“I assume they’re referring primarily to some of the early ones where Tom’s owner was an Aunt Jemima-type woman.”
She was the maid.
The Obama Phone Lady is more of a stereotype than that maid was.
The cartoons sometimes have a red-headed Irish maid (don’t recall her name). It may have been a 1960s modification on the theatrical cartoons. I’ve “heard” that sometimes the old soundtrack got “married” to the new footage but I’ve never seen an instance of it on video.
Well, the couple I’ve seen didn’t indicate anybody else living there, so her being the maid would have had to be assumed.