I Can Haz Cat Memes!
Cat Memes Date Back Over 150 Years
Heidi Crabtree
There he is again. That cat asking about cheezburgers. Some found the “LOLCats” photo funny, while others (admittedly including myself) didn’t quite get it. In any case, it was an “image macro,” a popular term in the early years of this century.1 Pasting a humorous line or two over a photo became the rage, and of course our favorite animal was used quite often. We now call them “memes.” Indeed, they spread like a virus slicked with motor oil. The miracle of technology? Not so fast! People of the Victorian era had their own kind of “memes,” and thousands of people still collect them. Yes. In scrapbooks and boxes.
Let’s look at a little history for context. A 1976 book, The Selfish Gene, by Richard Dawkins, first used the word “meme” for fads, catch phrases, anything that (as we now say) “went viral.”2 Dawkins took it to a deeper level, including genetic traits. Thirty years later, animations such as the infamous Dancing Baby proved that an image macro/meme did not have to be a photo. Software like AutoDesk, used for the Dancing Baby, and Flash, which made the equally useless but funny “Combo Number 5,” burst onto the still innocent internet and gave tools to the layman with an imagination. These were the “memes before memes,” and it would take another nine years – until 2007 – for the captioned cat asking, “I can has cheezburger?” went wild.
Humans of certain generations are pretty smug in their belief that they created something life-changing and brand-spankin’ new. No one ever had the idea of using a computer to share a funny photo of a cat, often an anthropomorphic version.
Ask a Postcard Collector for Their Opinion …
Cats and postcards go together like cats and the empty box their new toy came in.
Postcards date to the mid-1800s but had no photos. Some were made to be mailed in envelopes. Picture postcards arrived sometime in the late-1800s, with images of the Chicago World’s Fair and the new Eiffel Tower helping the picture postcard gain traction.3 The “Golden Age” of postcards began in the earliest part of the 20th century, and it didn’t take Nostradamus to predict that cute cats, funny cats, humanized cats, unintentionally scary cats – all cats – would be used by photographers and artists to create their own privately published postcards. They were mailed and thus shared like today’s memes which we now receive via text messaging.
Raphael Tuck and Sons produced cat postcards with art by Louis Wain.4 As far as we know, close to 500 designs of cats by Wain were made into cards by the company and their business increased. The entire Wain series was reproduced onto postcards, illustrating the popularity of cats on cards.
Plenty of artists jumped on the “catwagon,” especially those who painted these pets in the act of traveling. Postcards from the mid-century years skimped on the novelty and “meme” effect and often just showed a real photo of a cute kitten or two.
One can argue that cute cat postcards helped make cats the popular pet that they are today. In earlier Victorian days, cats were often seen as a nuisance, and those who loved having cats lounge around their homes were likely perceived as a little strange. In 1905, a “picture postcard libel suit” played out in the London newspapers. Of course, the card featured a joke with a cat illustration.5 To date, these funny captions have actually been repeated in the form of modern memes.
Why do cats rule the meme world? For the same reason they were beloved by photographers and artists of postcards. Place a few birds or puppies around a tea table for a cute Victorian photo. Imagine a dog riding a Roomba. Isn’t it easier to picture cats with teacups, or a kitten on the floor vacuum? Cats are both cuddly and independent, loving and mysterious. The human urge to share a funny cat photo may be part of what Dawkins meant, albeit inadvertently. It’s simply in our genes to laugh at a cat squeezing itself into a very small box … and then to show it to anyone nearby!
- Willingham, A. J. 2023. “What Was the First Meme? A Critical Question, Answered (Sort Of).” CNN. July 25, 2023. https://www.cnn.com/us/first-meme-ever-cec/index.html.
- Sewell, Claire, and Spencer D. C. Keralis. 2019. “The History & Origin of Cat Memes: From the 18th Century to Lolcats; Or, How Cats Have Basically Changed the Internet and the World Furever.”Hyperrhiz: New Media Cultures, no. 21 (November). https://doi.org/10.20415/hyp/021.m07.
- com. n.d. “History of the Postcard.” Worldpostcardday.com. https://worldpostcardday.com/history.
- “The Troubled Life of Louis Wain – Postcard History ARC.” 2020. Postcardhistory.net. 2020. https://archive.postcardhistory.net/2020/10/the-troubled-life-of-louis-wain/.
- “Dec 24, 1905, Page 7 – Sunday Dispatch at Newspapers.com – Newspapers.com.” 2024. Newspapers.com. 2024.
Opening image: Artist Eugan Hartung, 1940s, travel cat postcard