Stealing a Dinner (1899)
Article 5638 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 2-24-2019
Director unknown
Cast unknown
Country: USA
What it is: Trained animal antics

A dog steals a man’s dinner and frames a cat for the crime.

From what I see here, I’m guessing that this film is a recreation of a trained animal act on the vaudeville circuit; the AMB catalogue refers to a certain Professor Leonidas and his trained cats and dogs. The fantastic content comes toward the end of the short, which implies that dogs have a police force; at least, that’s how I interpret the dog in the police costume who appears at the climax. It’s probably funnier seen live; in this short, the action is a bit too frantic and abrupt to be really funny.