Wawa Cat / Oh The Misery Cat

About

Wawa Cat, also known as Oh The Misery Cat, is a cat named Kotaro that became a meme when creators edited his ears off and made GIF captions using the lyrics "oh the misery" from the song "Enemy" by Imagine Dragons and J.I.D. The original photo of Wawa Cat was posted on Instagram in early 2021, becoming an exploitable meme over the following year. The origin of the original "Oh The Misery" video is currently unknown but surfaced on YouTube in early 2022.

Origin

Wawa Cat's real name is Kotaro and he lives in Japan with his owner and two other cats named Niko and Toro. All three cats have an Instagram^[1] page. On May 5th, 2021, Kotaro's owner posted a photo on Instagram^[2] of him sitting on a desk that would later become the primary Wawa Cat image. Over the course of one year, the post received roughly 5,200 likes (shown below, left).

The exact origin of Kotaro being nicknamed "Wawa Cat," as well as the creator of the original earless photograph (shown below, right), is currently unknown. However, the earliest known posting of the image was on June 22nd, 2021, by Twitter^[3] user OwlPower669. A likely source for the image is a since-deleted tweet from Twitter^[9] user Isnt__Jerry (since-suspended). The tweet was posted in late June 2020 and captioned the photo of earless Wawa Cat with "Hear no evil." It earned an unknown amount of likes.

Spread

On June 29th, 2021, Twitter^[4] user NlGHTGUARDS posted the photo of Wawa Cat with no ears including the word, "Bitch" written over it. However, the tweet earned no likes. On October 9th, 2021, the Instagram^[5] account zeldas.butt posted a video using the image of the earless Wawa Cat, adding in a song by Kanye West and earning roughly 55,200 views and 14,100 likes in eight months (shown below).

On October 23rd, 2021, Redditor NyanSquidd made a post to /r/wawacat,^[6] being the first to share a Wawa Cat image on the platform. It earned five upvotes in seven months (shown below, left). Also on October 23rd, 2021, Redditor NickTheMelonLord shared an image of a "wawall," to /r/wawacat,^[7] earning five upvotes in seven months (shown below, right).

Oh The Misery Cat

Going into 2022, Wawa Cat became known as the "Oh The Misery" Cat to some online due to multiple videos that surfaced using GIF captions, the 3D CapCat Zoom Effect and the song "Enemy" by Imagine Dragons and J.I.D.,^[8] which was a song created for the League of Legends TV series Arcane in early November 2021.

The first known Oh The Misery Cat video posted online was uploaded by YouTuber Joe Ballin on March 11th, 2022. Over the course of three months, the video received roughly 42,400 views and 1,700 likes (shown below, left). On March 12th, 2022, YouTuber Crexlon posted a different version of the video, earning roughly 4,900 views in three months (shown below, right). It is unknown if either of these videos are the originals, however, they are the first reposts made online.

More iterations of the aforementioned videos surfaced going into May 2022. For instance, on May 12th, 2022, YouTuber Shotgun9009 posted a video that used GIFS posted in a 4chan thread, earning roughly 11,000 views in four weeks (shown below).

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References