The history of cat memes did not begin with a recommendation algorithm. Long before anyone could upload a kitten, photographers were already arranging cats into little human dramas. The internet gave an old enthusiasm much faster distribution—and a very generous supply of spelling mistakes.
This timeline follows some of the major milestones, from Victorian photographs to LOLcats, video remixes and AI-generated absurdity. It is a history of overlapping formats rather than a competition to identify the one cat that invented everything.
For the wider story beyond the feline department, start with our guide to internet meme history.
Table of Contents
- Before the internet: photographs and captions
- From personal sharing to a shared format
- Caturday, LOLcats and Cheezburger
- Keyboard Cat and the video remix
- Nyan Cat, Maru and different kinds of fame
- Grumpy Cat, Lil BUB and celebrity
- Short video and familiar sounds
- AI cats and the brainrot era
- Frequently asked questions
Before the Internet: Photographs and Captions
In the 1870s, Brighton photographer Harry Pointer made staged cat photographs known as the Brighton Cats. The surviving examples collected by Sussex PhotoHistory include small carte-de-visite photographs with humorous captions.
Calling them Victorian cat memes is a useful comparison, provided we remember the difference. These were physical photographic cards, not images being endlessly recaptioned on an online network. The resemblance lies in the joke: show a cat in a recognisable situation and invite a human reading of its expression.
Harry Whittier Frees later photographed animals dressed and posed in miniature scenes. The Library of Congress catalogue dates his Mischief Makers to 1915 and describes two kittens in dresses beside an overturned sewing basket.
The props have changed, but the basic temptation has not. Give a kitten a tiny domestic disaster and a viewer will supply the dialogue. Apparently we have been assigning cats household responsibilities for a very long time.
The Word “Meme” Came Later
Richard Dawkins introduced the term in his 1976 book The Selfish Gene, discussing cultural transmission through imitation. His chapter on memes concerns a broader idea than captioned internet pictures.
For an online cat meme, the useful emphasis is repetition and variation. A picture can be funny on its own; a meme gives people something recognisable to reuse, adapt or respond to.
From Personal Sharing to a Shared Format
It helps to separate a cat picture from a cat-meme format. “Here is my cat” introduces an animal. “Here is this familiar cat saying something about your Monday” invites an audience to recognise a pattern.
That distinction also explains why finding the first cat picture uploaded to the internet would not necessarily identify the first cat meme. Distribution, reuse and surviving evidence are different questions. Early posts can disappear; later reposts can become better known than their sources.
The lesson for a timeline is to be careful with firsts. A documented example gives us a useful marker. It does not automatically prove that nobody had tried anything similar before it.
Mid-2000s–2007: Caturday, LOLcats and Cheezburger
Know Your Meme’s Caturday archive places the Saturday cat-posting tradition on 4chan’s /b/ board in the mid-2000s. It records examples and related communities from that period, rather than naming a securely established individual inventor.
The recurring ritual helped make cat images into a shared activity. You were not merely finding a funny animal; you were contributing to a joke other people knew how to continue.
In early 2007, Eric Nakagawa and Kari Unebasami launched I Can Has Cheezburger?. A 2008 interview with the founders and Ben Huh describes the flood of submissions and Huh’s acquisition later in 2007. Unebasami belongs in that origin story alongside Nakagawa.
Why the Broken Grammar Worked
Lolspeak supplied a recognisable comic voice: unexpected plurals, deliberately awkward verbs and short, emphatic requests. The writing was part of the performance. A technically corrected LOLcat often loses the thing that makes it sound like a LOLcat.
That is also why captions could travel beyond the original photograph. Once readers understood the voice, a different cat could deliver a different complaint using the same comic language.
LOLcats became a major mainstream internet format. They were not the first online joke to reach a wider audience, and they did not need to be. Their particular achievement was making the format approachable: picture, caption, repeat. No expensive set, no professional cast, and a lead performer who had not agreed to any of this.
2007–2009: Keyboard Cat and the Video Remix
Keyboard Cat is a good example of why creation date and viral date should not be collapsed into one. Charlie Schmidt filmed Fatso in 1984 and uploaded the footage to YouTube in June 2007. In 2009, Brad O’Farrell reused it as a comic ending to another clip—the “play him off” format documented in the Keyboard Cat archive.
The cat appeared to play a keyboard because Schmidt manipulated his paws. The joke was a performance, not a discovery that orange tabbies had quietly mastered music theory.
The remix gave the footage a new function. It could dismiss a failed performance, close an awkward moment or provide a cheerful musical exit from somebody else’s disaster. The same few seconds became a reusable punchline.
That is a different kind of success from a popular standalone pet video. People were not only watching Fatso; they were using the clip to say something about other footage.
The 2010s: Nyan Cat, Maru and Different Kinds of Fame
Christopher Torres created the pixel animation that became Nyan Cat in 2011. In his interview about the character, he discusses the creation of the now-familiar flying pastry cat.
The April 2011 video combined that animation with a version of Nyanyanyanyanyanyanya!; the uploader was saraj00n. The result was animation and sound, not an unaltered cat photograph with a cartoon pasted around it.
Nyan Cat matters to this timeline because it makes an obvious point very cheerfully: a cat meme never had to contain a real cat. A rainbow-producing pixel pastry had already settled that question long before generative AI.
