Pete Puma: The Looney Tunes Mountain Lion Explained

Pete Puma is proof that a cartoon character can appear in a single short, lose every scene he is in, and still be remembered seventy years later.

He is a scraggly orange mountain lion with a mallet, a terrible plan, and one of the strangest voices in the entire Looney Tunes catalogue. He tried to eat a baby rabbit once, in 1952, and never quite recovered.

Almost everything memorable about him comes down to that voice and a single running gag about sugar lumps. He is not a major character, he has almost no story, and he beats himself over the head with a hammer until he passes out.

None of that has stopped generations of people from doing his laugh.

Character file: Pete Puma, a dim-witted mountain lion and occasional Bugs Bunny nemesis in the Looney Tunes shorts. First appeared in Rabbit’s Kin, released 15 November 1952, directed by Robert McKimson and written by Tedd Pierce. Voiced, uncredited, by Stan Freberg.

He Only Appeared in One Golden Age Cartoon

The single most surprising fact about Pete Puma is how little screen time built his reputation. He had exactly one classic-era appearance.

His only Golden Age short is Rabbit’s Kin, from 1952.
Robert McKimson directed it, with a script by Tedd Pierce.
In it, Pete tries to eat a small rabbit that Bugs has taken under his wing.
Bugs Bunny spends the short humiliating him with a series of tricks.

Why it stuck: plenty of one-shot Looney Tunes characters vanished without trace. Pete survived on the strength of a performance so odd it lodged in people’s memories, which is why he kept being brought back decades later despite having almost no history to draw on.

The Voice Is the Whole Character

Pete Puma is remembered almost entirely for how he sounds, and the voice is a specific piece of 1950s comedy history rather than an invention.

Stan Freberg performed the voice, though he went uncredited.
It is a slow, plodding, punch-drunk delivery, not a high-pitched one.
Every few lines break into a wheezy, inhaled chortle.
That laugh is the single most imitated thing about the character.

Where the voice comes from: Freberg based Pete on a comedy character created by Frank Fontaine. Fontaine played a happily befuddled dimwit named John L. C. Silvoney on Jack Benny’s radio show, then took the same character to television as Crazy Guggenheim on The Jackie Gleason Show. Pete Puma is that routine, dropped into a cartoon cat. Knowing the source turns a piece of animation nonsense into a snapshot of what American audiences found funny in 1952.

The How Many Lumps Gag

The scene everyone remembers is a tea party, and it is one of the cleanest running gags Robert McKimson ever staged.

Bugs offers Pete tea and asks how many lumps of sugar he wants.
Pete answers “three or four”, and Bugs clobbers him on the head with a mallet.
The blows raise matching lumps on Pete’s skull rather than sugar in a cup.
Pete never once catches on to the joke.

The capper: the gag builds to Pete taking the mallet himself and demanding “a whole lot of lumps”, then hammering his own head repeatedly while Bugs and the rabbit simply leave. A villain defeating himself more thoroughly than the hero ever could is pure McKimson, and it is the moment that sealed Pete’s reputation as the friendliest, most hopeless antagonist Bugs ever faced.

What He Looks Like

Pete’s design matches his voice, all shabby edges and misplaced confidence, and it reads clearly even in a crowd.

He is a large, scraggly orange or tan mountain lion.
His fur is unkempt and his frame is loose and gangly.
A permanent wide grin sits under half-lidded, none-too-bright eyes.
He towers over Bugs yet never once poses a real threat.

The design logic: everything about Pete signals a predator who should be dangerous and plainly is not. The size promises menace, the grin and the droopy eyes undercut it, and the mismatch is the joke before he even speaks. It is the same trick the studio used on Gossamer, where a monster’s size is set up only to be deflated.

The Drag Disguise Scene

Rabbit’s Kin has one more sequence that fans single out, and it is as strange as anything in the short.

Pete tries to grab the rabbit by disguising himself as its mother.
His costume is leaves for ears and a skirt with his tail poking out.
He keeps the same goofball voice and laugh throughout.
The disguise fools nobody for a second.

Worth knowing: where Bugs Bunny’s own drag disguises are always slick and convincing, Pete is deliberately the world’s worst at it, with leaves inelegantly stuck to his hat and lipstick smeared across his grin. The contrast is the point, and it is a good example of how the short lets Pete lose in every possible register.

The 45-Year Wait for a Second Short

Having made such an impression, Pete then did almost nothing for decades, which is part of why his return was notable.

He made no further theatrical shorts through the 1950s, 60s, 70s or 80s.
His second theatrical outing was Pullet Surprise, in 1997.
That short pairs him with Foghorn Leghorn instead of Bugs.
Stan Freberg returned to voice him again.

The long gap: forty-five years separated Pete’s first theatrical short from his second, and Freberg voiced both. There is also an odd footnote in between: Pete’s voice turned up in a 1960 Sylvester cartoon called Mouse and Garden, performed by someone other than Freberg, which is the rare case of the character appearing without the man who defined him.

Where He Turned Up Later

Between and after his two shorts, Pete became a reliable background player the studio could drop into almost anything.

He worked as the janitor at Acme Looniversity across Tiny Toon Adventures.
The crowd scenes of Space Jam in 1996 include him.
He turned up in Carrotblanca as a waiter and in later Christmas specials as a janitor again.
Freberg voiced most of these later appearances himself.

Worth knowing: the recurring janitor role is a nice piece of casting, since a hopeless character who cannot win a scene sits naturally in the background of someone else’s story. Our roundup of cat cartoon characters covers the wider feline corner of animation he belongs to.

The Looney Tunes Show Reinvented Him

The 2011 series is where the modern idea of Pete comes from, and it is a real departure from the 1952 original.

He is recast as a dim-witted friend of Daffy Duck rather than a Bugs villain.
John Kassir voiced this version.
He works a rotating series of odd jobs around town.
The menace is dropped entirely in favour of amiable stupidity.

Worth clearing up: a lot of write-ups describe Pete as Daffy’s dim friend who takes odd jobs, as if that were the whole character. That is only the 2011 series. The original Pete is a Bugs Bunny nemesis from a single 1952 short, and the two versions share little beyond a name and a build. He was also voiced by Jess Harnell as an intern to Foghorn Leghorn in Looney Tunes: Rabbits Run.

Frequently Asked Questions About Pete Puma

A few of the questions that come up most about this character.

What animal is Pete Puma? A mountain lion, also called a puma or cougar, drawn as a large scraggly orange cat.

Who voiced Pete Puma? Stan Freberg originated the voice, uncredited, in 1952 and returned for later appearances. John Kassir voiced him in The Looney Tunes Show.

What is Pete Puma’s catchphrase? His exchange over “how many lumps do you want?” is the line everyone remembers, capped by the moment he demands even more of them for himself.

How many cartoons was Pete Puma in? Only one during the classic era, Rabbit’s Kin in 1952. His second theatrical short, Pullet Surprise, did not arrive until 1997.