About

Cat Band is an Instagram video fad in which the participant pets a cat as if it were a musical instrument to a fitting audio track in the background.

Origin

On March 31st, 2014, Instagram user Julieamalone^[1] uploaded a video in which she strums the stomach of her cat like a string instrument with a guitar instrumental track playing in the background. In two weeks, the video has gained over 90 likes.

Spread

On April 2nd, the single topic Tumblr blog cat-band^[2] was launched with Julieamalone's cat-strumming video as its first featured post and an instruction on “How to Audition for #CatBand.” According to the guideline^[3]:

"1. Play a song that features a prominent instrument. TURN UP YOUR VOLUME. The more creative the instrument, the better.
2. Go get your cat
3. Play your cat (Please don’t hurt your cat. That would be super lame.)
4. Tag your Instagram videos with #CatBand and we will review your submissions. If you end up on the site, You’re in the band!

During the first half of April 2014, the band was joined by a keyboardist, guitarist, saxophonist, jazz trumpeter and violinist and the hashtag #catband^[4] was mentioned in at least 27 video posts on Instagram^[3] and 190 tweets on Twitter.^[4] On April 3rd, Buzzfeed^[5] published a post titled “People Playing Their Cats As Instruments Is The New Best Thing.” On April 13th, the fad was covered by The Daily Dot^[6] in a post titled “People are playing their cats like instruments for ‘Cat Band’.”

Notable Examples

Search Interest

External References