Pun Salad

This 2010 movie was a 2011 Oscar nominee for Best Animated Feature, but lost out to Rango. What, Pixar didn't win that year? Oh right,… that was the year of Cars 2. That still hurts.

That cat in question is Dino, who lives a double life. He's the devoted pet of cute, mute Zoe during the day. But as Zoe sleeps, Dino heads out to assist cat burglar Nico. No news to us cat owners: they have no morality whatsoever.

Zoe is mute due to psychological problems stemming from the murder of her policeman father; the perpetrator is known to be the foul criminal Victor Costa. Zoe's mom, by coincidence, is Police Commissioner, and she's sworn to hunt Costa down. Costa, meanwhile, is plotting another caper.

Quelle Surprise, Zoe's efforts to discover where Dino goes at night leads her into trouble with Costa. Fortunately, he and his gang are, while menacing, also amusingly inept.

It's very short, 70 minutes according to IMDB. The animation, while interesting, is obviously lo-fi; they weren't working with a Pixar-size bankroll. This site claims the characters "resemble people from the paintings of Leger, Modigliani, Matisse, and Picasso" so I guess that's why the word "artsy" came into mind while I was watching.