About

Crying Cat, also known as Sad Cat or Schmuserkadser, not to be confused with Thumbs Up Crying Cat, refers to a series of photoshopped images of cats with teary, glassy eyes to appear as though they are sad. The most common one used in memes is a photoshopped version of the Serious Cat meme (depicting a white cat) that swaps the face with a tear-eyed kitten, but most are typically used as reactions and image captions.

Origin

The earliest known usage of the Crying Cat was published by an anonymous Meme Generator ^[1] user on June 11th, 2014 (shown below, left). The image is a photoshopped version of Serious Cat, due to the fact that the background of the image and the ears and color of the cat are identical (shown below, right). Within four years, the image has generated more than 925 images.

The face used in the Crying Cat meme notably comes from a photo of a kitten with teary eyes and a wet nose (seen below).

Spread

Later that year, the image was posted on the website ask.fm^[3] by user YoussefArafa88.

On April 9th, 2015, the image appeared on the German image board pr0gramm,^[2] where it earned the name "Schmuserkadser." Within three years, the image received more than 975 points.

The following year, an anonymous 4chan ^[4] user published a picture of a larger cat with the same expression. They captioned the image (shown below), "First it's smug, then it's fat. It's living my life." The photograph is a Photoshop of another photograph of a sleeping cat.^[5]

The image has since been shared widely. On January 27th, 2017, Facebook ^[6] user smokememe posted the image with the caption "sad react only." Within a year and a half, the post received more than 2,200 reactions and 440 shares.

On April 10th, 2018, Redditor ^[7] plebdev asked the /r/OutOfTheLoop subreddit, "What's the origin of the crying cat pictures, and why am I seeing them all over now?"

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References