Maru and the Pleasure of a Recurring Character
Maru’s box videos offered a different attraction. Rather than one image available for endless captions, viewers could return to a familiar animal doing variations on a familiar thing.
Guinness’s account of Maru records more than 325 million views as of September 22, 2016, for his former most-viewed-animal-on-YouTube title. That recognition should not be moved back to 2012. Guinness reported his death at 18 in September 2025.
Maru represents the recurring channel as much as the remixable meme. The attraction was partly knowing who would appear next—and suspecting that the next box might be slightly too small.
Cat Videos Became a Public Event, Too
Will Braden’s Henri 2: Paw de Deux won the Golden Kitty audience award at the Walker Art Center’s Internet Cat Video Festival in 2012, as documented in the Henri archive. Its gloomy, black-and-white feline philosophy was another reminder that cat comedy could have a distinctive authored voice.
A cat staring into space can support both an existential monologue and the suspicion that dinner is late. The format is versatile.
2012–2019: Grumpy Cat, Lil BUB and Celebrity
Grumpy Cat’s official account dates her rise to 2012, when a photograph of her distinctive frown spread online. Her recognisable face became a recurring character rather than an anonymous reaction image.
That recognisability is what makes the business story interesting: an audience can seek out a named character across different appearances and products. It does not justify repeating an unsupported lifetime-earnings total. Fame is visible; the financial accounts are another matter.
Lil BUB’s story points toward another use of attention. Her official biography describes her rescue in Indiana in 2011, her need for special care and her death in December 2019. Lil BUB’s Big FUND carries on a mission of helping animals needing extra support.
These cats did not all represent the same thing. One familiar face might become a reaction, another a regular subject of affectionate updates, another a focus for charitable activity. “Internet-famous cat” covers several different relationships between an animal, an owner and an audience.
2020s: Short Video and Familiar Sounds
On short-video feeds, the sound can carry as much recognition as the animal. Viewers may know the musical cue before they know which cat will appear, and creators can use that expectation for timing.
“Chipi Chipi Chapa Chapa” is a useful example. The phrase comes from Dubidubidu by Chilean singer Christell, and became associated with a wave of remixes in late 2023. It is not a Hungarian song, and the format should not be assigned to one misidentified cat clip.
Looping, movement and a recognisable audio fragment make a compact joke. They do not replace every earlier format: still images, captions, GIFs and longer pet videos continue alongside them.
One non-feline correction is worth making here. Pesto at SEA LIFE Melbourne is a king penguin, not a Maine Coon. He is welcome in the broader history of internet animals, but the cat department cannot claim him simply because he is fluffy.
2024–2026: AI Cats and the Brainrot Era
Generative imagery adds another way to produce impossible animal scenes: cats in elaborate fictional stories, exaggerated hybrids and images designed around a visual punchline. What changes is the production process, not the existence of imaginary cats.
The wider Italian brainrot wave is not exclusively feline. Tralalero Tralala is associated with a shark in trainers. Tung Tung Tung Sahur has Indonesian origins and a wooden humanoid appearance. Neither is a cat-food hybrid with an Italian name.
Those distinctions help avoid treating every absurd AI character as the same story. Our earlier piece on Italian brainrot’s move into products and games looks at another part of that wider phenomenon.
The Useful Authenticity Question
A drawn cat and a photographed cat can both be funny. The important question is what the post asks the viewer to believe. An openly fictional animation does not make the same claim as a realistic clip presented as an actual rescue or an animal’s real experience.
AI therefore adds questions about origin and presentation, but it does not create the first non-real cat in meme history. Nyan Cat is still flying through the evidence, leaving a rainbow behind it.
Frequently Asked Questions
What Was the First Cat Meme?
There is no securely established single first across every definition. Pointer’s Victorian photographs are useful predecessors; Caturday is a later online tradition. Calling either one the proven beginning of all cat memes claims more than the surviving record supports.
When Did LOLcats Become Widely Known?
The mid-2000s were the key period, with I Can Has Cheezburger? launching in 2007. It helped bring an existing style of captioned cat humour to a much broader audience.
Was Nyan Cat a Real Cat?
The famous image is a pixel animation created by Christopher Torres. Its flying pastry body was never a photographic discovery, however much the internet might have wanted one.
Is Every Cat Video a Meme?
No. A video can simply document a pet. It becomes part of a meme when people recognise, repeat, adapt or use it as a shared reference. A viral video and a remixable format can overlap without being identical.
Why Do Cats Work So Well in Memes?
A small action can invite a large human interpretation: a stare becomes judgment, a pause becomes indecision, and an occupied box becomes a lifestyle statement. That does not prove cats dominate every platform, but it gives people plenty of material.
The technology keeps changing. Our willingness to look at a cat and invent its internal monologue seems rather more durable.
Choose a route through cat culture
- How a joke travels: picture-and-caption image macros, the looping Hampster Dance page, and the cat distribution system’s reusable phrase. These are different formats, not successive stages of one invention.
- The real animals behind the stories: Longcat’s owner and original photograph and Marty’s place in Nyan Cat’s history.
- From captions to evidence: whether cats recognise their names, why they knead, what purring can tell us, and why objects end up on the floor. The jokes are familiar; the research asks narrower questions.
