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Sylvester The Cat

Sylvester J. Pussycat Senior is an animated cat who appears in several Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies cartoons, often chasing Tweety Bird, Speedy Gonzales, or Hippety Hopper. The name "Sylvester" is a play on silvestris, the scientific name for the cat species. The character's prototype appeared in Bob Clampett's 1941 cartoon The Hep Cat who had no name, but resembled Sylvester (although without the lisp). The character got his permanent look in the 1945 short film Life With Feathers. In the 1947 cartoon Tweetie Pie (which was the both the first pairing of Tweety with Sylvester as well as the first Warner Bros. cartoon to win an Academy Award), Sylvester was called Thomas.

Sylvester's trademark was his sloppy, stridulating lisp (which, like Daffy Duck's, was based on producer Leon Schlesinger's). His sloppy voice was provided by voice acting legend Mel Blanc. Blanc reveals in his autobiography that Sylvester's voice and Daffy's were identical, but Daffy's was sped up in post-production. Sylvester's trademark exclamation is "Sufferin' succotash!", which is a minced oath/euphemism of "Suffering Savior".

Sylvester is an adorable tuxedo cat who shows much pride in himself, and never gives up. Despite (or perhaps because of) his pride and persistence, Sylvester was definitely on the "loser" side of the Looney Tunes winner/loser hierarchy. His character was basically that of Wile E. Coyote while he was chasing mice or birds. He shows a different character when paired with Porky Pig in explorations of spooky places, in which he doesn't speak as a scaredy cat. (In these cartoons, he basically plays the terrified Costello to Porky's oblivious Abbott). Sylvester's most developed role is as hapless mouse-catching instructor to his dubious son, Sylvester Junior, in which the "mouse" is a powerful baby kangaroo. His alternately confident and bewildered episodes bring his son to shame, while Sylvester himself is reduced to nervous breakdowns.