The Cat as a Mascot
Sport Teams and Businesses Alike Use Cats to Promote Themselves
Kate Preston
Cats are said to have nine lives because they survive so much that humans could not. The idea of a cat arriving fierce, alive and unscathed through extremes of stress and danger is embodied in the mascots adopted by a broad variety of entities – from athletic team to museum, to movie studio to cereal. Even a railroad car or a bridge can have a mascot.
Domestic Cats
Some of the smallest mascots include Karla Kick, a cartoon character with a soccer-player’s body and a simple orange cat head that served as mascot for England’s national female soccer team in 2011. A decade or so later, Dave the Cat – a stray brown tabby with white nose, paws, and throat – was adopted by English soldiers stationed at Al Wakrah in Qatar. Dave became England’s unlikely mascot in the World Cup for soccer held in Qatar in 2022. Rehomed in England, Dave appears a masterful feline, aplomb personified.
Then there is Chessie, the instantly recognizable sleeping kitty, snuggled under a blanket, representing the finest comfort the Chesapeake/B&O railroad has to offer.
Another charmer, a tiny orange kitten, almost missed his chance for fame as the mascot of a massive construction project. In late 2021, Shannon Meeks, a construction manager for the Gordie Howe International Bridge project (connecting Windsor, Ontario and Detroit, Michigan across the Detroit River), found a tiny, cold and weak kitten in a gutter near the U.S. Port of Entry. The project’s quality manager, Emily Brown (a cat lover), then brought the kitten back from the edge of oblivion, to the delight of many others on the bridge project’s crew. His name? Gordie, of course, an adorable, minuscule mascot for the very large bridge scheduled to open in September 2025.
And a wee mascot with a remarkably similar name, “Geordie,” has done a fine job encouraging the Fife Flyers, the oldest professional ice hockey team in the United Kingdom at nearly 100 years old.
The Big Cats
The popularity of various big cats as symbols and mascots is confirmed in an article published by World’s Best Cat Litter.1 It notes that five of the biggest cats dominate as mascots for major athletic teams: Nineteen of those teams chose tigers; sixteen chose lions; twelve, cougars; eleven, panthers; and eleven teams chose wildcats. Another published study using only football mascots found these supersized kitties in order of popularity: (1) tiger (2) wildcat (3) panther (4) cougar and (5) bobcat.2
Tigers as Mascots
In major college football, five teams (3.8 percent of all programs) are named “Tigers.” Four of those schools — Clemson, Auburn, Missouri, and Louisiana State (LSU) — decided to try to help actual tigers, whose wild population had declined significantly from poaching and loss of their natural habitat. Brett Wright, Dean of Clemson’s Behavioral Sciences, stated, “Students, faculty and alumni chant ‘Go Tigers!’ on a daily basis, but not many know the truth about the animal we hold so dear.”3
The schools’ collaboration cited the Global Tiger Forum, which estimated that fewer than 4,000 tigers were living in the wild from the 100,000 that existed before hunting and habitat issues decimated them. Some groups now show numbers slightly over 5,500.
One of the teams (LSU) in the new consortium maintained for years a live tiger mascot named Mike that ranged the football stadium during games. Though his current successor, Mike VII (a handsome Siberian mix), will never appear on the field, he lives in a tiger sanctuary made exclusively for him, and is cared for by veterinarians from LSU’s prestigious veterinary school.
Tigers, of course, have been mascots for more than just football. They are represented in baseball – the Detroit Tigers – and even in cereal. Tony the Tiger, a user-friendly version of this apex predator, maintains that Kellogg’s Frosted Flakes are “GR-R-REAT!”
Lions as Mascots
Detroit also has a massively-maned African lion mascot (“Roary”) for football. Penn State’s Nittany Lion, one of the oldest mascots around, is actually an eastern mountain lion, whose mane has been replaced by a flying scarf of Penn State’s blue and white colors.
A truly famous lion, Leo, is the MGM Studio representative on the silver screen. Since the early days of Hollywood, this roaring symbol of the power of film has introduced countless movies that have made history, and cemented the reputations of some actors and directors, too.
Lions often represent greatness, such as the lions rampant on the coat of arms of English royalty or the lavish oriental lions in the Chinese Lion Dance. Even Coca-Cola has used a lion to advertise its product in a 1953 cartoon film showing a mouse and a lion as adversaries making up over shared Cokes.
