Forums / Discussion / Meme Research

I have requested a change to that page to inclute information I found several years ago, and it is still not included. Accroding to it, Happy Cat was born in 2001 and apparently is still alive, I've uploaded some more photos of him in the gallery to preserve them in case original sites would go down.

My original post from two years ago:

The true origin of a Happy Cat was revealed thanks to blogspot user Corpuscula (post – http://corpuscula.blogspot.com/2010/07/blog-post_9590.html) and a person nicknamed Julia in that post.
Original photo was taken for a year 2002 calendar, and looked even funnier, thanks to a “sad cat” next to “happy cat” : (http://4.bp.blogspot.com/m0O2XlVi3Mc/TD8ZbaOdBiI/AAAAAAAACdo/l5D35tDd7L0/s1600/Solomatina_11.jpg)
Happy Cat’s actual name is Mishel. He was born in 15.07.2001 in Russian pet center “Туманный Альбион” (“Foggy Albion”) in Moscow. (http://www.tumalbion.ru/details.php?aid=3)
His photos, including the one,used for “Can i haz cheezburger” picture, can still be found in sites gallery : http://www.tumalbion.ru/boys/index4.htm. There is one particular photo, that proves photos origin: http://www.tumalbion.ru/boys/slides/bigman9.htm – on this picture Mishel is seen lying on the same couch, that is present on canonical picture.
Unofficial (web 1.0) site with lower quality photos of Mishel and that “sad cat” can be found here : http://tumalbion.narod.ru/, along with some other photos of cats on the same couch, including low quality group photo of Mishel, “sad cat” and two younger kitten (http://tumalbion.narod.ru/solomatina4.jpg).
He now lives happily with family that took him in somewhere in Moscow.

This cat is one of the oldest memes, and I really would like to have this information included in the main article.

I highly doubt all of this.

Well, all proofpics are there. The one with happy+sad cat is no doubt is the original one used for canonic picture, and both cats and the couch they are sitting at could be seen on other photos from the site. Both "sad" and Happy Cat are sen with small kittens on the same couch on one of the pics. What keeps you from believing it?

I suppose there isn't much proof to the original backstory. But how did it spread? The image came from a mysterious Russian website that no one has ever heard of, which Idid not see have a explicit use of date. But the said OP was Russian so not much else. Looking into this is necessary.

Um, everyone who downvoted the OP, did you even look into it?
The web 1.0 site dates back to 2006 at the earliest and claims the cat was born in 2001. While this definitely needs more research, I would consider this a solid lead.