Sewer Horse/Basement Horse

About Sewer Horse

Originally known as Sewer Horse, this image started as a varant on the Ceiling Cat meme.
Although Ceiling Cat search traffic was well into it's second year, activity didn't peak until April of 2008. During interest peaks such as these, memetic instances tend to proliferate in high numbers, and as a result, we can see interest in Sewer Horse peak two months after Ceiling Cat began to wane.

By comparing "ceiling cat", "sewer horse", "basement cat", and Catnarok, we begin to develop a clear picture of the sequence of events.

Sept of 2007: queries for Catnarok first appear.
October of 2007: queries for Ceiling Cat spike, apparently due to Catnarok.
Interest in Ceiling Cat rises steeply beginning in February 2008, reaching it's pinnacle by April 2008. This same month, queries for Basement Cat appear.
June 2008: Sewer horse appears inexpicably, and in a manner seemingly unrelated to Catnarok, harkening back to the "exploitable" roots of the Ceiling Cat Meme.

Sewer Horse appears to be a "throwback" of sorts.

• The first mention of Sewer Horse in Urbandictionary.com was on May 15th, 2007, although the definition refers to a person, rather than the Sewer Horse that watches one masturbate; a definition which was posted on June 13th of 2008.

• Also on June 13th of 2008, Sewerhorse.com was privately registered.

• ED first wrote about Sewer Horse on January 14th, 2008.

• Sewer Horse appears on MuseumOfHoaxes.com on June 17th of 2008.

Amber Amputee and Basement Horse

On January 31st, 2009This picture of Myspace personality Amber Amputee with a photoshopped Sewer Horse, and titled simply WTF, made it to the Digg front page with over 27,000 Diggs. The name "Basement Horse" was coined in the comments section of the page by user seforbes.

Later that day, the short-lived basementhorse.blogspot.com was created.

On the same day, January 31st, 2009, basementhorse.com was registered by Australian, Wayne Whatford.

By early February, 2009, Buzzfeed user Sarah Hebard posted the same photo to Buzzfeed.com, with the title of Basement Horse.

Google Insights

The term "Sewer Horse" was first to peak in June of 2008, with searches for "Floor Horse" catching up by November of 2008. But "basement horse" peaked high above all the others in February of 2009; most likely due to Digger activity.