So far we don't have the squeaky clean Disney version of the "Cat Came Back." I'm sure the song will endure as long as children continue to respond favorably to this indestructable feline; I think they find it re-assuring that she always survives (too bad about all the other death and mayhem - trainload of passengers - but that's generally off-screen). My mother once did a children's book based on this song, facing many of the same questions that have been raised here as to which version to use, which verses, and which words, and fighting off an editor who was alarmed at what parents would think of the cat being taken up the river in a boat, and the boatman drowning (mother did change the "boy" to a "man"). Maybe I'll post my mother's resulting version. She didn't include the great Cisco Huston verse about the cat being placed in the orange crate on Rt. 66, came a ten ton truck with a twenty ton load, scattered pieces of the orange crate all down the road, BUT the cat came back...