The story about a cat stifled bydrudgery. Its adventures aroused Soviet bureaucrats’ suspicions, as the screenplay was seen as a multi-layered political pamphletabout the contrasts between the U.S. and the USSR. The film-makers were ordered to delete everything that was evenremotely militaristic. Thus, prisoners in the film became clowns, and a camouflage-wearing soldier, a cowboy. A manholecover attested to the presence of subtextual profundities. Above it, the adventure of the endless world of imagination awaits where one cancut through a blue stripe on a yellow car, so that the car falls to pieces, and then flee the scene with the militia hot on one’s heels, looking for someone to blame.