Pop Cat

About

Pop Cat refers to a series of videos in which use two images of a cat named Oatmeal, one with its mouth closed, and the other photoshopped as if the cat is holding it wide open in the shape of an O. The images have been used to create videos in which the cat lip syncs various songs, similar to Baby Eats Camera memes.

Origin

Prior to October 9th, 2020, Twitter user @XavierBFB posted two images of his cat Oatmeal to an unknown Discord server, a photograph of the cat and an edit in which the cat is given a widely opened, O-shaped mouth. On October 9th, Redditor^[8] Skettidragon, a friend of @XavierBFB, posted an edit based on the photographs to /r/MEOW_IRL subreddit, where it gained 122 upvotes in one month (shown below).

meow_irl from r/MEOW_IRL

My husband made the popping noise and my dog, who is snoring, happened to be nearby.
- Skettidragon^[12]

On October 10th, Twitter^[9][10] user @partitiongal reposted the edit (shown below) and posted the two images, with the tweet gaining over 1.6 million views, 57,100 retweets and 161,600 likes.

i cannot stop thinking about this video pic.twitter.com/SR799WZMx6

— emily but festive 🎄 (@partitiongal) October 10, 2020

Following @partitiongal's viral tweet, @XavierBFB posted^[11] the original video of Oatmeal (shown below).

So there's a video with some images of my cat Oatmeal out and here's the full clip of him chirping at a bug. pic.twitter.com/4MVTWiIknc

— Xavier Archambault (@XavierBFB) October 11, 2020

Spread

Also on October 11th, 2020, iFunny^[1] user cattsu reposted the video to iFunny, where it gained over 1,600 smiles in one month. Later on October 11th, 2020, iFunny^[2] user FeelixG posted a Sicko Mode meme based on the video (shown below). The video received over 470 smiles in one months.

On October 12th and 13th, Tenor^[3][4] users Itlizard and scarfired posted GIFs based on the images (Scarfired's post shown below, left). On October 13th, Twitter^[5] user @WhatTheFuaack posted the images of the cat, with the tweet gaining over 25,300 retweets and 15,100 likes in one month (shown below, right).

Starting in mid-October 2020, the images gained popularity in two related meme formats: on iFunny and Instagram, edits in which the cat lip synced various songs gained popularity (October 20th meme by @ideiasvirgin^[6] shown below, left), while on Twitter and Facebook four-panel memes in which various characters copied the facial expressions of the cat were spread (October 23rd meme by @yachifumis^[7] shown below, right).

Popcat.click

Popcat.click is a clicker website that allows visitors to click on an interactive image of the Pop Cat meme to have it pop its mouth. The site tracks the number of clicks and the visitor's country, with countries competing on a global leaderboard. The website went viral in several countries in August 2021, with users from Taiwan, Thailand and Malaysia entering a competition with each other to bring their country to the top position on the leaderboard.

Related Memes

Baby Eats Camera

Baby Eats Camera refers to a viral video of a baby grabbing and trying to eat a GoPro camera, recorded from that camera. After receiving initial spread as one of the earliest viral examples of You Died meme in October 2017, in September 2019 the video gained popularity in lip sync edits in which it repeatedly opened and closed its mouth.

Various Examples

Templates

Search Interest

External References