusi as a "legend" whose style was distinctly different from the rest of the site's animation.⁵

The production used Spümcø's Flash optimization methods: while some studios simply scanned inked drawings and removed vector points to reduce file size, Spümcø's Flash cartoons were more elaborate than others' yet downloaded much faster because of how they were optimized.⁸ Annmarie Ashkar McCarty was the main animator and created the abstract title sequences, built by choosing a piece of music and moving shapes to it.⁸ Gabe Swarr served as assistant director on the series.⁹

Music

The series' music was mostly sourced from the Chappell production music library, according to a message board posting, in contrast to Ren and Stimpy, which drew mostly from the APM music library.² A production music wiki lists the library music as primarily from Associated Production Music (KPM Music, Selected Sound, Sonoton) and FirstCom Music (Chappell), along with a track from Langlois Filmusic, with named cues per episode such as "Crime Wave" by Robert Busby in episode 1 and "Blood In the Gutter" by Laurie Johnson in episode 12.¹²

Cancellation and afterlife

The series was intended to run for 14 episodes, but Icebox went out of business in what one commentator called the First Great Internet Crash, with only 12 episodes produced; the final act had been storyboarded but not animated due to the loss of the sponsor, and storyboards for the unfinished 13th episode later appeared on Jim Smith's blog.²^•¹³^•¹⁰ Episode counts vary across databases: IMDb lists 14 episodes,¹ while Plex and Simkl list 12,¹⁴^•¹⁵ and Gabe Swarr's resume credits the series with 13 episodes for Icebox.com.⁹

The series reached television indirectly: on April 15, 2001, episodes were scheduled to be shown on the premiere of MTV Downloaded, a showcase of webtoons hosted by Gimpy of the MTV series Undergrads, alongside web cartoons such as Happy Tree Friends and Angry Kid; after the 9 pm (ET/PT) broadcast, viewers could log on to mtv.com to watch, review, and rate each complete webisode.¹⁶ All 12 produced episodes later circulated on YouTube, and in 2012 a fan transfer edited the 12 original SWF episodes together as a single complete cartoon for the first time.²^•¹⁰ IMDb records the series with a 7.0/10 rating from 51 users and a TV-MA rating.¹

References

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026