SYLVESTER THE CAT

Sylvester J. Pussycat, Sr., or simply, Sylvester the Cat, or Sylvester, or Puddy Tat (as in I tawt I taw a puddy tat, a sentence often repeated by his arch-nemesis Tweety Bird) or gringo pussy-gato (a sobriquet attached by another antagonist, Speedy Gonzales), is a fictional character, a three-time Academy Award-winning anthropomorphic tuxedo cat in the Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies repertory, often chasing Tweety Bird, Speedy Gonzales, or Hippety Hopper. The name "Sylvester" is a play on felis silvestris, the scientific name for the wild cat species (domestic cats like Sylvester, though, are actually felis catus). The character debuted in Friz Freleng's Life With Feathers (1945). Freleng's 1947 cartoon Tweetie Pie was the first pairing of Tweety with Sylvester, and the Bob Clampett-directed Kitty Kornered (1946) was Sylvester's first pairing with Porky Pig. Sylvester appeared in 96 cartoons in the golden age.
Sylvester was #33 on TV Guide's list of top 50 best cartoon characters, together with Tweety.

Naming:Until the mid 1960's many books called the house cat Felis sylvestris catus and asserted that it is a sub-species of the European Wildcat. But in the mid 1960's studies emerged correcting the lineage, so now the domestic cat is identified as a species by itself, being a descendent of Felis lybica - which in its own turn has recently been recognized as a species apart from Felis sylvestris.
In fact the picture is even more complex, since the classic distinction between species and sub-species used to depend on whether cross-breeding of animals of the two types produced fertile offspring. If it did, the animals were said to belong to sub-species within the same species. If not, they were recognized as being of separate species. If the distinction is made according to this test, then domestic cats and African Wildcats are both sub-species of the European Wildcat as all three can interbreed successfully and produce fertile offspring (cross breeding with feral domesticated cats is the greatest threat to the extant populations of several species of wild cats, including Felis sylvestris, Felis lybica and Felis chaus). In the last five decades genetic studies forced zoologists to abandon the classic distinction and adopt new tests based on gene analysis. According to these new test methods Felis sylvestris, Felis lybica and Felis catus (i.e. the European Wildcat, the African Wildcat and the Domestic Cat) belong to different, though very closely linked, species.
Sylvester the Cat was created in 1945, and the scientific knowledge prevalent at the time fully justified the claim made by his creators that he is named after the domestic cat's scientific name, Felis sylvestris. Over the years public relations outlets used by the studios made this claim regarding the naming of Sylvester common knowledge, immortalizing it despite the change in scientific taxonomy.
Incidentally, although the character was named Sylvester in later cartoon shorts (beginning with 1948's Scaredy Cat), he was called "Thomas" in his first appearance with Tweety Bird in Tweetie Pie. He was most likely called Thomas as a reference to rival MGM's Tom and Jerry where Tom's unseen (from the head-up) owner Mammy Two-Shoes would always call him Thomas as well; thus, the name had to be changed. Like Mammy Two-Shoes, the woman who owned Thomas could not be seen from the head-up. Coincidentally, WB now owns the Tom & Jerry cartoons as well (through Turner Entertainment).

Sylvester Junior son of Sylvester the cat.