Can you say…el gato?

Ahead of Dora the Explorer ’s 25th anniversary, the series’ creators Chris Gifford and Valerie Walsh Valdes revealed the loveable character was supposed to have a different concept — including being a talking cat.

“There were a couple of iterations before Dora was Dora,” Valdes told Today in an interview published on August 13. “She was Tess. She was almost a motion capture. She had a little mouse that was Boots that lived in her pocket. But there were some things that stayed the same throughout, like the essence of her character. We tried to hold on to that.”

The 59-year-old also noted the Nickelodeon icon was almost drawn as “a bunny, a little red-headed girl” and of course, “a cat.”

In addition, to the character itself, her ethnic

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