A newspaperman jumps in the river to drown himself. He reappears as a cockroach, who finds he can still type by jumping up and down on the keys of a typewriter. He is in love with Mehitabel, the office cat. He writes poetry to her, and tries to keep her on the straight and narrow. Big Bill the Alley tom cat is Mehit's heart-throb, and Archy's nemesis. She has kittens, and archy declares war in a George Herriman sequence.