The cat in Tom and Jerry is Tom.
Tom is the feline half of the classic animated rivalry, opposite Jerry, the mouse. He is usually portrayed as a blue-gray domestic cat whose schemes to catch Jerry repeatedly collapse into elaborate slapstick disasters. Although Tom often acts as the aggressor, the cartoons regularly show him suffering the consequences of his own plans, and the relationship sometimes shifts from rivalry to cooperation.
The character’s first released appearance was in the 1940 short Puss Gets the Boot, where he was called Jasper. The mouse was also not yet consistently identified as Jerry. After the short’s success, MGM continued the series and renamed the cat Tom and the mouse Jerry. A studio contest selected those names, with animator John Carr receiving a prize for the winning suggestion.
Tom is sometimes called “Tom Cat” or “Thomas,” but “Tom” is the standard quiz answer. Sylvester belongs to Warner Bros.’ Looney Tunes, Garfield is Jim Davis’s comic-strip cat, and Felix is the star of an earlier animated franchise; none is the cat from this series.