That F***ing Cat

About

That Fucking Cat, also know Cover-Tom, is an exploitable image and response image originating from 4chan, showing a picture of popular cartoon character Tom from Tom and Jerry leaning out from behind a construction site girder and smirking. It stands out as one of the few succesful forced meme’s.

Origin

The original Tom expression comes from the 1965 Chuck Jones-era Tom and Jerry short, Bad Day at Cat Rock, as can be seen at 0:34 in the above video. Despite the short taking place in a construction site, this specific moment was not actually set near any of the girders, instead having Tom lean out from behind a tree, suggesting the popular image was in fact photoshopped with some other shot elsewhere in the cartoon.

The meme originated after a 4chan user frequently spammed the /b/ board with the same plain image of Tom for a number of days, causing much anger and frustration to the users, to the point where any sight of the picture would result in shouts of “IF I SEE THAT FUCKING CAT ONE MORE TIME”.

Another popular response to the picture is to post a photo of US congressman Tom Delay with a similarily condescending smirk on his face, an image which itself has become a popular subject for parody.

Spread

According to Google Insights for Search, interest in “That Fucking Cat” first appeared in November of 2005. As evidence of the growing popularity of the meme, Cover-Tom managed to get both the 9.2 and 9.3 millionth posts on the /b/ thread.

On March 28th, 2009, Newgrounds user KevnSevn uploaded That Fucking Cat Dress-Up Flash game^[1].

The earliest mention of Cover Tom on Dramatica dates back to October 7th, 2007^[2].

External Links

^[1]Newgrounds – That Fucking Cat Dress Up

^[2]Enycylopedia Dramtica – That Fucking Cat

^[3]Lurkmore – Cover-Tom