It is directed by Wolfgang Reitherman and written by Ken Anderson, Larry Clemmons, Eric Cleworth, Vance Gerry, Julius Svendsen, Frank Thomas and Ralph Wright.

The film features the voices of Phil Harris, Eva Gabor, Hermione Baddeley, Dean Clark, Sterling Holloway, Scatman Crothers, and Roddy Maude-Roxby.

[3][4][5] Longtime Disney collaborators Robert and Richard Sherman composed multiple songs for the film, though only two made it in the finished product.

In 1910, mother cat Duchess and her three kittens, Berlioz, Marie, and Toulouse, live in Paris with retired opera diva Madame Adelaide Bonfamille, and her English butler, Edgar.

While preparing her will with elderly lawyer Georges Hautecourt, Madame declares that her vast fortune will be first left to her cats, then revert to Edgar once they all pass away.

On December 9, 1961, Walt Disney suggested that Harry Tytle and Tom McGowan find some animal stories to adapt as a two-part live-action episode for the Wonderful World of Color television program.

By New Year's 1962, McGowan had found several stories including a children's book about a mother cat and her kittens set in New York City.

Following a rough storyline, the story became about two servants—a butler and a maid—who were in line to inherit a fortune of an eccentric mistress after the pet cats died and focused on their feeble and foolish attempts to eliminate the felines.

During the filming of Escapade in Florence (1962), McGowan brought Tytle the story that had been written by Tom Rowe, an American writer who was living in Paris.

On August 29, during their flight back to London, Disney told Tytle to purchase the story for a live-action theatrical film, with McGowan as director.

However, the project was temporarily shelved, and in August 1963, Tytle suggested that The Aristocats should be reworked into an animated feature, to which Disney agreed.

At Disney's recommendation, Tytle presented the project to Wolfgang Reitherman, who was directing The Jungle Book (1967), who agreed it would work as an animated film.

In November 1964, during a story meeting, Disney felt the cats should talk amongst themselves but never in front of the humans, in a similar approach as in One Hundred and One Dalmatians (1961).

[11] Because of the production delays, studio producer Bill Anderson advised Tytle to centralize his efforts on live action projects, and he was subsequently replaced by Winston Hibler.

[13] Reitherman assumed the producing duties, and later tossed out the more emotional story of Duchess's obsession to find human adopters befitting of her kittens' talents.

Furthermore, the character Elvira, the maid, who was intended to be voiced by Elsa Lanchester, was removed from the story placing Edgar as the central villain in order to better simplify the storyline.

"[13] Furthermore, Reitherman cast Eva Gabor as Duchess, remarking she had "the freshest femme voice we've ever had", and Sterling Holloway as Roquefort.

[20] Originally, O'Malley was going to be drawn with stripes to have him resemble a tabby cat, but this was dropped after Reitherman remembered the difficulty in animating Shere Khan in The Jungle Book.

While employed, the Sherman Brothers completed their work on the film, but they would not return to Disney until they were asked to compose songs for The Tigger Movie (2000).

"[27] The instrumental music was composed by George Bruns, who drew from his background with jazz bands in the 1940s and decided to feature the accordion-like musette for French flavor.

On August 21, 2015, in honor of the film's 45th anniversary, a new soundtrack was released as part of Walt Disney Records: The Legacy Collection.

In January 2000, Walt Disney Home Video launched the Gold Classic Collection, and The Aristocats was released on VHS and DVD on April 4, 2000.

[2] Howard Thompson of The New York Times praised the film as "grand fun all the way, nicely flavored with tunes, and topped with one of the funniest jam sessions ever by a bunch of scraggly Bohemians headed by one Scat Cat.

"[52] Charles Champlin of the Los Angeles Times wrote that the film "has a gentle good-natured charm which will delight the small-fry and their elders alike."

The website's consensus states, "Though The Aristocats is a mostly middling effort for Disney, it is redeemed by terrific work from its voice cast and some jazzy tunes.

"[60] On Metacritic, the film holds a weighted average score of 66 out of 100, based on 12 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews".

[61] In 2021, the film was one of several that Disney limited to viewers 7 years of age and older on their streaming service Disney+, stating that the character Shun Gon was a racist stereotype of East Asian people.

[66] Additionally, the story was meant to center around Marie, Duchess's daughter, who becomes smitten by another kitten aboard a luxury cruise ship.

[67] The project was cancelled when John Lasseter was named Disney's new chief creative officer, in which he called off all future sequels Disneytoon had planned and instead make original productions or spin-offs.