While the lions rule the jungle, it wouldn’t be an overstatement to say that their distant feline relatives, cats, now rule the internet.

If you consider yourself a cat lover, a dog lover or none of the above, let’s face it, it’s hard to look at the internet and not declare cats as its royalty, the undisputed monarch.

Open YouTube and there’s a fluffy tabby kneading biscuits on a blanket, like a dedicated baker at work. Scroll through Instagram, and an orange cat is chilling in a cardboard box. Refresh the twitter, and a globally aired news interview is photobombed by the housecat of the speaker who joined online.

With their constant presence on each and every algorithm: cats, they are everywhere!

Cats & Memes

While the adorable, cuddly cat videos are where kitty fame came into being, it was the memes that made them the stars of the internet.

Actually, as recent as the trend may seem, cat humor made their way to the internet longer than we know. During the 1990s, when the internet was more of a text-based than image-based world, cat-like figures made with mathematical symbols (early emojis) became a common email forward. “Can I has cheeseburger?” became one of the most popular cat memes from 2007, continuing the legacy of cat humor through present-day viral cat meme videos such as the “huh cat”.
Social media today has witnessed the “cat craze” among people: from the sensational Ouuiiaa Spinning Cat soundtracking a NYE rave festival by Dutch DJ duo W&W, to the Crying Banana Cat litting up the Mumbai club screens to cats being called as “cars” as an internet’s shared “inside joke”, proving these felines have gone global, driving us collectively crazy and connecting us through memes and humor.

Some humorists and cat enthusiasts claim that the shared love for cats online is the closest we have reached to world peace and harmony.

So whether it’s a cat smacking a bald man, a dog, an iguana, a bear (sometimes even personal space-invading toddlers) or toppling the Christmas tree, the internet has traced one fact: cat videos transcend borders, politics, and language barriers. In a world that struggles to agree on much, we’ve somehow reached the consensus that cat videos can be universally hilarious and heartwarming.

Cats & Stats

For those who belong to the “no social media, no scrolling” community, somewhat unaware of the viral cat fever, let the statistics do the talking.

Long before Instagram and Facebook Reels became a thing, cat videos were already dominating YouTube. By the year 2014, there were over two million uploads of cat-related content, which collectively yielded more than 25 – 26 billion total views, averaging approximately 12,000 views per video, more than many other categories!

If the talk is about cats conquering the internet, then Nala – the cross-eyed (and very cute) queen of Instagram sits firmly on the throne. With approximately 4.5 million Instagram followers, this strabismic tabby-Siamese hybrid from Los Angeles holds the esteemed Guinness World Record for the highest number of Instagram followers attributed to any feline since 2019 to the present day.

However, Nala’s empire transcends beyond mere Instagram. Her digital presence has evolved into a booming business of merchandise, pet food and charitable initiatives, proving that cat content is more than just entertainment. It’s also hugely revenue-generating.

According to research, both independent retailers and well-known brands have been highly benefited from the rising feline fandom around the globe caused by the internet, which has led to a rise in the purchase of cat-themed merchandise like quirky t-shirts, coffee mugs, home decor, fun tech accessories and a multitude of other products.

Our online bond with cats has gone from just posting cute animal photos to a much broader cultural and economical phenomena at an extent that now exists: professional cat influencers, cat celebrities, cat TV shows based around the celebrity cats and even cat video film festivals, and that’s A LOT OF CATS, which makes us come to the obvious question: why cats?

Cats & Humans

What makes cats so desirable and fun is not just their cuteness, but also the range of emotional expressions they show through body language and actions, provoking the human instincts to relate with them.

Cats often make silly expressions that can appear savage, judgmental, annoyed, funny, or affectionate, making them the most suitable for conveying raw human emotions. Their unscripted and spontaneous actions, like a miscalculated jump or a dramatic yowling that sounds like “sometimes I’m alone, sometimes I’m not”, captured by chance, become universally funny.

So while their actions can be funny and relatable to us, even more interesting is what cats do to our brains.
Feline specialists and philosophers Michael Newell and Jeffery Boussolini through their observational studies explained the nuances of human psychology that draws a connection between human babies and cats through certain similarities such as round face, large round eyes, domed shaped heads and the call that mimics the cry of a human baby triggering the nurturing instincts inside us and making a lot of us go gaga over them, somewhat explaining the online cat obsession (perhaps even why the Egyptians worshipped them).

Some popularly known content analysts and internet researchers agree on the theory that “similar to the painting of Mona Lisa, cats are popular online just because they’re popular online”. The theory continues to argue that the painting of Mona Lisa, though undeniably beautiful, is not grandiosely remarkable or something out of the ordinary, but remains hyped till date. People visit the museum to see the Mona Lisa so that they can tell other people they saw the Mona Lisa, which in turn gets more people to want to go and see the Mona Lisa. According to this point of view, cats, although cute, are popular just because they are popular. Nevertheless, whether you agree with the theory or not, psychological surveys back up what many social media users have experienced after spending time watching cat content online.

Cats & Oxytocin

Love them or scroll past them, research suggests the influence of cats on mental health is subtly powerful. 
In an increasingly stressful world where work emails follow us home, and bad news from around the world endlessly runs through headlines, dramatic cats getting jumpscared by cucumbers (though they don’t solve our problems) have certainly provided us moments of laughter and relief.

Cat content consumption, according to research, has reportedly reduced stress and improved moods, releasing Oxytocin also known as the happy hormone, which is also associated with humans feeling affectionate, warm and comforted.

Could all of these be the reasons why internet cats have been on the rise? Maybe. But we do have to agree that cats on the internet have not just brought smiles on millions of faces; they’ve also connected those million people globally through their united love for cats and cat humor.

So the next time you find yourself scrolling through yet another ridiculously cute compilation of cats being silly, just know that you’re not wasting time. You’re witnessing a global phenomenon that’s proven to make us smile and remind us that sometimes happiness is watching a chonky cat trying to fit in a box that’s clearly too small (and proceeding to barely fit into it and purr already).

That said, cats may not be officially ruling the internet, but they are certainly ruling our hearts.