Penelope Pussycat



Penelope Pussycat, often shortened to just "Penelope", is a cat character from Looney Tunes. She is best known for being the love interest of Pepe Le Pew.

Name confusion
For many years, Penelope remained a nameless character, simply referred to as "the black cat." She was eventually given a name in the 1954 short, The Cat's Bah, where her owner referred to her as "Penelope." The name was later changed in the 1955 short, Two Scent's Worth, where she was identified as "Fifi." In the 1959 short, Really Scent, she was referred to as "Fabrette" (oincidentally, her mother's name is "Fifi") She remained without an official name for many years, up until Carrotblanca (a parody of Casablanca) was released in 1995. Her name was then canonized as "Penelope Pussycat," as many advertisements for the short credited her as "Penelope Pussycat in her first speaking role."

Character history and personality
Penelope Pussycat is best known as the often bewildered love interest of Looney Tunes' star-skunk, Pepé Le Pew. Penelope is a typical black and white pussycat, though by some means or another, she often finds herself with a white stripe down her back. She talks very seldom, and has a somewhat shy personality until she falls in love. When that happens and there is nothing to get in her way, she can be just as aggressively passionate and unstoppable as Pepe. Penelope is always on the lookout for romance, but it often comes paired with a disturbingly foul odor.

Role reversals
While she finds herself constantly being chased by the overly enthusiastic Pepè, their relationship is certainly not a one-sided attraction. In Looney Tunes episodes such as Little Beau Pepe, For Scent-imental Reasons, and Really Scent, she has been shown to harbor an equally powerful desire to chase, capture and smother Pepè in overwhelming amounts of passion and romance (much to Pepe's fright, as he, perhaps because of his accustom to being the chaser and not the chasee, has an ironic phobia of women trying to capture him). However, while she does find Pepè to be attractive, it is his smell that she cannot stand. Despite their differences, and a smell strong enough to kill plants where they stand, Penelope is very much in love with Pepè when given the proper opportunity to be with him. On many occasions, she will go to great lengths to separate Pepe from his odor, and in the moments where she succeeds, she easily turns the tables on him and amorously hunts him down with reckless abandon.

Filmography

 * For Scent-imental Reasons (1949)
 * Scent-imental Romeo (1951)
 * Little Beau Pepe (1952)
 * The Cats Bah (1954)
 * Past Perfumance (1955)
 * Two Scent's Worth (1955)
 * Heaven Scent (1956)
 * Touche and Go (1957)
 * Really Scent (1959)
 * Who Scent You? (1960)
 * A Scent of the Matterhorn (1961)
 * Louvre Come Back to Me! (1963)
 * Tiny Toon Adventures episode It's A Wonderful Tiny Toons Christmas Special (1992)-cameo
 * Carrotblanca (1995) - only speaking appearance
 * Space Jam (1996) - cameo as auditor
 * Tweety's High Flying Adventure (2000)
 * Looney Tunes: Back in Action (2003) - appears in a deleted scene
 * Bah, Humduck! A Looney Tunes Christmas (2006) - appears as customer
 * Loonatics Unleashed episode The Hunter (2007) - cameo as Otto The Odd's statue
 * The Looney Tunes Show (2012) - cameos in the Merrie Melodies entitled "Cock Of The Walk" and "Skunk Funk"
 * The Bugs Bunny/Roadrunner Movie (1979)

Cat sounds

 * "Le meow, le purr."
 * Le rowr, rowr!" (from Little Beau Pepe)
 * "Le pant, le pant, le heave, le pant, le pant..." (from A Scent Of The Matterhorn and Who Scent You)

Trivia

 * Despite the fact that Petunia Pig, Lola Bunny, Granny, Witch Hazel, Melissa Duck, and other female charater wear clothes, Penelope does not wear any herself.
 * She has a sister named "Jeanette" in Really Scent.
 * Her mother's name is Fifi (even though Penelope had the same name in Two Scent's Worth)
 * Her father's name is Pier
 * Most of the time, Penelope's purrs and meows were voiced by Mel Blanc using a feminine voice, with the exception of Really Scent, in which she was voiced by June Foray.