gotten A LOT of comments about this, but yes, puss did say "hasta la muerte" instead of quoting mort. I originally meant it as a bit of a joke, at least that part, but I totally see the cultural ignorance behind it. In a way, it's cool that so many people recognize this, and care so much about this culture. Anyway, won't happen again, my bad guys.

i actually think the reason why death is a wolf is because wolves are known being endurance hunters -- they basically run their prey to exhaustion. i think that serves as a parallel to the concept of death -- no one can outrun death, because death never stops chasing.

When Puss proves he has changed during the climax, Death angrily complaints "why the the hell did I play with my food?!" in Spanish before putting his sickles away. So yeah, I don't think Death planned for Puss to have a change of heart either

Death didn't want to 'literally' kill him. He was just a message and a reminder and played with Puss until he realised to not take life for granted and fight. Which is why he said "pick it up" to his weapon because he wants Puss to fight for his life. He easily had the chance to kill Puss in so many scenes.

There's a litany of reasons:

Also, as a fun detail, when he "rage quits" and says stuff in spanish He says "Why the hell did i play with my food" implying he also terrorized puss to put him in his place with fear and when he sees he isnt afraid of him anymore he doesnt see the arogant little legend who thinks hes immortal

I love the fact that Death kept wanting Puss to fight for his life during their first battle, him kicking his sword back to Puss felt like Death wanted Puss to fight, not cheat or run, for his life (which is what he kept doing throughout the whole movie until the final act), and that is such a really neat thought of mine.

He didn't call Death "Mort". It's spanish: Puss said "Hasta la muerte" (untill death), a play on "hasta la vista" (untill I see (you)).

Aesthetically, because the Big Bad Wolf imagery, figure generally seen as the most dreaded and foreboding fairy tale monster. In-universe, he’s diametrically opposed to cats for getting multiple chances when most only get one.

My reasons:

I think Death specifically took Puss's thing of "laughing at the face of death" personally.

I think an important scene to consider is also the cave one when one of puss's lives tells death that "hes cheating" and death replies with "shh don't tell". To me that tells that death has found Puss's existance so insulting that he personally wanted to put him in his place, of course there would have been more satisfaction for him to kill him while he was still afraid and prideful but when he changed he had to respect that and backed off. Death can also be seen as someone who will judge everyone at the end which is probably the "stare off" between puss and death happened at the end to signify that death is judging him again and has deemed him worthy of keeping his life.

At any point, Death could have killed Puss, but he gives him a fair fight. When he's disarmed, Death acknowledges that Puss actually values his life enough to fight for it, and gives him back the opportunity of a natural death.

3:28 puss doesn't call death anything, he just says "hasta la muerte", which is a play on words based from "hasta la vista" which means see you again or until we meet again, but he says it like see you in death, or until i die, meaning that the next time they'll meet again is when he dies

The writers said that they depicted death as a wolf because they drew inspiration from the Brothers Grimm for the movie and the Brother Grimm often depicted wolves as "the personification of fear".

Death comes quickly for those who fear it. Puss, realizing he was now one cataclysm (pun) away from true death now subconsciously feared something he previosly did not. This inadvertently called "Death" to hunt him and gave "Death" the knowledge of how to keep Puss in a state of absolute terror. The way "Death" comes for us all is unique and Puss's fear is what gave "Death" its physical manifestation of a wolf. This is the short version of why I personally believe "Death" in this movie is an antagonist/obstacle but not a villain.

fun fact: death's weapons, Shotels, are used to knock warriors off of mounts, usually horses. this means that death is literally and metaphorically there to knock puss off of his high horse

I noticed that The Wolf's Latin accent seems to get softer, sometimes to the point of dropping entirely, when he gets excited. That might imply that Death learned Spanish and put on an accent just for this occasion.

The Wolf is in fact teaching Puss a lesson. But he's having fun terrorizing him. It's not that his ultimate goal is to push him into character development, but rather that he wants respect. After all, puss can't run away from him. If he wanted, he could've easily killed him in the bar scene and be done with it. But he's toying around with him and showing up only whenever puss puts himself in danger. To remind him he should fear and respect Death.