About

I Wake Up / There Is X" also known as *Cat Circle Of Life refers to an exploitable meme that originated from an image of a short brown cat named Ethel surrounded by a circle graph that reads, "I wake up → There is something wrong with me." The meme was first posted in June 2022, with the text and the cat being Photoshopped to read differently with each variation. In November 2022, Elon Musk reposted a version of the meme that read, "I wake up → There is another psyop," with the image of the cat altered to wear a tin foil hat.

Origin

As per correspondence with Know Your Meme, the cat pictured in the "I Wake Up/ There Is X" template is a rescue cat named Ethel.^[8] According to Ethel's owner,^[9] the image of a stubby-legged cat was first posted to the Facebook group "Cats On Catnip Group" in January 2019 (seen below), after which it was picked up by Latin American meme creators under the name "Ai Dise Gratis."

On June 10th, 2022, the Instagram^[1] page @drinkurtapwater posted the earliest known image of a stocky brown cat surrounded by a circle graph that read, "I Wake up → There is something wrong with me." the post gathered over 680 likes and was reposted by various pages in consecutive months.^[2][3]

Spread

On June 30th, 2022, the Instagram^[4] page @potadachen posted a version of the meme with the text changed to read, "I wake up → There is something wrong with America." The post gathered over 2,400 likes in a year (seen below, left). Also on June 30th, 2022, Instagram^[5] page @memetecanacional posted a version of the meme where "America" was switched out for "Mexico," gathering over 4,000 likes in a year (seen below, right).

Another early variation of the meme was posted by Twitter^[6] user @isawken on July 28th, 2022, where it gathered over 78,000 likes in nearly a year (seen below, left). Also on July 28th, Tumblr^[7] user @topherchris posted a similar meme, gathering over 2,000 notes in a year (seen below, right).

Various Examples

Search Interest

Unavailable.

External References