Mouse Cleaning is a 1948 one-reel animated cartoon and the 38th Tom and Jerry short. The title is a play on "house cleaning". It was produced in Technicolor and released to theatres on December 11, 1948, by Metro-Goldwyn Mayer and again on February 17, 1956. It was animated by Ray Patterson, Irven Spence, Kenneth Muse and Ed Barge, who were the usual animators for the Tom and Jerry cartoons in the early 1940s up until the late 1950s. It was directed by William Hanna and Joseph Barbera, and produced by Fred Quimby; no writer has yet been credited (though many suppose it was Hanna and Barbera). The music was scored by Scott Bradley and the backgrounds were created by Robert Gentle.