Coughing Cat

2018image macroclassic

Published August 17, 2026

Coughing Cat is a photoshopped picture of an open-mouthed, wide-eyed cat that went viral on Twitter in December 2018 after users noted how closely it mirrors the strained face small children make while coughing. It spread as both a reaction image and an exploitable image macro.

catsreaction memesphotoshop memesexploitable templatescaptioned animal memes

Overview

Coughing Cat is a heavily photoshopped picture of a cat with a comically wide-open mouth and bulging eyes, giving the impression of a violent, involuntary cough or heave 1. The source image comes from an Instagram account that specializes in absurdly altered animal photos, and the exaggerated face is entirely a digital manipulation rather than a real cat expression 2.

The image is best known in the reaction-image context that Twitter users built around it, where the cat's strained face was pointed out as a near-perfect match for the scrunched, over-the-top look small children get mid-cough 1. That specific comparison is what turned a one-off photoshop into a recurring joke format and gave the meme its name 3.

Origin & Background

Platform
Instagram (source image) / Twitter (viral spread)
Creator
Idascreatures
Date
2018

On November 27th, 2018, the Instagram account @idascreatures, a page that regularly posts photoshopped pictures of animals, uploaded the open-mouthed cat photo that would later be called Coughing Cat 2. The picture drew attention on Instagram for its unsettling proportions but did not go viral in the cat-cough framing at that stage 3.

The image sat on Instagram for about a week before jumping to Twitter, where a different caption pushed it into a much larger audience and pinned down the meaning it is still tied to today 1.

How It Spread

On December 3rd, 2018, Twitter user @aliahgeyes posted the picture with the caption "This is how little kids cough," which pulled in over 200,000 retweets and 630,000 likes 1. The comparison landed instantly, and replies quickly turned into a mini-thread of people submitting evidence that the cat really did look like a coughing toddler 3.

Twitter user @julissapizzaaaa replied with a short clip of her little brother coughing to back up the comparison, racking up over 750 retweets and 6,400 likes before the tweet was deleted 3. User @blackbile posted a series of photos of kids captured mid-cough with the same scrunched, watery-eyed face, gaining around 140 retweets and 1,500 likes 4.

User @ericisgrody stitched the cat and a coughing kid's face together on side-by-side phone screens for a direct visual match, pulling in over 570 retweets and 4,400 likes 5. From there Coughing Cat settled in as a general reaction image on Twitter for anything sudden, strained, or embarrassing, and was folded into image-macro edits on other platforms 3.

How to Use This Meme

Coughing Cat is typically used as a reaction image for choking on food, laughing too hard, sudden shock, or any moment that involves an exaggerated facial recoil 1. A common convention is pairing the cat with a photo of a person, especially a child, making a matching expression, playing off the original "this is how little kids cough" framing 5. It also gets used as an exploitable, with the cat's face edited into unrelated scenes or captioned in the standard top-and-bottom image-macro layout 3.

Frequently Asked Questions

Coughing Cat

2018image macroclassic

Published August 17, 2026

Coughing Cat is a photoshopped picture of an open-mouthed, wide-eyed cat that went viral on Twitter in December 2018 after users noted how closely it mirrors the strained face small children make while coughing. It spread as both a reaction image and an exploitable image macro.

cats reaction memes photoshop memes exploitable templates captioned animal memes

Overview

Coughing Cat is a heavily photoshopped picture of a cat with a comically wide-open mouth and bulging eyes, giving the impression of a violent, involuntary cough or heave 1. The source image comes from an Instagram account that specializes in absurdly altered animal photos, and the exaggerated face is entirely a digital manipulation rather than a real cat expression 2.

The image is best known in the reaction-image context that Twitter users built around it, where the cat's strained face was pointed out as a near-perfect match for the scrunched, over-the-top look small children get mid-cough 1. That specific comparison is what turned a one-off photoshop into a recurring joke format and gave the meme its name 3.

Origin & Background

Platform
Instagram (source image) / Twitter (viral spread)
Creator
Idascreatures
Date
2018

On November 27th, 2018, the Instagram account @idascreatures, a page that regularly posts photoshopped pictures of animals, uploaded the open-mouthed cat photo that would later be called Coughing Cat 2. The picture drew attention on Instagram for its unsettling proportions but did not go viral in the cat-cough framing at that stage 3.

The image sat on Instagram for about a week before jumping to Twitter, where a different caption pushed it into a much larger audience and pinned down the meaning it is still tied to today 1.

How It Spread

On December 3rd, 2018, Twitter user @aliahgeyes posted the picture with the caption "This is how little kids cough," which pulled in over 200,000 retweets and 630,000 likes 1. The comparison landed instantly, and replies quickly turned into a mini-thread of people submitting evidence that the cat really did look like a coughing toddler 3.

Twitter user @julissapizzaaaa replied with a short clip of her little brother coughing to back up the comparison, racking up over 750 retweets and 6,400 likes before the tweet was deleted 3. User @blackbile posted a series of photos of kids captured mid-cough with the same scrunched, watery-eyed face, gaining around 140 retweets and 1,500 likes 4.

User @ericisgrody stitched the cat and a coughing kid's face together on side-by-side phone screens for a direct visual match, pulling in over 570 retweets and 4,400 likes 5. From there Coughing Cat settled in as a general reaction image on Twitter for anything sudden, strained, or embarrassing, and was folded into image-macro edits on other platforms 3.

How to Use This Meme

Coughing Cat is typically used as a reaction image for choking on food, laughing too hard, sudden shock, or any moment that involves an exaggerated facial recoil 1. A common convention is pairing the cat with a photo of a person, especially a child, making a matching expression, playing off the original "this is how little kids cough" framing 5. It also gets used as an exploitable, with the cat's face edited into unrelated scenes or captioned in the standard top-and-bottom image-macro layout 3.

Frequently Asked Questions