A dog might be man’s best friend, but a cat is surely the internet’s. They’re so inseparable that they have their own Wikipedia page. In it, it’s written that cats are considered the “unofficial mascot of the internet.” 

How did we end up with such a mascot? Well, since the beginning of human civilization, cats have been our buddies. It started out as a partnership of convenience and evolved into a mutual connection. Now, cats are the second most common pets, at least in the United States. 

People love these pets so much that they include them in their media and art. For instance, back in the 1870s, photographer Harry Pointer used to take pics of his cats mimicking human activities. The pets were also stars of short movies like “Boxing Cats” (1894) and “The Sick Kitten” (1903).

These examples are just a small piece of cat media. There’s a whole dedicated site called “The Great Cat” for cats in history, art, and literature. Well, to have a whole site, there should be plenty of stuff, right? 

With the rise of the internet, the quantity of this stuff grew at a fast pace. It all started with cats being shared via email in the 1990s. Then, in 2005, YouTube was founded. The first video of a cat on the platform was posted by its co-founder Steve Chen. It was his cat called Pyjamas playing with a rope. From that point on, cats and the internet became an unstoppable phenomenon.

It became so widespread that in 2015, only 10 years after YouTube’s start, New York’s Museum of the Moving Image (MoMI) opened an exhibition called “How Cats Took Over The Internet.” As the name suggests, this exhibition celebrated the history of cats online – all the viral videos, viral characters, and so on. 

That’s not the only celebration of this phenomenon. There’s also the book “How to Make Your Cat an Internet Celebrity: A Guide to Financial Freedom”, the annual Internet Cat Video Festival, and, of course, plenty of articles honoring these pets. 

This article adds to the collection. It’s another piece featuring pictures of felines. This time they’re funny images collected from an Instagram page called “Catto Factory,” which currently has over 80K followers. As the account bio says: “Cats are the best in the world.” And we completely agree – they’re really great. 

These collected pictures of felines are no less great. In addition, they’re very funny – you can find cats riding horses, cats looking like bread, and many others. Looking at these pics, it's no wonder why these animals are stars of the online world – they’re whimsical, cute, and intelligent. 

All these factors combined create something many people can’t turn their eyes away from. Sometimes all you need is some simple content to wind down after a hard day, and what’s better than a funny and endearing pet? Perhaps that’s what it all comes down to – cats being uncomplicated content in this complicated world. 

What kind of cat content do you like the best? Share with us in the comments!