An American Tail

In 1885 Shostka, Russian Empire (a city that is today located in Ukraine), the Mousekewitzes are a Russian-Jewish family of mice who live with a human family named Moskowitz. While celebrating Hanukkah, Papa gives his hat to his son, Fievel, and tells him about the United States, a country in which he believes there are no cats. The celebration is interrupted when a battery of Cossacks ride through the village square in an anti-Semitic arson attack and their cats attack the village mice. The Moskowitz home, along with that of the Mousekewitzes, is destroyed, while Fievel narrowly escapes from the cats. They flee the village in search of a better life.

In Hamburg, Germany, the Mousekewitzes board a tramp steamer, setting sail for New York City. All the mice aboard are ecstatic at the prospect of going to America, believing that there are "no cats" there. During a thunderstorm on their journey, Fievel finds himself separated from his family and washed overboard. Thinking that he has died, they proceed to the city as planned, though they become depressed at his loss.

However, Fievel floats to New York in a bottle and, after a pep talk from a French pigeon named Henri, decides to look for his family. He encounters conman Warren T. Rat, who sells him to a sweatshop. He escapes with Tony Toponi, a street-smart Italian mouse, and they join up with Bridget, an Irish mouse trying to rouse her fellow mice to fight the cats. When a gang of them called the Mott Street Maulers attacks a mouse marketplace, the immigrant mice learn that the tales of a cat-free country are not true.

Bridget takes Fievel and Tony to see Honest John, a politician who knows the city's voting mice. However, he is unable to help Fievel search for his family, as they have not yet registered to vote.

Led by the rich Gussie Mausheimer, the mice hold a rally to decide what to do about the cats. Warren is extorting them all for protection that he never provides. No one knows what to do about it until Fievel whispers a plan to Gussie. Although his family also attends, they stand well in the back of the audience, and they are unable to recognize Fievel onstage with her.

The mice take over an abandoned museum on the Chelsea Piers and begin constructing their plan. On the day of launch, Fievel gets lost and stumbles upon Warren's lair. He discovers that he is actually a cat in disguise and the leader of the Maulers. They capture and imprison Fievel, but his guard is a reluctant member of the gang, a vegetarian tabby cat called Tiger, who becomes friends and frees him.

Fievel races back to the pier with the cats chasing after him and exposes Warren as a cat when Gussie orders the mice to release the secret weapon. A huge mechanical mouse, inspired by the bedtime tales Papa told Fievel of the "Giant Mouse of Minsk", chases Warren and his gang down the pier and into the water. A tramp steamer bound for Hong Kong picks them up on its anchor and carries them away. However, a pile of leaking kerosene cans has caused a torch lying on the ground to ignite the pier, and the mice are forced to flee when the fire department arrives to extinguish it.

During the fire, Fievel is once again separated from his family and ends up at an orphanage in an alley. Papa and Tanya overhear Bridget and Tony calling out to Fievel. Papa is sure that there is another "Fievel" somewhere, until Mama finds his hat. Meanwhile, Fievel ends up in Orphan's Alley, and is convinced by a trio of bullies that his family should be looking for him, not the other way around, and the reason why they haven't is because they don't care. Saddened by this, he cries himself to sleep.

Joined by Gussie, Tiger allows them to ride him. This allows them to find Fievel. Papa returns Fievel's hat, commenting that it now fits him, and he has grown up into a mouse. Henri ends the journey by taking everyone to see his newly completed project—the Statue of Liberty, which appears to smile and wink at Fievel and Tanya, and the Mouskewitzes' new life in the United States begins.