Snowball in Vegas cat

A ten-foot cat head with its tongue at human height is the opening stop on the Las Vegas Art Trail. Snowball in Vegas stands at the corner of First Street and Coolidge Avenue in the Arts District, a sculpture by Las Vegas artist Jesse Carson Smigel that the city commissioned in 2014. A City of Las Vegas post on July 14, 2026 reported that it had recently been refurbished and described it as the first stop along the trail.

According to Roadside America, which interviewed Smigel, the artist first proposed a nine-foot tardigrade in a top hat for the then-new First Street Art Trail, but the city did not take to it, so he built a giant cat head instead. It was unveiled on October 14, 2014, and named after the first family cat he remembered from childhood, a white cat; Smigel gave the sculpture an orangish tabby colour. He told Roadside America the tongue was placed at human level so visitors could lean into it and pose as if being groomed, though most people instead photograph themselves facing the cat, sometimes sticking out their own tongues.