Boozecats

2009Photoshop / image editdead

Published September 16, 2026

Boozecats is a Photoshop meme where alcoholic beverages in party photos are censored by superimposing images of cats over the bottles, cups, and cans. Brooklyn resident Ryan Darrenkamp created the first boozecat images in July 2009, and the concept spread through a dedicated blog and viral compilations that racked up coverage from BuzzFeed, Entertainment Weekly, MTV, and Uproxx between 2009 and 2012.

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Overview

Boozecats, a simple Photoshop gag: take any photo where people are holding or standing near alcoholic drinks, then paste cat images over every visible bottle, glass, or cup4. The result looks like partygoers are casually clutching kittens instead of beers. The meme was curated on a single-topic blog at Boozecats.com and spread through compilation posts with titles like "How to Properly Hide Booze in Your Facebook Pictures"2.

Origin & Background

Platform
Facebook (original photos), Boozecats.com (blog)
Creator
Ryan Darrenkamp
Date
2009

In July 2009, Ryan Darrenkamp, a Brooklyn resident, made the first boozecat edit for a practical reason. His roommate Lisa needed a clean photo of herself with a friend who was about to get married, something suitable for a wedding photo album. The problem was that every photo from a party they both attended featured visible beer4. Darrenkamp's solution was to Photoshop cats over each bottle and cup in the pictures.

On July 13, 2009, he uploaded six different boozecat photos to a Facebook album to share with friends4. That same day, he purchased the domain name Boozecats.com, though he wouldn't actually post the images on the site until October 27, 20094.

How It Spread

Once Boozecats.com went live in late October 2009, media coverage came fast. Within a month, Entertainment Weekly, BuzzFeed, Urlesque, and beer blog 40cozy all published articles about the blog1. Flash News, a pop culture news wire, picked up the story in December 20094. Darrenkamp also created a Twitter account that December but didn't keep it active.

In July 2010, Darrenkamp expanded the concept to video, uploading "The Big Lemeowski," which replaced the beers in a scene from the 1998 Coen Brothers film *The Big Lebowski* with cats4. That same month, LA Weekly interviewed him about the blog's history.

The meme's second wave hit in August 2011 when humor sites Sad and Useless and EatLiver posted compilations titled "How to Properly Hide Booze in Your Facebook Pictures"3. On November 15, 2011, these photos were reposted on Tumblr, where they picked up over 17,000 notes2. That Tumblr spike triggered a fresh round of coverage from MTV5, Uproxx3, Trend Hunter, and The Chive.

Google search interest for "boozecats" peaked in December 2009, went quiet until August 2011's second surge, and had been declining steadily by 20124.

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