"Toss it Right in There!"

In DfN, the prop man places a kitten into a scene where the animal is expected to rush at a breakfast tray put outside a hotel room (at 0:52:23 on the Criterion DVD). Scriptwise, the animal is expected to start eating all scraps of food left on dishes on the tray.

After many takes in which the cat goes everywhere within the frame, except to the tray, the director gives the above order to the prop man.

Samuel Fuller's classic, "Pickup on South Street" - a film made 20 years earlier - showed the identical thing. A cat suddenly appears as if shot from a cannon horizontally into the frame of a scene in a back alley.

Fuller's slam-bang style of directing probably had him saying to a crew member to just toss the cat into the scene.

E pluribus unum