About

Cat Pap refers to a wholesome comic in which a person pets a black cat, with the cat asking for more pats. Starting in December 2019, the comic gained popularity as an object labeling meme on Reddit.

Origin

On April 4th, 2016, Tumblr user askfordoodles posted a four-panel comic in which a person pets a black cat. As the person begins to withdraw their hand, the cat grabs onto it and pulls its back towards its head with a "pap" sound (comic shown below).^[1] The post received over 379,000 likes and reblogs in three years.

Spread

On April 7th, 2017, Tumblr user nooodle07 redrew the comic, including two additional panels (shown below).^[2] The post received over 1,800 likes and reblogs in two years.

In the following years, askfordoodles' comic was widely circulated on social media. On August 2nd, 2019, Redditor ZombGames posted a pink version of the comic by an unknown author to /r/wholesomememes subreddit, gaining over 10,400 upvotes.^[3] On September 21st, 2019, Redditor Punkster13666 reposted the earliest known captioned meme based on the comic created by an unknown author.^[4] The post received over 34,500 upvotes (shown below, right).

Starting on October 3rd, 2019, Redditor Lazuli73 posted a series of memes based on the format, with the Ocrober 18th post scoring highest with 220 upvotes in /r/memes subreddit (shown below, left).^[5][6][7] and On December 6th, 2019, Redditor DictatorIsabella posted an object labeling meme based on the comic to /r/wholesomememes subreddit (shown below, center),^[8] gaining over 27,300 upvotes in one week. On the same day, Redditor IgDailystapler posted another meme based on the format to /r/memes, gaining over 32,400 upvotes (shown below, right).^[9]

In the following days, the format gained significant spread in memes on Reddit.

Various Examples

Template

Search Interest

External References