What is Fat Rat Being Grabbed?

It is a 2018 photo of a large white pet rat named Baby Rose being held by the scruff, which became an exploitable image used in ironic captions and video game weapon edits.

Where did Fat Rat Being Grabbed come from?

Instagram user @socalratpack posted the original photo on October 6th, 2018, though it did not break out until a Ratatouille demotivational poster hit /r/okbuddyretard in November 2019.

What does Fat Rat Being Grabbed mean?

There is no fixed meaning. The caption version is used for ironic jokes and Ratatouille references, while the cutout version imagines the rat as a melee weapon or firearm in video game screenshots.

How do you use Fat Rat Being Grabbed?

Common uses include captioning the photo with ironic text in the style of a demotivational poster, or dropping the transparent PNG template into a video game screenshot so the rat replaces a held weapon.

Is Fat Rat Being Grabbed still popular?

Peak spread happened between late 2019 and mid 2020, and Baby Rose died in September 2020. The format is best treated as a classic ironic meme from that era rather than an actively trending one.

Fat Rat Being Grabbed

2018exploitable imageclassic

Published October 9, 2026

Fat Rat Being Grabbed is a photograph of a chunky white pet rat named Baby Rose being hoisted by the scruff of her neck, first posted to Instagram in October 2018. The image sat quietly online for over a year before an ironic Ratatouille demotivational poster sent it viral in late November 2019, kicking off a long run as a photoshop exploitable where the rat gets edited into video game screenshots as a makeshift weapon.

exploitable templates photoshop memes animal memes gaming delayed virality memes

Overview

Fat Rat Being Grabbed is built around one unflattering photo: a very round white rat lifted by the scruff, legs dangling, looking resigned to its fate1. The source animal is Baby Rose, a pet rat owned by Instagram account @socalratpack, and the original 2018 upload drew only 95 likes before anyone turned her into a meme1.

The format has two distinct lives. The first is caption-based, where the photo gets paired with ironic text in the style of a demotivational poster or a Crying Cat edit, often with Ratatouille references stuck to its face2. The second, which took over in 2020, is purely visual: a transparent cutout of Baby Rose gets pasted into video game screenshots so she looks like a weapon the player is wielding, from Doom pistols to the Team Fortress 2 Sandman baseball3 4.

The joke works because the rat looks absurdly heavy, slightly annoyed, and completely wrong as a melee implement. Editors lean into that mismatch, swapping her into games where the sprite replaces a bat, a club, or a gun grip, so the inventory HUD treats a chubby rodent like it belongs there5.

Gallery

Origin & Background

Platform

Instagram (source) / Reddit (viral spread)

Creator

@socalratpack; RamenDuck

Date

2018

On October 6th, 2018, Instagram user @socalratpack posted the source photograph of their pet rat Baby Rose being held up by the neck1. The image gained basically no attention at the time and only picked up 95 likes over the following two years1.

The first documented edit came on May 7th, 2019, when Twitter user @JUSTcatmeme turned the rat into a Crying Cat style reaction image6. A plain reupload of the source photo followed on May 31st from @emkamo_7, and on August 3rd Redditor umopapisdn99 posted a /r/hmmm edit that drew abs onto the rat, which cleared 470 upvotes8. None of these early edits broke containment.

How It Spread

The breakout moment came on November 29th, 2019, when Redditor RamenDuck posted an ironic demotivational poster riffing on Ratatouille to /r/okbuddyretard, which pulled over 44,400 upvotes2. The joke jumped platforms the same day, with an iFunny repost picking up more than 47,700 smiles9 and a December 22nd Instagram repost cracking 28,500 likes10. A wave of Demotivational Conversations posts followed through December, including a @slazo tweet on December 6th that cleared 900 retweets and 7,800 likes11, plus a dubbed version from @little_paisano on January 8th, 202012.

The second viral chapter started with video games. On February 3rd, 2020, @ThisBearHugs tweeted two rat cutouts with the caption about making a Doom mod where the rat is your weapon3. Three months later, on May 5th, an anonymous 4chan /v/ poster swapped the rat in for the Sandman baseball in Team Fortress 213, and a May 10th repost in the No context TF2 Facebook group pulled over 1,200 reactions14.

From May 14th onward, Twitter user @datonestarfox2 ran a series of video game screenshot edits starting with a Blood edit that collected 750 retweets and 4,800 likes4, then followed up on May 16th with a PNG template so anyone could paste Baby Rose into their own screenshots5. The rat's owners announced on September 20th, 2020, that Baby Rose had been put to sleep, with the farewell post drawing more than 395 likes15.

Timeline

2018-10-06

@socalratpack posts the source photo of Baby Rose to Instagram, which only reaches 95 likes.

How to Use This Meme

People typically use Fat Rat Being Grabbed in one of two ways. The caption format pairs the photo with ironic text, often a Ratatouille gag or an insult directed at the rat as if it were a cursed roommate2. The exploitable format uses the cutout PNG shared by @datonestarfox2 on May 16th, 2020, which creators drop into video game screenshots so the rat occupies the hand position where a weapon normally sits5.