Zoomates is an 8 minute animated short film by Seth MacFarlane and directed, storyboarded and produced by Butch Hartman. It aired on Nickelodeon's Oh Yeah! Cartoons in 1998 and Channel Frederator on February 28, 2007. The title is a parody of the word roommates.

A woman named Helen (Jennifer Love Hewitt), who works at the zoo, tells her boss Mr. Sutten (Dee Bradley Baker) that she doesn't think it's right for the animals to be trapped there, she argues that they should live in houses like humans. After a failed attempt at disposing of her with a trapdoor, Mr. Sutten gives her three animals, Mark the Polar Bear (Phil LaMarr), Paul the Alligator (S. Scott Bullock), and Warren the Ostrich (Phil LaMarr), and makes a deal - If she can take them home and prove they are able to conventionally live in a house like the average human, he will shut down the zoo and release them all.

Helen takes the animals back to her apartment for the night and leaves them with a manual on how to live there, telling them she'll check up on them again in the morning. The animals first find her washing machine and dryer, which Mark goes into assuming it's where he is supposed to bathe when the others question what it's for. When he comes out, he feels dizzy from the spinning and bumps into a shelf, knocking a bottle of floor wax onto the ground, causing the slippery wax to then spill across the floor and prevent them from being able to get up. Somebody then appears at the door, and upon trying to get over and answer it the three animals find they slip over every time. Mark tries to resolve the problem by kicking Paul and Warren across the room, but this causes disaster when they crash straight through the door and knock the man down the stairs. At the bottom the man tells them he had come to offer them spiritual enlightenment, which Paul declines, claiming he heard it's "high in sodium".

Seth Woobury MacFarlane (born October 26, 1973) is an American actor, voice actor, animator, screenwriter, comedian, producer, director and singer. He created the animated sitcom Family Guy and co-created American Dad! and The Cleveland Show, for which he also voices many of the shows' various characters.

A native of Kent, Connecticut, MacFarlane is a graduate of the Rhode Island School of Design, where he studied animation, earning a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree. He was an animator and writer for Hanna-Barbera for several television shows, including Johnny Bravo, Cow and Chicken, Dexter's Laboratory and I Am Weasel, before creating his own series for 20th Century Fox entitled Family Guy in 1999. MacFarlane went on to co-create American Dad! in 2005, and The Cleveland Show in 2009 for Fox. He also went on to serve as executive producer on the Fox sitcom The Winner.

As an actor, he has made guest appearances on shows such as Gilmore Girls, The War at Home and FlashForward. MacFarlane's interest in science fiction and fantasy has led to cameo and guest appearances on Star Trek: Enterprise and voicing the character of Johann Kraus in Guillermo del Toro's Hellboy II: The Golden Army. In 2008, he created his own YouTube series entitled Seth MacFarlane's Cavalcade of Cartoon Comedy. As a singer, MacFarlane has performed at several venues, including Carnegie Hall and the Royal Albert Hall.

Elmer Earl "Butch" Hartman IV (born January 10, 1965) is an American animator, executive producer, animation director, storyboard artist, voice actor, occasional singer, producer, and creator of the animated series The Fairly OddParents, Danny Phantom and T.U.F.F. Puppy. He heads the production company Billionfold, Inc., which produces the three aforementioned programs.

Hartman was born in Highland Park, Michigan to Elmer Earl Hartman III and Carol Davis. He received the nickname "Butch" as a youth and continues to use the name professionally as an adult. Hartman spent his childhood in Roseville, Michigan and his teen years in New Baltimore, Michigan. He graduated from Anchor Bay High School in New Baltimore in 1983. He subsequently attended the California Institute of the Arts in Valencia, California.

While still attending the California Institute of the Arts, Hartman received the chance to intern as an in-between animator on the Don Bluth film, An American Tail. Shortly after graduating for the California Institute of the Arts Hartman was hired as a character designer for the animated series My Little Pony. Instead, they had him working on storyboards (which he had not done before) and as quickly as he was hired, he was fired. Soon after Hartman found work with Ruby-Spears, where he worked on It's Punky Brewster and Dink, the Little Dinosaur. He was also a video reference crew for the Disney movie, Pocahontas. Later, he became a writer, television director and storyboard artist for several Hanna-Barbera shows, including Dexter's Laboratory, Johnny Bravo, Cow and Chicken, I Am Weasel and The PowerPuff Girls. After his contract with Hanna-Barbera finished up he went to work with former co-worker Fred Seibert on the Oh Yeah! Cartoons show.