About

Cat Transcendence, also known as The Prophecy Is True Cat and Flower Crashes Cat, is a short video of a cat reacting in bewilderment to a flower placed on top of its head. Originally uploaded to Instagram in June 2015, the video remained under the radar for several months until the viral emergence of a parody video uploaded by YouTuber Max Goodrich in late January 2016.

Origin

On June 18th, 2015, Instagram^[1] user Sophiella_cats_n_nails uploaded a short video of herself singing the Russian song "Lilies of the Valley"^[8] to her cat before placing a flower on the top of its head, which startles the cat to react in utter bafflement and shock with its eyes wide open. On June 25th, the Instagram video was re-uploaded to the YouTube channel lolzing4gifs (shown below), indicating that the Instagram video had been made into an animated GIF prior to entering circulation on YouTube. The YouTube video accumulated over 2.8 million views within the first year of its upload.

Spread

On June 30th, 2015, animal-themed website The Dodo^[2] ran an article about the aforementioned video. On August 4th, Imgur^[3] user Wolfy1005 uploaded an animated GIF of the video, which garnered more than 2.5 million views within a year. Throughout the latter half of 2015, a handful of remixes, parodies and reenactment videos began to surface on YouTube (shown below), though none of them managed to gain any substantial traction.

"The Prophecy Is True" Remix

On January 23rd, 2016, YouTuber Max Goodrich uploaded a five-second remix of the original video, accompanied by an echoing soundbite of Morpheus (played by Laurence Fishburne) muttering the line "the prophecy is true" from the 2003 sci-fi action film Matrix Reloaded to the background music of "Mountains," an ambient track composed by renowned film scoremaker Hans Zimmer for the 2014 epic sci-fi film Interstellar. (shown below). That same day, Goodrich shared his remix video on his Instagram and Vine channels,^[4] which served as the catalyst for the viral rise of the "Transcendence Cat" across multiple social media platforms.^[5][6][7] As of July 2016, Goodrich's YouTube video has gained over 680,000 views.

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References