Speedycat

[ WARNING: The containt from the links provided in this entry can easily trigger epilespy, seizures or, at least, a very bad headhache. Be very careful when you visit those links ]

About

Speedycat is a lesser meme from the Lolcat family represented by a yellowish, supposedly female, drawn cat that can fly at the speed of light and, sometimes, at warp speed. Her only relation with Longcat is that she got her own sentence copied from that latter’s “long cat is looooooong” thing. Beside that, there’s not true relation between her and any cat meme. She’s not part of the Lolcat Bible either for there’s no mention of her anywhere in it.
However, ED’s article for Longcat states that Speedycat and Longcat are not only dating, but have had a child.

Origin

The meme came from one of IRC chatrooms named #4chan in the late months of 2005. One of them was nicknamed “Speedchat” or “Speedychat” because it was usually invaded by excessive spammers or by people typing too fast at the same time.
Then, upon hearing the “speedy cat” song from the Japanese group Y&Co, song wich was featured in the 2004 Beatmania IIDX 11 rythm game, an idea to create a new cat meme for 4chan started appearing and be put forwards. There was an appeal in the fact that this song was somewhat Engrishly badly sung coupled with the metaphor of a “speedy” cat which initially represented a woman car racer.

Initial Flash Animation

An anonymous user took the initiative and pushed the meme idea further by dedicating a whole website for a flash animation he made from it:

http://www.e-torque.net/ (initially e-torque.co.uk)

The flash animation depicts the yellow cat flying above the stars while the song is playing endlessly in the background and its lyrics are written above as well as below the animation in itself. Furthermore, Speedycat’s gif animations are travelling randomly from the right side of the webpage to the left side.
Ultimately, if you click on the moon appearing in the flash animation, the cat would hit “Warp Speed” in which it would be seen flying through bright flashing lights to a sped up version of the “Speedy cat” song.
The “Splendid like a fire” lyric from the song is often associated with the meme.

Blue = The song
Red = The meme in itself

Spread

First, the flash animation got featured in several websites:

• Dagobah.biz
• Photobucket
• Sheepa.org
• SWFchan

Urban Dictionary entries began to be made in November 2006

Speedycat makes a brief appearance in the original 4chan City by NCH and also in this Party Van flash animation.

Although the Speedycat meme is far less popular than any other cat meme instances, it got its own derivatives in the form of animated GIFs and some altered images:

It also got 3 YTMND occurances. There are really far from a fad of any sort, but do indicate that the meme reached YTMND:

• http://meowmeowlol.ytmnd.com/ by KKyuubi in November the 3rd 2006

• http://splendidlikeafire.ytmnd.com/ by superoven in February, the 11th 2007

• http://speedyshooris.ytmnd.com/ by MIKEMIKEMIKEMIK in September the 27th 2007

An Urban Dictionary entry began to show up in the late 2006, followed by another in the late 2008.

In April the 9th, 2007, a DeviantArt user by the name of “speedycatplz” created 3 different DeviantArt accounts:
http://speedycatplz.deviantart.com/
http://speedycatplz2.deviantart.com/
http://speedycatplz3.deviantart.com/

The three accounts contained nothing but a gallery of the main speedycat gif cut into 3 pieces. Besides, the user’s descritpion featured the lyrics from the “Speedy cat” song as an anthem as well as a link to another flash animation from http://www.e-torque.net/speedylong.html featuring both longcat and speedycat. (beware of epilepsy !)

It’s not really known if the purpose was to force the meme through the DeviantArt community but it kind of worked: Many image variations can be seen on DeviantArt

• DeviantArt’s speedy rabbit variation
• Speedycat Xmas edition (according to this flash list, the Xmas version was last modified in June 2006)