About

Persian Room Cat Guardian, also known as Cat-Monkey or Monkey-Cat, is a reaction and image macro series and photoshop meme featuring photographs of a stuffed toy cat seated on top of a box with arms outstretched. Image macros of the photos are typically captioned with frustrating or annoying situations, using the stuffed toy's pose to convey an incredulous reaction.

Origin

On August 5th, 2013, DeviantArtist^[1] AnyaBoz posted a photograph of a stuffed cat toy titled "Persian Cat Room Guardian," describing room guardians as "small creatures that protect one's home from negative spirits and energies" (shown below).

Spread

The images remained undiscovered until early 2016 when they began appearing on Instagram in the form of reaction image macros. On February 5th, 2016, the @ratchetpeoplemeet Instagram^[5] page posted an image macro featuring two photos of the stuffed toy with the caption "When you ask your girl what's wrong and she gets mad even more and says 'you're supposed to know'" (shown below, left). Within four days, the image gained over 8,500 likes. The following day, Anyaboz posted several photos Tumblr^[3] blog, including another image macro with the caption "When you wake up from a nap and your mom starts yelling at you" (shown below, right).

That day, Anyaboz updated the DeviantArt page noting that the picture had "become somewhat of a meme" and encouraged others to credit her when using the photo. On February 7th, Reddit captainchase submitted the photograph to the /r/photoshopbattles^[2] subreddit, describing it as a "monkey looking thing." Within 24 hours, the post gathered upwards of 2,100 votes (91% upvoted) and 100 comments, many of which contained edited versions of the image (shown below).

The same day, Redditor majkadajk submitted a post titled "What is the origin of the stuffed white monkey looking thing?" to /r/OutOfTheLoop,^[4] to which Redditor Beast_Mode_Alfy cited Anyaboz DeviantArt page. Also on February 7th, the @gymmemesofficial^[6] Instagram page posted an image macro of the stuffed toy with the caption "When you get done with the dumbbells and see someone else racked theirs in place of yours" (shown below).

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Search Interest

External References