By Dan in Tempe

As I researched the topic, looking for an old article written by someone from the New Yorker, I was surprised that the articles I found mentioned several steps in the chain of the lolcat origin story. But the beginning of the story was missing…

MUCH MORE ON LOLCATS

Early Cat-Blogs were really gung-ho about their daily ritual of pretending to be their cats(s). They developed a cute language for their cats, including abbreviations like mol for ‘meow out loud’ and purrs, which means goodbye.

Someone came up with the idea of Caturdays! Caturdays is really where the lolcat paradigm was developed. They started with cute embroidery style graphics to post with pictures of their cats, usually sleeping, hiding under the covers or laying on their backs stretched out. Somewhere along the line one of these hoomans (as they lolcats call them) added some of their cute catspeak to her cat picture and that is when the lolcat was born.

Soon other days were added. Tuesday is Toesday or Tocksday where photos of their cats toes or buttocks are featured. Wednesdays became Wordless Wednesday and of course Sundays became ‘Easy as Sunday Morning’ on many blogs. The use of catspeak being added to these photos (except Wordless Wednesday) continued and the paradigm grew.

Some college kids picked up on the images with the cute catspeak and in 2003 began posting their own lolcats to 4Chan.org. Eventually Icanhascheezburger.com did the rest of the work.

I have made a few lolcats in my time, but none were ever accepted by the Cheezburger site. Do any of you have lolcat pictures you made? I’ll share a few of mine as well as my first lolcat ‘I has a flavor’ (see above).

Thanks for letting me share my cat related knowledge on this awesome website!

Dan in Tempe >^.~.^<

Purrs.

Associated page: Lol Cats