What is Me Petting My Cat Before the Nuclear Blast?

It is a series of 2021 image macros using a photo of a man petting his cat while an implied nuclear detonation goes off behind him, captioned to frame the pair's final moments together.

Where did Me Petting My Cat Before the Nuclear Blast come from?

The source photo surfaced on Discord in March 2021, but the canonical caption template was built by Discord user Furbybrennan on April 9, 2021 and reposted to /r/okbuddyretard four days later.

What does Me Petting My Cat Before the Nuclear Blast mean?

It plays the quiet domestic scene against the apocalyptic context for dark humor, with later macros treating the setup as an open story that other posters can extend with alternate endings.

How do you use Me Petting My Cat Before the Nuclear Blast?

People typically add captions that continue or branch the story, often with ironic 'good ending' or 'bad ending' bracket explanations inside the image, chaining their entry to earlier macros in the shared timeline.

Is Me Petting My Cat Before the Nuclear Blast still popular?

Its peak was the May 2021 /r/196 and Twitter run, where posts cleared tens of thousands of upvotes and likes within days; the dedicated /r/MePettingMyCat subreddit still catalogs the format.

Me Petting My Cat Before the Nuclear Blast

2021image macroclassic

Published October 9, 2026

Me Petting My Cat Before the Nuclear Blast is a series of image macros built around a photo of a man calmly stroking his orange-and-white cat as a mushroom cloud approaches. The format broke out in early May 2021 on Reddit's /r/196 and Twitter, where fans turned a single doomed moment into a sprawling collaborative storyline with dozens of alternate endings.

cats exploitable templates dark humor memes collaborative fiction memes subreddit origin memes

Overview

The joke rides on the contrast between a tender domestic snapshot and the apocalyptic caption slapped on top of it. The source photo shows a man seated indoors, hand resting on a white-and-orange cat, with a blown-out window behind him that readers reinterpret as the shockwave of an incoming bomb1 2. The canonical caption, 'me petting my cat before the wave of the nuclear bomb hits us (it's our final moments together),' sets up the man and the cat, affectionately nicknamed Chugnus by posters, as a doomed pair facing their last seconds together2.

What pushed the format past a one-off gag was the way /r/196 users treated the image as the opening frame of a story rather than a punchline5. Follow-up macros filled in sequels, prequels, and parallel storylines using ironic 'good ending / bad ending' bracket captions, and compilers later stitched the entries into branching timelines of what happens to the man, the cat, and the bystanders7 3.

Gallery

Origin & Background

Platform

Discord / Reddit (viral spread)

Key People

Furbybrennan, with earliest edits by Discord user -Charon-7000

Date

2021

The original photograph's provenance is unknown, but it circulated through Discord before anyone attached nuclear captions to it. According to the Know Your Meme entry, user h189 posted the picture to the GAYSEX2 Discord server on March 20, 2021, and user -Charon-7000 posted the first two caption edits three days later on March 23, with Charon7000 cross-posting the raw photo to /r/cats on March 243.

The template that actually went viral was built on April 9, 2021 by Discord user Furbybrennan, who paired the brightened image with the 'final moments together' caption and dropped it in the r/okbuddyretard Discord server3. Redditor Greygun98 reposted it to /r/okbuddyretard on April 13 under the title 'will miss you chugnus...,' and the post pulled over 19,200 upvotes in two weeks2.

How It Spread

The macro bled out of /r/okbuddyretard through standard repost channels first. On April 21, 2021, Redditor LongDoggos pushed it to /r/memes for over 9,600 upvotes, and on April 30 a Tumblr repost of a Furbybrennan follow-up picked up more than 22,800 notes in a week3. The real breakout hit on May 1 when AlkarinePineapples posted it to /r/196, racking up 7,200 upvotes in three days5.

Twitter did the heavy lifting the next day. On May 2, 2021, @aitchwhore posted a version that pulled over 12,000 retweets and 94,000 likes within two days, while @citruscereal's post the same day cleared 4,000 retweets and 25,600 likes1 4. Hours later @phadingle added a third macro that explicitly extended the storyline, which gave later posters a shared continuity to riff on6.

Over May 3 and 4, dozens of /r/196 posters generated sequels and alternate endings in the good ending / bad ending format. Redditor Splurted_The_Gurt built a consolidated timeline post that drew 4,600 upvotes7, then followed up by founding the dedicated /r/MePettingMyCat subreddit on May 3, which pulled in over 2,000 subscribers in its first day3. An extended timeline posted the following day collected additional branches contributed across Reddit and Twitter8.

Timeline

2021-03-20

Discord user h189 posts the source photograph to the GAYSEX2 server.

2021-03-23

User -Charon-7000 posts the first two caption edits on the same Discord server.

2021-04-09

Discord user Furbybrennan creates the canonical 'final moments together' template.

2021-04-13

Greygun98 reposts the template to /r/okbuddyretard, picking up 19,200+ upvotes.

2021-05-01

AlkarinePineapples brings the macro to /r/196, kicking off the format's expansion.

2021-05-02

@aitchwhore and @citruscereal post viral Twitter versions; @phadingle adds a story-extending third macro.

2021-05-03

Splurted_The_Gurt posts the first full timeline and launches /r/MePettingMyCat.

2021-05-04

Extended timelines compiling the branching endings spread across Reddit and Twitter.

How to Use This Meme

The template typically treats the original photo as a story prompt rather than a static reaction image. Common conventions include adding sequential captions, writing 'good ending' or 'bad ending' tags with ironic bracket explanations inside the image, and referring to the cat as Chugnus. Creators often chain their contributions to earlier macros to extend the shared timeline rather than invent a standalone joke.