Close-up of a gray and white cat with a crowd behind it, captioned 'Life or bath for dry cat? Life!!!!!!'

Life or Bath for Dry Cat

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Published November 14, 2026

Life or Bath for Dry Cat started as an under-the-radar March 2023 post on X from @Hannyer_man that reworked the 'Life or Death for Berryboy' voting format, trading Berryboy for a dry cat whose fate ends in a bath via the Soggy Cat image1. The comic went mostly unnoticed until YouTuber Memetastic recorded a voice-acted version in June 2023 that gave it a reusable audio clip3. By February 2024, that clip was powering TikTok and YouTube animations including a Team Fortress 2 remix from @beebcore6.

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Overview

The format copies the 'Life or Death for Berryboy' structure, in which a crowd shouts options at a central figure holding up two paper choices and then goes with the obviously worse one. In the cat version, the vote is 'life' or 'bath' for a dry cat, and the crowd picks 'bath,' which cuts to the Soggy Cat reaction image standing in for the aftermath1. Absurd cruelty inside a cheerful committee vote drives the joke, helped by the fact that the wet-cat punchline is already a well-traveled reaction image on its own4.

Most clips made after Memetastic's dub treat the audio as the template rather than the image. Animators drop their own characters into the dry cat role or the chorus, keeping the voice lines intact and swapping only the visuals3. Team Fortress 2 edits and original cartoon figures both show up across the February 2024 animations6.

Origin & Background

Platform
X (original comic) / YouTube (viral audio)
Creator
@Hannyer_man
Date
2023

On March 21, 2023, X user @Hannyer_man posted a still-image remix of the 'Life or Death for Berryboy' comic, replacing Berryboy with a cartoon cat and offering the choices 'life' or 'bath'1. The crowd votes 'bath,' and the final panel is the Soggy Cat photo filling in for the result. The post went almost nowhere at first, picking up only a handful of likes over the next year4.

Five days later, on March 26, 2023, an iFunny user reposted the image, where it did considerably better and reached over 3,200 smiles within a year2.

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How It Spread

Momentum shifted on June 16, 2023, when YouTuber Memetastic posted a voice-acted take on the comic, turning the vote into a short dialogue skit. That video passed 108,000 views in nine months and became the de facto audio clip for everything that followed3.

Animators picked up the clip in February 2024. On the 19th, YouTuber kalen uploaded an animated version that reached 48,000 views within a month5. YouTuber Eggz posted a separate animation using the same audio that same day and hit 212,000 views over the next month7. Four days later, TikToker @beebcore brought the audio into a Team Fortress 2 edit on February 23, 2024, and that version reached 124,000 views across the following two months6. Other TikTok animators followed with their own cartoon takes during that same window, including @marielfilm_8.

Timeline

2023-03-21

@Hannyer_man posts the original 'Life or Bath for Dry Cat' comic to X, a direct remix of 'Life or Death for Berryboy' using Soggy Cat as the punchline.

2023-03-26

The image is reposted to iFunny, where it performs far better than the X original and passes 3,200 smiles within a year.

2023-06-16

YouTuber Memetastic uploads a voice-acted version of the comic, creating the audio that drives later animations.

2024-02-19

YouTubers kalen and Eggz post animated versions set to Memetastic's audio on the same day, reaching 48,000 and 212,000 views respectively within a month.

2024-02-23

TikToker @beebcore posts a Team Fortress 2 animation using the audio that reaches 124,000 views in two months.

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