About

Cat Thinking, also known as Pondering Cat, refers to a series of image macro and caption memes pairing a photoshopped side-profile image of a cat doing a pondering gesture with its paw edited, similar to the Philosoraptor meme format. The photo of the cat was first posted online in mid-January 2025 on TikTok, with the "Thinking Cat" memes becoming popularized on TikTok and Instagram Reels in February 2025, often adding humorous texts as if the pet is having philosophical thoughts about average situations. The meme trended alongside the Thinking Baby meme, which showed a baby pondering in the same position at the same angle.

Origin

On February 5th, 2019, American artist Douglas Sacha^[1] published the “Thinking Cat” image on the Fine Art America website (seen below).

On January 14th, 2025, TikTok^[2] user @rexiilol posted the earliest known memetic version of the thinking cat image, which was accompanied by the text, “Thinking what job imma get on the 19th of January.” The post (seen below) amassed more than 366,000 plays and 93,000 likes in a month.

Spread

In the following weeks, netizens started to create their own funny texts paired with the thinking cat meme, typically adding captions to the image of the animal either above it or overlaid on top.

For instance, Instagram^[3] user @ofcoursecats posted on February 11th, 2025, a version of the cat pondering image thinking about food (seen below), which amassed more than 70,000 likes and 40,000 reposts in two days.

On January 15th, 2025, TikTok^[4] user @swirls_jaytrx uploaded a version of the cat meme adding the text overlay, “When yo mama start getting mad at you so you gotta act serious so she don’t get even more upset.” The post (seen below) received roughly 2,300 plays and 106 likes in a month.

Various Examples

Related Memes

Thinking Baby

Thinking Baby refers to a black and white photo of a baby with her hand on her chin, looking to her left and contemplating something. It became a reaction image and the subject of an image macro series in 2025, notably spreading on Twitter / X. Thinking Baby memes usually include a question in the caption, which is the question that the baby (and the meme creator) is weighing in their mind. The image is similar to the Cat Thinking meme, which shows a cat in the same position at the same angle. The original Thinking Baby photo was titled Thoughtful Baby, and it was uploaded to Flickr by the baby girl's father in 2006.

Search Interest

External References