Thomas O'Malley is and always has been the Best Disney Man because, although he is clearly attracted to and interested in Duchess throughout, it's never his primary motivation.
Sure, he's flirting with her when they first meet at the start, and she's clearly enjoying it (she's a sheltered pedigree cat, and a single mother with three kidsā chances are it's been a while). But then when the kids show up and he realises that she's probably not looking for casual relationships at the moment, she graciously gives him a way out.
She makes it absolutely clear that she doesn't blame him for being put off by the kids, or expect anything from him. They're both adults, they both want different things, and he doesn't owe her. There is nothing wrong with his initial impulse to wish them all good luck on their travels and then go back to whatever he was doing before.
Instead we get the "you're not a cat, you're a rat" moment, followed by him rushing back with an offer to guide them to Paris.
Pretty everything else he does in the film moving forward is motivated purely by the fact that he couldn't live with himself if he left this nice but clearly out of their depth family stranded like that. It's entirely selfless.
Later on, we have the roof scene. They've been travelling together for a while (alrightā pretty sure it's less than a day, but we're working with Disney Time here) and he's genuinely come to love and admire her. He makes another offerā this time he's willing to try for a more serious relationship, and be a father to her children.
She loves him, he loves her, but she's not willing to give up Madame. She's rejecting him, again, for reasons that he can't really understand ("you're just her housepet!") after he just poured his heart out to her.
And I feel like, in most other Disney films, this would be the part where we have the 'protagonists argue before the climax' moment. Like, this is his cue to point out all that he's done for her, and for her to point out that she never asked for it, and for him to storm off in a huff and leave them to go the rest of the way alone, only returning at the climax to save them all dramatically.
But that never happens, because Abraham De Lacey Giuseppe Casey Thomas O'Malley is a perfect gentleman, thank you very much.
He never had any Nice Guy-level assumptions about 'earning' her love when he made that offer to escort her to Paris, and he's not going to back out of it just because she rejected him. He may not understand her reasons for doing so, but he understands that she is as disappointed by how things turned out as he is, and he's not going to make things worse for her.
And then, at the end, he fucking moves in with her.
He fully respects that she's not willing/able to sacrifice her relationship with Madame, and so decides to sacrifice his own life as a street cat (despite his suspicions about humans) in order to be with her. You can see at the end that he's still getting used to his new situation, but he's fully prepared to try and make it work for her.
Seriously, Best Disney Guy hands down.
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