If you watched American television in the 1970s and 80s you probably do.

I did a little research on the 1970s Mary Tyler Moore show recently, since I uploaded a photo of her TV Land statue in Minneapolis. I was too young to care to watch the show when it was on, but I knew it was popular. Somehow I never tuned into the syndicated reruns later on, but I became an ardent follower of MTM's Hill Street Blues and St. Elsewhere. I was always amused to see the MTM studio mascot close out every episode of every show from that studio.

A cute parody of MGM's Leo the lion, an orange kitten would appear within a circular frame of ribbon and utter a single loud meow as the MTM logotype formed. (I have always suspected that this was inspired in part by the Tom and Jerry cartoons Chuck Jones produced for MGM in the 1960s where Tom meows fiercely in Leo's place.) Years ago I had already read in a book that the crew assigned to film the famous meow spent a day with a litter of homegrown kittens belonging to one of their families and barely got any usable footage. An editor smartly found a shot of a kitten yawning, ran it backwards and slowed down, and dubbed in the sound fX. The image first aired in 1970.

The thought struck me that that kitten probably lived until the mid or late eighties. Further research told me that the kitten was born in 1968 and the mascot's name was Mimsie or Mimsy, but couldn't say if that was the cat's real name. It did corroborate the notion that the cat lived its life in the household of an MTM staffer in California (some accounts claim Mimsie was Mary Tyler Moore's own pet) and passed away in 1988.

MTM rarely played with their mascot and logotype in their early years. One time Mary appeared in Mimsie's place to utter "Th-th-th-that's all, folks!" a la Porky Pig, and in a blooper reel they swapped out Mary's voice with the kitten's meow, followed by Mimsie uttering, "Bye!" in Mary's voice. Later on they started to have fun with it: a different cat dribbling an animated basketball at the close of The White Shadow, Mimsie wearing a policeman's cap on Hill Street Blues and O.R. scrubs and mask on St. Elsewhere. Mimsie meowed in Bob Newhart's voice at the end of Newhart. (Sorry, never watched that one either.) There were a few more amusing variants over the years, most notoriously on St. Elsewhere's final episode credits: in place of their usual still image of the O.R., an adult Mimsie is seen asleep within her circular frame, connected to intensive care equipment outside the frame, a heart monitor beeping away steadily. When the logotype appears the heart monitor flatlines with the accompanying sound effect. Mimsie "dies" and the series is over. (Click on "Goodnight, Mimsie :(" if it appears in the suggestions.) Mimsie in fact died sometime that year, and MTM itself was none too healthy by then anymore.



Through the 1990s, MTM Enterprises was bought and sold between various distributors until its library ended up property of FOX. FOX has since plastered its own logo over Mimsie in some places, obliterating the cute kitten. Knowing that, and realizing how many years it's been since I last saw Mimsie somehow deeply saddened me. Chuckles the clown wouldn't have liked that.