Cat memes as we know them date back to the 1990s, when bored office workers and friends started using email for sending each other funny felines. But there were similar trends long before we had computers.

In fact, scholars of media history say that understanding the cat postcards of the early 20th Century might help us to understand social media today.

"Some things persist across generations and media, and depictions of cats are one of those things. It's kind of reassuring," Ben Weiss, a senior curator at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts and co-curator of the museum's The Postcard Age exhibition, told BBC.

In the 19th and early 20th centuries, "postcards functioned like social media today."

Cheaper, faster, and more convenient than a letter, they were used to share random musings, plan logistics for where and when to meet, tell jokes and, of course, post cat pictures.

Whether it's mail sent with a stamp in 1924 or posts made with the tap of a finger a century later, cats have always had an audience.

The first postcards were printed in Austria-Hungary in 1869 – fortuitous timing for innovation in the mail field because in 1874, 21 countries established the Universal Postal Union, allowing mail to be sent and delivered internationally.

More countries followed in the next few years, and postcards rode this wave.

Like memes, postcards carried not just a picture and a few lines of text but were tangible evidence of a vast network and powerful institutions that had transported them rapidly across huge distances. They marked a changing world and technology's startling advance, delivered daily into the hands and mailboxes of regular people.

"We've forgotten the density of that early 20th-century communications network, which postcards were moving through," Weiss explained.

"You could send a postcard to someone at 10 saying you'll be there at 5:30, if you're going from Manhattan to Jersey City, and you can get the message to them fairly quickly."

Postcards in the early 20th-century city arguably marked the first time in history that communication at that speed was affordable and widely accessible. Between 1900 and 1914, according to Weiss, "there's this massive worldwide postcard craze to the point where people talk about it being a disease in the public bloodstream".

During this period, millions and millions of postcards circulated, and cats quickly took over the new medium.

At the time, they were considered more than just pest control. Monarchs and socialites, including Queen Victoria, were famous cat lovers, and the animal's association with Halloween was well-established.

Some postcards featured cats just being cats: sipping milk from saucers, playing with yarn, and basking in the sunlight. Others depicted them dressed as humans, working jobs, and taking part in various domestic scenes.

Assistant Professor Jessica Gall Myrick from Indiana University, America, asked 7,000 people how they felt before and after watching videos of cats.

The results showed that people were happier after watching videos of cats, and that they felt less anxious or sad. Something tells me that memes and even postcards have a similar effect.