The Itchy & Scratchy Show is a segment or "side-show" featured on The Simpsons which usually appears as a portrayal of the fictional Krusty the Klown TV show, watched regularly by Bart and Lisa Simpson and other characters on the animated series. Itself an animated cartoon, The Itchy & Scratchy Show depicts an anthropomorphic blue mouse, Itchy (voiced by Dan Castellaneta) who mutilates an anthropomorphic black cat, Scratchy (voiced by Harry Shearer).
They first appeared in the Tracey Ullman Show short "The Bart Simpson Show", which originally aired November 20, 1988. Their first appearance in the regular series was There's No Disgrace Like Home.
Many consider Itchy and Scratchy to be a running gag of the original Tom and Jerry show, where the cat (Tom) would chase the mouse (Jerry) and the often violent scenes that would follow (though the later years of Tom and Jerry became child-friendly).
