About

Stretchy Cats refers to a meme on Japanese Twitter in which people take pictures of their cats either held in such a way that shows off their length a la Long Cat, or stretching on their own to look tall. The pictures are shared using the hashtag #全日本猫伸ばし協会, which roughly translates to "All Japan Cat Extension Association" according to Google Translate.

Origin

On February 11th, 2018, Twitter user @yaha_bon^[1] quote-tweeted an image of a stretched-out cat, using the phrase "All Japan Cat Stretch Association" (shown below, left). A reply to that tweet by user @14unyan^[2] turned the phrase into a hashtag (shown below, right).

Spread

Over the following several weeks, the hashtag spread as more users added it to pictures of their
stretched cats. Some popular tweets include a tweet from March 3rd, 2018 by user @inisheno which gained over 1,500 retweets and 4,900 likes (shown below, left). Several pictures by user @AliceKinako gained over over 170 retweets and 1,000 likes (shown below, right).

On March 12th, 2018, Twitter Moments^[3] compiled some of the most popular examples of the hashtag from the previous week. Some examples include a tweet by @mkktmsan which gained over 7,600 retweets and 15,000 likes (shown below, left). Another tweet by @otonnu gained over 2,700 retweets and 6,800 likes (shown below, right).

Various Examples

Search Interest

Unavailable

External References