The Nine Lives of Fritz the Cat

In the 1970s Fritz is married, unemployed, and living with his wife Gabrielle and their son Ralphie. Gabrielle berates him for his irresponsibility while he smokes cannabis, and he retreats into a series of imagined lives. These drug-fueled fantasies become his escape from a stagnant real life.

In Fritz's first life, he visits his Puerto Rican friend Juan at his house and meets Juan's sister Chita. Chita, unsettled by the cannabis odor, is persuaded to smoke it and becomes aroused, leading to sex with Fritz. A pair of crows watches the scene until Chita's father bursts in and shoots Fritz dead, ending this life.

The violent interruption ends Fritz's first life as Chita's father shoots him. The watching crows drift away, ending their vigil on the doomed scene.

In his second life, Fritz meets a drunken bum who claims to be God. The encounter is surreal and serves as another surreal turn in his drug-fueled visions.

Fritz serves as a soldier in Nazi Germany and is involved in a ménage a trois with a commanding officer's wife and daughter, then escapes and becomes an orderly to Adolf Hitler. He later adopts the role of a therapist, analyzing Hitler and suggesting his world domination plans are really a bid for attention.

In a tense shower scene, Hitler tries to coerce Fritz into an act of rape by grabbing the soap and provoking him. The confrontation ends with Hitler being maimed—his testicle blown off—while Fritz survives this shocking moment.

Shortly after the chaotic events surrounding Hitler, Fritz is killed by an American tanker as the war rages around him, ending this life.

In this life, Fritz attempts to sell a used condom to a liquor store owner named Niki. Niki later learns that Fritz's wife caught gonorrhea from him, provoking anger. Fritz leaves the store boasting about his supposed 1930s prowess as a stud.

A psychedelic montage of old stock film and animation illustrates Fritz's downfall in the 1930s, showing him losing everything to partying and drinking. The sequence emphasizes his self-destruction and lack of responsibility.

Fritz tries to cash a welfare check with Morris, a Jewish toad who owns a pawn shop, offering a toilet seat in exchange. A playful turn leads Morris to accept the deal only after a sudden bout of diarrhea from pickles, and he instead gives Fritz a space helmet for his next fantasy.

Fritz envisions himself as a NASA astronaut preparing for the first mission to Mars. During an interview, he invites a crow reporter into the space shuttle for a sexual encounter, and the shuttle launches prematurely and explodes in space, ending this life.

Fritz witnesses Henry Kissinger depicted as a rat become president of New Africa, granting independence to New Jersey, now renamed New Africa. He works as a courier delivering a letter to the president in the Black House. The vice president assassinates the president and frames Fritz, igniting a war between America and New Africa. Kissinger declares unconditional surrender and Fritz is executed.

Fritz finds himself in the sewers of New York, where he meets an Indian guru and Lucifer personified as a purple cat with wings, horns, and a devil-like tail. Gabrielle snaps him out of the drug-induced reality and ejects him from the apartment to focus on his family. After glimpsing all his lives, Fritz declares this final life the worst and vows to become a responsible father and husband.