Snowball V, later renamed Snowball II, is the Simpsons’ fifth cat and is almost identical in appearance to Snowball II. In “I, (Annoyed Grunt)-Bot”, the Crazy Cat Lady throws a cat at Lisa while she is mourning the death of her other three cats that are killed in the episode. Lisa then tells the cat to leave, because any cat that she owns is unlucky and is certain to be killed. As the cat starts to cross Evergreen Terrace, a car driven by Gil Gunderson drives past.
As Gil swerves to avoid hitting the cat, his car hits a tree and bursts into flames, thereby giving him insurance compensation for his meals. Since the cat is intact and whole, Lisa takes it as a sign of good luck and adopts her. Lisa renames Snowball V “Snowball II” at the end of the episode, in her words “to save money on a new dish”, also promising to act as if the whole thing did not actually happen. Snowball V also is the focus of a subplot in the sixteenth season episode “The Seven-Beer Snitch”, in which she becomes overweight after abandoning the Simpsons for brief periods to visit a different family’ but she then goes back to live with the Simpson family.