The basic premise is the one that would become familiar to audiences; in The Art of Hanna-Barbera, Ted Sennett sums it up as "cat stalks and chases mouse in a frenzy of mayhem and slapstick violence".

The angry cat chases the mouse and accidentally bumps into a Greek pillar, where it breaks upon falling onto him along with the flowerpot that was standing on it.

The maid enters the room and scolds Jasper for his unacceptable behavior despite it being an accident, issuing him an ultimatum that if she catches him having broke something, he will get kicked out of the house.

The mouse flees the scene and dives into his hole just as the maid hits Jasper with a broom, throws him out of the house and slams the door shut.

Barbera then teamed with fellow Ising unit animator and director William Hanna and pitched new ideas, among them was the concept of two "equal characters who were always in conflict with each other".

[4] The short, Puss Gets the Boot, featured a cat named Jasper and an unnamed mouse,[5] and an African American housemaid.

Leonard Maltin described it as "very new and special [...] that was to change the course of MGM cartoon production" and established the successful Tom and Jerry formula of comical cat and mouse chases with slapstick gags.

[6][4] It was released onto the theatre circuit on February 10, 1940, and the pair, having been advised by management not to produce any more, focused on other cartoons including Gallopin' Gals (1940) and Officer Pooch (1941).

[7][3] A studio contest held to rename both characters was won by animator John Carr, who suggested Tom the cat and Jerry the mouse after the popular Christmastime cocktail, itself derived from the names of two characters in an 1821 stage play by William Moncrieff, an adaptation of 1821 Pierce Egan's book titled Life in London where the names originated, which was based on George Cruikshank's, Isaac Robert Cruikshank's, and Egan's own careers.