Crying Cat

2014reaction imageclassic

Crying Cat is a series of photoshopped cat images with teary, glassy eyes edited to make the animal look on the verge of tears. The format traces back to a June 2014 Meme Generator upload that dropped a weeping kitten's face onto the Serious Cat photo, and it grew into one of the internet's default sad reaction images by the late 2010s.

catsphotoshop memesreaction memesself deprecating memes

Overview

Crying Cat, also known as Sad Cat or, in German-speaking corners of the web, Schmuserkadser, is a family of cat photos digitally altered to give the animal huge, watery, sorrowful eyes2. The signature version pastes a crying kitten's face over the body of the Serious Cat, a white feline meme staple, so the finished picture reads as an oddly composed pet caught mid-breakdown2.

People read human emotion into animal faces, and the wet-eyed cat pings that instinct immediately, which is why the format works so well for jokes about sadness or disappointment5. Users pair the image with sarcastic captions about small inconveniences, hard feelings, or reactions to bad news, and the same face is still being dropped onto fresh cat photos years after the first edit2. It sits alongside other anthropomorphized pet memes but locks in one specific role: sadness, resignation, or exaggerated self-pity5.

How It Spread

Later in 2014, an ask.fm user going by YoussefArafa88 reposted the image, giving it an early bump outside its home site. The next major jump came on April 9, 2015, when the picture landed on the German image board pr0gramm, where locals renamed it "Schmuserkadser" and pushed it past 975 points on the site.

The format kept mutating over the next few years. In 2016 an anonymous 4chan poster stretched the template by grafting the crying face onto a photo of a much larger sleeping cat, captioned "First it's smug, then it's fat. It's living my life." On January 27, 2017, a Facebook page called smokememe posted the original image tagged "sad react only," which pulled in over 2,200 reactions and 440 shares. By April 10, 2018 it was widespread enough that Redditor plebdev asked r/OutOfTheLoop for context on why the crying cat pictures were suddenly everywhere.

The Crying Cat face also seeded one of the internet's bigger spinoff memes. A Discord emote called "JabGood," first posted on August 16, 2017 inside the JabGood server, was later re-edited with the Crying Cat's teary eyes and grew into Thumbs Up Crying Cat. That variant hit its peak on Google Trends between August and September 2020, driven partly by a viral April 2020 Twitter post from user @SaoryEmanoelle responding to @RespectfulMemes at the start of pandemic social distancing.

How to Use This Meme

Making a Crying Cat typically means dropping the same set of glassy, tear-filled eyes and a small quivering mouth onto any cat photo, then pairing the finished image with a caption about something upsetting. Common conventions include sarcastic reactions to minor inconveniences, self-pitying jokes about personal problems, or plain sad-reacts to bad news others have posted. The joke is often the mismatch between the everyday complaint and the theatrical, weeping cat delivering it.

Fun Facts

- The face used in every Crying Cat edit comes from one specific photo of a grey and white kitten with wet, glassy eyes.

- The first Crying Cat was an edit of the Serious Cat meme, so the original is technically Serious Cat with different eyes.

- Meme Generator alone hosted several hundred Crying Cat versions within four years of the first upload.

- Thumbs Up Crying Cat started as a plain Discord emote called "JabGood" in 2017 before someone spliced Crying Cat's teary eyes onto it.

- Google Trends interest for Thumbs Up Crying Cat peaked in August and September 2020 during pandemic social distancing.

Derivatives & Variations

Thumbs Up Crying Cat: the same tearful eyes added to a cat giving a thumbs up, which took off on Reddit and Twitter through 2019 and 2020[1].

Frequently Asked Questions

Crying Cat

2014reaction imageclassic

Crying Cat is a series of photoshopped cat images with teary, glassy eyes edited to make the animal look on the verge of tears. The format traces back to a June 2014 Meme Generator upload that dropped a weeping kitten's face onto the Serious Cat photo, and it grew into one of the internet's default sad reaction images by the late 2010s.

cats photoshop memes reaction memes self deprecating memes

Overview

Crying Cat, also known as Sad Cat or, in German-speaking corners of the web, Schmuserkadser, is a family of cat photos digitally altered to give the animal huge, watery, sorrowful eyes. The signature version pastes a crying kitten's face over the body of the Serious Cat, a white feline meme staple, so the finished picture reads as an oddly composed pet caught mid-breakdown.

People read human emotion into animal faces, and the wet-eyed cat pings that instinct immediately, which is why the format works so well for jokes about sadness or disappointment. Users pair the image with sarcastic captions about small inconveniences, hard feelings, or reactions to bad news, and the same face is still being dropped onto fresh cat photos years after the first edit. It sits alongside other anthropomorphized pet memes but locks in one specific role: sadness, resignation, or exaggerated self-pity.

How It Spread

Later in 2014, an ask.fm user going by YoussefArafa88 reposted the image, giving it an early bump outside its home site. The next major jump came on April 9, 2015, when the picture landed on the German image board pr0gramm, where locals renamed it "Schmuserkadser" and pushed it past 975 points on the site.

The format kept mutating over the next few years. In 2016 an anonymous 4chan poster stretched the template by grafting the crying face onto a photo of a much larger sleeping cat, captioned "First it's smug, then it's fat. It's living my life." On January 27, 2017, a Facebook page called smokememe posted the original image tagged "sad react only," which pulled in over 2,200 reactions and 440 shares. By April 10, 2018 it was widespread enough that Redditor plebdev asked r/OutOfTheLoop for context on why the crying cat pictures were suddenly everywhere.

The Crying Cat face also seeded one of the internet's bigger spinoff memes. A Discord emote called "JabGood," first posted on August 16, 2017 inside the JabGood server, was later re-edited with the Crying Cat's teary eyes and grew into Thumbs Up Crying Cat. That variant hit its peak on Google Trends between August and September 2020, driven partly by a viral April 2020 Twitter post from user @SaoryEmanoelle responding to @RespectfulMemes at the start of pandemic social distancing.

How to Use This Meme

Making a Crying Cat typically means dropping the same set of glassy, tear-filled eyes and a small quivering mouth onto any cat photo, then pairing the finished image with a caption about something upsetting. Common conventions include sarcastic reactions to minor inconveniences, self-pitying jokes about personal problems, or plain sad-reacts to bad news others have posted. The joke is often the mismatch between the everyday complaint and the theatrical, weeping cat delivering it.

Fun Facts

- The face used in every Crying Cat edit comes from one specific photo of a grey and white kitten with wet, glassy eyes.

- The first Crying Cat was an edit of the Serious Cat meme, so the original is technically Serious Cat with different eyes.

- Meme Generator alone hosted several hundred Crying Cat versions within four years of the first upload.

- Thumbs Up Crying Cat started as a plain Discord emote called "JabGood" in 2017 before someone spliced Crying Cat's teary eyes onto it.

- Google Trends interest for Thumbs Up Crying Cat peaked in August and September 2020 during pandemic social distancing.

Derivatives & Variations

Thumbs Up Crying Cat: the same tearful eyes added to a cat giving a thumbs up, which took off on Reddit and Twitter through 2019 and 2020[1].

Frequently Asked Questions