About

Kitty Cat Dance is a music video created by digital artist Steve Ibsen^[2] featuring various photos of his black-and-white cat dancing using a stop motion animation technique. The video has inspired a number of remixes and parodies.

Origin

In an interview with Ultra Kawaii^[1], Ibsen revealed that he created the video while he was a senior in high school after taking pictures of his cat Kayla before leaving for school. While scrolling through the photos, Ibsen observed that it appeared as if the cat was dancing in stop motion animation, which inspired him to create the music video. Ibsen originally uploaded the video to his website G-Shack^[6] on March 3rd, 2004. The original Ibsen video was uploaded to YouTube^[4] by user Batman1225 on October 19th, 2005. As of March 2012, the Batman1225 upload has over 4.3 million views, the Steve Ibsen upload has over 2.4 million views and a Facebook^[11] page has over 13,400 likes.

CAT, I'm a kitty cat, and I dance dance dance, and I Dance Dance Dance
CAT, I'm a kitty cat, and I dance dance dance, and I Dance Dance Dance

(and so on)

PERRRRRAVACOTIVE POSING!
PERRRRRAVACOTIVE POSING!

CAT, I'm a kitty cat, and I meow meow meow, and I meow meow meow

I say sexy things to myself when I'm… Daaaancing!
I say sexy things to myself when I'm… Daaaancing!

PERRRRRAVACOTIVE POSING!
PERRRRRAVACOTIVE POSING!

bat-I'm a picky pat- and I boop be boop babba boop boop boop

CAT, I'm a kitty cat, and I dance dance dance, and I dance dance dance

Spread

The video was submitted to the flash sharing website Albino Black Sheep^[5] on March 10th, 2004. On June 3rd, a link to the G-Shack video was submitted to the cat enthusiast AMCGLTD^[9] board where many remarked how catchy the song was. On September 11th, 2005, one of the earliest parody videos was uploaded by YouTuber QuackJAG which used footage from the video game Halo accompanied by the “Kitty Cat Dance” song. As of March 2012, This parody has accumulated over 6.6 million views.

A Myspace^[7] page for "Kayla From the Kitty Cat Dance" was created on June 11th, 2006 and accumulated over 1,800 friends in less than six years. Ibsen uploaded his own copy of the video to his YouTube^[3] channel on February 4th, 2007.

On October 17th, 2007, an Urban Dictionary^[10] definition (shown above) was submitted by user Zach Holland, who referred to the dance as "somewhat annoying." On August 12th, 2008, the cat product website Modern Cat^[12] posted a YouTube embed of the video referring to it as "pure foolishness." On September 12th, 2009, deviantArtist^[13] gnu32 posted an animated GIF (shown below) using frames from the music video which received over 450 favorites and 100 downloads in less than three years. A photo of a mouse pad with Kayla from the Kitty Kat Dance video printed on top was submitted to the photo sharing site Flickr^[14] on January 15th, 2010.

Notable Videos

Search Interest

Search query volume for "kitty cat dance" rose in March 2004 following the posting on G-Shack and reached its highest spike in December of 2005 following the first YouTube upload.

External References