Pepé Le Pew is an Academy Award-winning fictional character in the Warner Bros. Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies series of cartoons. A French anthropomorphic skunk that always strolls around in Paris in the springtime, when everyone's thoughts are of love, Pepé is constantly seeking "l'amour" of his own. However, he has two huge turnoffs to any prospective mates: his malodorous scent and the fact that he comes on too aggressively or with too much passion, to both of which he is cheerfully oblivious.

Normally, Pepé's romantic interests do include female skunks ("petite femme skunk"), but each episode invariably revolves around Pepé pursuing a "skunk", who, unbeknownst to him, is usually a hapless black cat(retroactively named Penelope Pussycat) who inadvertently has a white stripe painted down her back (sometimes on purpose, sometimes accidental). While Penelope sometimes reciprocates his amorous feelings, she runs away from him anyway due to his putrid odor.