In General:

Cheetor (swinging_cat) is played by Zack, and is an energetic, reckless, typical "Hey watch this! :D" teenager, as far as Cybertronians go. He's from the Beast Wars series by Mainframe entertainment, and his alt form is an African cheetah.

    Cheetor is by far the most enthusiastic of the Axalon crew, and has been described by the show producers, no less as sort of the 'cheerleader' for the group. Cheetor is optimistic, idealistic, and good at getting himself in a whole lot of trouble. He's keen on proving himself to anyone he idolizes, as well as proving his worth to, well, the world in general. He takes insults (real or imagined) badly, and his usual response is to hare off on a mission to "prove" the insulter wrong. This tendency has landed him in a number of situations, including an energy-draining web and being stuck by his lonesome in the Predacon base with a bomb about to go off. This does not seem to have taught him much, yet.

    For all his impetuousness, Cheetor is a fairly good warrior and a good scout. His exceptional land speed makes scouting forays a breeze for him, and he's a pretty good shot with a quasar cannon, provided he isn't trying too hard or getting the drop pulled on him. He's playful and a showoff, uses weird slang that only he seems to understand, and is fiercely loyal to his team, especially Optimus Primal. He even tries to include Dinobot in stuff, for all that the recalcitrant former Pred doesn't seem to want anything to do with "fun".

    He also likes coconut milk and rock music.

Official Canon:

SPOILERS FOR BEAST WARS. ALTHOUGH GOD, IF YOU HAVEN'T WATCHED IT, GO OUT AND DO SO ALREADY.

As of the moment this is being typed, Cheetor is being played during season one of Beast Wars, somewhere between The Spark and The Trigger, and is slowly being advanced through canon. Beast Wars is set chronologically after G1 in the TF continuum: Megatron is finally defeated, the Great War ends, the Pax Cybertronia is signed, and everyone pretends to be hunky-dory as Decepticons are essentially turned into second class citizens (yay!). Finally able to concentrate resources on something other than warfare, the Cybertronians decide to downsize their forms in order to better conserve energon (presumably so they won't face a second fuel crisis). Thus, the Maximals and the Predacons are born--er, evolved. In addition to the downsizing, advances are made in alt-mode scanning technology, to the point where transformers can now scan the DNA of organic life forms in order to gain semi-organic alt forms. Vehicular alt modes remain largely popular on Cybertron, and organic alt modes are mostly used by exploration ships in order to blend in better with whatever local life forms are around.

    Enter the Maximal exploration ship Axalon, 300 Earth years after the Great War has ended. It's a new ship with a fairly green crew, manned by the Maximals Cheetor, Rhinox, Rattrap, and Optimus Primal, having just left Cybertron with a cargo bay full of protoform team members for another planet exploration. The Axalon is suddenly hailed by the Council of Maximal Elders: a Predacon ursurper, calling himself Megatron after the original leader of the Decepticons, has stolen a ship and a valuable golden disc from the Citadel. The stolen ship has a transwarp drive, allowing it to jump through time and space, and the Axalon is the only ship nearby with the same drive. They're ordered to follow and bring down Megatron.

    Of course, Megatron was smart enough to steal a battle ship, and the Axalon is severely outgunned. Nevertheless, the Maximals lock onto Megatron's transwarp signal and follow his ship as it jumps, only to be immediately attacked on the other side of the warp. A combination of Megatron's arrogance and a good shot with a plasma cannon damages the Predacon ship in turn, and both ships fall into the gravitational pull of a nearby planet -- the Maximals expelling the stasis pods full of protoforms into orbit so that they won't be damaged in the crash.

    The Maximals have no idea where or when they are, and the planet they've landed on is so rich in raw mineral energon that it's a threat to their circuitry in robot mode. All team members scan local organic life forms to protect themselves from energon radiation, and settle in for a long-haul battle against the Preds -- because if Megatron can harvest enough energon and return to Cybertron with it, the planet won't stand a chance. On top of that, the Maximals' stasis pods start falling out of orbit, and the Preds are pretty keen on getting to them first . . .

    (Turns out that they're actually on prehistoric Earth, within their own history -- humans haven't evolved yet, and Optimus Prime and the first Megatron are still in the middle of their 4 million year wait under Mount St. Helens (or a random volcano in Oregon, depending on who you ask). The golden disc was  actually from the human Voyager probe, and supposedly revealed the location of a "great source of energon", which is why Megatron stole it. Later he decides he'd rather change his mind and revamp history by blowing off Optimus Prime's head. Go figure. And I'm not even getting into the Vok.)

Head Canon:

Cheetor was a typical racing kid on Cybertron before he decided he wanted to do something more interesting with his life, and he signed on for space exploration with the Axalon crew..

Game Canon:

Pertinent Links:

TF Plot Page

20 Things You Didn't Know About Cheetor

FMVs!