Smile Cat

About

Smile Cat is a creepypasta character created by animator lights.are.off that resembles a large, cat-like creature with a long neck, dark eyes and a big smile across its face. The character first appeared in a TikTok video posted in September 2021 and became increasingly prominent in the user's content going forward, also inspiring fan art and other fan content over the following years. Although similarly named, the creature initially had no relation to the Smile Dog creepypasta, although became further connected to the creepypasta in the following months through fan content.

Origin

On September 14th, 2021, TikToker^[1] @lights.are.off, known for their horror animations, posted a video where a cat-like creature walks across the road, then walks towards a car with other larger smile cats, garnering over 86.5 million views in two years (shown below). The creator asks in the description, "what should we call these guys?" with the top comment being "Name it smile cat."

Spread

The animator continued to feature Smile Cat in numerous future videos. He uploaded a compilation of Smile Cat videos to YouTube^[2] on January 11th, 2022, garnering over 19.2 million views in a year (shown below).

Smile Cat inspired fan content throughout the 2020s as the videos continued to prove popular, with some fans expanding on the lore and abilities of the creature. On September 23rd, 2022, TikToker^[3] @christopherkiely posted a video on how to survive Smile Cat, garnering over 543,000 views in eight months (shown below, left). On February 11th, TikToker^[4] @d3s3rtqu33n posted a video on how to summon Smile Cat, garnering over 84,000 views in three months (shown below, right).

In these videos, the original Smile Cat design is used, as well as designs more similar to the Smile Dog or Smile.jpg meme.

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References