Bronze, rather than celluloid, provides the matrix for celebrating the symbolic power and magnificence of lions in some landmark locations, such as the Louvre Museum in Paris, where seated lions guard the major museum entrance, and thousands of visitors weekly pass their watchful gaze. This pair has a complementary set of twin stone lions, instantly recognizable at the entrance to the New York Public Library. Viewing the sculptured muscling of these works of art, it is no wonder that sports teams would choose this emblem of quietly leashed power for a mascot.
Then there is the Winged Lion of Darius’ Palace in Susa, Babylon (Louvre, Paris), dating back to c. 6th Century BC, which joins the strength of the lion with the wild freedom of wings. No one today can be sure what this fantastic creature meant to the Babylonians, but clearly lions represented an important element of their culture. And of course, the ancient Egyptians had a very devout view of felines, and believed cats could protect homes from evil spirits (as well as less ethereal creatures such as rats), so to kill a cat in Egypt was to risk punishment by death. This certainly should enlighten us about the significance of the lion’s body on the Sphynx, that inscrutable emblem of a once vast empire.
Cougars as Mascots
Washington State and the University of Houston both have teams named “Cougars,” and cougars as mascots are even more popular in USA high schools than in colleges. Native to The Americas, cougars (at c. 200 lbs.) are smaller than either lions (400-500 lbs.) or panthers (c. 300 lbs.), but are great mascots for competitive teams because they have an interesting anomaly: larger hind paws than either lions or panthers, which gives them excellent traction!
Among the collegiate level schools taking advantage of the cougars’ athleticism is Brigham Young University (BYU). In 1956, a Utah student, Peggy Mortensen, performed as “Cosmo the Cougar,” but there have also been live cougars periodically at the games since 1924, when the university bought two cubs for 50 cents each. Cougars are native to Utah, so there has been no difficulty acquiring live mascots. The current kitty, “Shasta,” was rescued by a rancher and bought by the university.
Panthers as Mascots
Over a thousand high schools flaunt panthers as their mascot, and since panthers are known for being very fast, any sports teams with a panther mascot have to be swift-footed. These cats are known for a truly terrifying roar and, as a member of the jaguar family, they are also excellent swimmers. Playing a game in a flooding downpour gives the edge to panther teams.
One striking example is the Carolina Panthers’ “Sir Purr,” who has his own Facebook page and, at eight feet tall, lives up to the reputation of panthers as being larger than cougars. He is often shown, however, with blue eyes – not the bright green eyes that are a distinct feature of real live panthers, as is the black coat. There is even wallpaper available with the Carolina Panther picturing a ferocious fanged creature set in lightning bolts – appropriate for the shocking speed of a panther.
A variety of sports have these fearsome mascots, among them rugby (Penrith Panthers), and hockey (Florida Panthers). Some schools, like the University of Pittsburgh, use their mascot, the Pittsburg Panthers, for all athletics, including basketball, football, women’s volleyball, track and field, baseball, and myriad others. Georgia State offers a range of sports, including tennis, golf, and soccer, featuring Pounce the Panther; and the University of Wisconsin’s Milwaukee Panthers does the same with several intercollegiate teams. The Jacksonville Jaguars showcase “Jaxson de Ville,” who, being in Florida, naturally wears shorts and sunglasses as he romps the field for the professional football team.
What About Cheetahs and Bobcats?
Though panthers are among the scariest of the big cats due to their size, stealth, and speed, the speed record belongs to cheetahs. In spite of being among the fastest animals on earth, cheetahs are not as popular as sports mascots. However, Chester Cheetah (a fictional creature) is the official mascot for Frito-Lay’s Cheetos brand snacks! So we should ask ourselves, “Just how swiftly is this snack gone?”
Finally, after examining the array of cats that can represent almost anything or anyone, we come to a small mystery. Why is it that the professional Arizona Diamondbacks baseball team has as a mascot not a rattlesnake, but a cheeky bobcat nicknamed … BOB?
Perhaps this purring kitten in my lap can answer that question.
References:
- “The Best Cat Mascots in Professional and Collegiate Sports” World’s Best Cat Litter, Dec. 17, 2019. Accessed 2/3/25
- Harris, Janie. Infographic: Five Most Popular Cat Mascotscom. Oct. 29, 2016 Accessed 2/9/2025
- Kirshner, Alex. A Bunch of Colleges with Tiger Mascots Are Teaming up to Save Actual Tigers. SB Nation, July 19, 2017. Accessed online 2/8/25