The Origin of LOLcats

J

31 Mar, 2018

The Origin of LOLcats

There is a history for everything.

KnowYourMeme says that the term “LOLcats” wasn’t coined until 2007* when someone pasted a caption saying “I CAN HAS CHEEZBURGER?” (with the classic Impact font) onto a photo of a British shorthair named Frank, on the 4chan chat website.

TheStar explains: 

Some time in 2005,* an anonymous poster put text over a picture of a very relaxed cat, indicating he was waiting for “Caturday.” Soon, 4chan.org was flooded with pictures of cats in various states of idyll proclaiming their love for “Caturday.” 

Because it was more cute than funny, it would have been a short-lived fad had not another anonymous poster uploaded a picture of a hungry-looking, plus-sized grey cat with the text, “I can has cheezburger?” It was followed by a picture of the same cat snarling at a heap of clementines, with the words “Do not want!”

And thus LOLcats and memes were born.
*It’s not clear if 2005 was the correct date, or how much later the “Cheezburger” photo was posted, but a graph by Google Trends of some early LOLcat search terms shows that the term “LOLcat” itself wasn’t used until 2007.
The photo itself was from much earlier — Frank’s disembodied cat head had also been used in 2003, on the website of a Russian pet food company, advertising “Happy Cat.”
It’s not clear who took the original photo, but KnowYourMeme.com says that Frank was born in 1994 and died in 2007.

Before the term itself, some say the original LOLcat might have been the “Hang In There” cat photo. According to Wikipedia, that picture was taken in 1963 by Photographer William Baldwin of his Siamese cat Sassy in Beverly Hills.

The photo was featured on the back of a children’s fictional book the photographer wrote in 1970 (ironically, the cats name was changed to “Wiki”). He got so many requests for copies of the photo that he made a poster of it that year, made into what would turn out to be a famous poster in 1970 with the caption “Hang In There Baby.” The first copy of the poster was sold to composer of The Music Man‘s Meredith Willson.

Going even further back, there are at least two collections of photographs of cats with amusing props and captions, taken in 1870 and 1906 by photographers Harry Pointer and Harry Freese (yes, they were both named “Harry”). Here’s an example of Mr. Pointer’s work:

The story of how Mr. Freese began photographing animals is told in the annals of Life Magazine’s March 1, 1937 edition:

HARRY Whittier Frees of Audubon, Pa. has given the better part of his life to dressing up little animals in human clothes and taking pictures of them. The most famed U. S. photographer of dressed-up animals, he began his career by accident. In 1906, one of the Frees family brought a paper hat to the dinner table. It was passed gaily from head to head until, in a final burst of hilarity, it was cocked on the head of the Frees cat who, up to that time, had taken no part in the fun. Then and there, Mr. Frees de- cided to take a photograph of the cat wearing a hat. It was so much admired that he took others, sold some to a postcard printer. The printer clamored for more and Mr. Frees began taking pictures of animals in more and more elaborate dresses and poses.

While the Internet doesn’t appear to have a copy of the original paper hat photo, here’s an adorable one taken that same year and no doubt inspired by the original: