Cat Pervert

About

Cat Pervert or Couple Upset That Their Cat Likes The Neighbors is a viral video of a man accusing his neighbor of "harboring" his cat by letting the cat wander onto his yard, at one point repeatedly calling him a "cat pervert." The video was posted to YouTube by ViralHog in late June 2023 and gained viral spread over the following days, with the phrase "cat pervert" trending on Twitter in Canada and the United States in mid-July, inspiring memes and reactions.

Origin

On June 30th, 2023, YouTuber^[1] ViralHog posted a video titled "Couple Upset That Their Cat Likes The Neighbors" (shown below). The video depicts a couple yelling at their neighbor, who is filming, for letting their cat wander onto his lawn. The man calls the neighbor "unreasonable" and says he's "holding" their cat, which he claims he is not. The man then asks the neighbor to tell the cat, Mercury, to go home, but the neighbor insists the cat doesn't know English. The man then starts calling the neighbor a "cat pervert" and accusing him of harboring their cat. The description of the video, which claims the incident took place on June 24th in San Diego, California, gives further insight into the argument (shown below the video). The video gained over 8,000 views in two weeks.

"My neighbors have a very friendly outdoor cat that likes to hang out in my yard. The cat is free to come and go as it pleases. For some reason, they don’t like that, and decided it’s my job to tell the cat where and where not to go. Before I started recording, they said I was 'manipulating' the cat by 'befriending' it. They did end up calling the police after I stopped recording, but the police almost immediately hung up on them. The cat was right back in my yard the next morning."

Spread

The video spread over the following days. On July 1st, 2023, the Daily Mail Facebook^[2] page posted it, garnering over 14,000 reactions, 1,900 shares and 812,000 views in two weeks. On July 12th, Twitter^[3] user @detectclips posted the video, garnering over 44,400 likes and 10,000 retweets in a day. That day, it was also posted to /r/ThatsInsane,^[4] garnering over 20,500 upvotes in a day. The term "cat pervert" was trending on Twitter in the United States and Canada on July 12th and 13th.^[5][6] The video inspired numerous reactions and memes on Twitter^[7][8] that day (examples shown below).

On July 13th, Twitter^[9] user @rosedoodles posted a piece of artwork responding to the term trending on Twitter in Canada, garnering over 700 likes in under two hours (shown below).

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References