Lazy Dodsworth the Cat wants to catch a woodpecker for his breakfast. The woodpecker has built its home inside the upper trunk of a very tall tree, and Dodsworth puts on a professor's cap, pretending to be a passive teacher of bird-catching and thereby deceive an eager-to-learn kitten into doing the perilous ascending of the tree to try to catch the woodpecker. The true fact, is Dodsworth's schemes were deceptive and deceiving the kitten, throughout.