About

Bongo Cat refers to an animation of a cat appearing to play the bongos that has been used in various remix videos to make it appear as though the cat is playing along to different songs. After the original video grew popular, people made different versions of the video showing the cat playing other instruments or a variant of the cat with muscular arms banging on the table.

Origin

On May 7th, 2018, Twitter user @DitzyFlama responded to Twitter user @StrayRogue's GIF of an animated cat slapping a table by posting a video in which he'd edited the GIF to include bongos and added the song "Athletic" from the Super Mario World soundtrack. The tweet gained over 3,800 retweets and 7,000 likes.

Spread

On May 14th, the clip was posted to YouTube by user anon eats crayons (shown below, left). On May 20th, user GarinBadger uploaded a version of the video that played for the entire duration of "Athletic," gaining over 61,000 views (shown below, right).

In the following months, remixes began appearing on YouTube that featured the cat playing other instruments. On June 7th, YouTube user Kirk Keely posted an edit in which the cat plays "Robot Rock" by Daft Punk on electric guitar (shown below, left). On September 8th, YouTuber BananaManPlays made a Running In the 90s parody of the animation, gaining over 41,000 views (shown below, right).

Around the same time, DitzyFlama began posting more versions of the meme, including a "Through the Fire and the Flames" edit (shown below, top) and a "Take On Me" edit (shown below, bottom).

Muscular Cat Variations

In April of 2022, comparative Bongo Cat memes using a template that has a muscular Bongo Cat representing one concept and a weaker Bongo Cat representing a similar concept. One of the earliest examples was posted in /r/memes^[1] by user ludicrosity548 on April 26th, 2022, gaining over 153,000 points in three days (shown below). The post was then crossposted to /r/MemeTemplatesOfficial^[2] that day, gaining over 3,000 points.^[2]

Other popular examples on Reddit include an April 28th post by ludicrosity548 that gained over 23,000 points in /r/memes^[3] (shown below, left). The same day, user elwl8 posted an example that gained over 98,000 points in /r/memes^[4] (shown below, right).

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References