# Nyan Cat > Nyan Cat is a 2011 8-bit animated GIF meme featuring a cat with a cherry Pop-Tart body flying through space with a rainbow trail, set to 'Nyanyanyanyanyanyanya! Nyan Cat is an 8-bit animated GIF of a cat with a cherry Pop-Tart body flying through space, trailing a rainbow, set to the endlessly looping Japanese Vocaloid song "Nyanyanyanyanyanyanya!" by daniwellP. Artist Christopher Torres created the animation during a Red Cross charity livestream on April 2, 2011; three days later YouTuber saraj00n paired it with the song, and the combination quickly became one of the biggest viral memes of the early 2010s. The original video pulled in over 205 million YouTube views and sparked games, merchandise, a Webby Award, and a landmark NFT sale worth nearly $600,000. ## Origin On April 2, 2011, 25-year-old illustrator Christopher Torres of Dallas, Texas was running a charity drawing livestream for the Red Cross when two viewers made separate requests: one said "cat" and the other said "Pop Tart"[5]. Torres combined the two ideas into a quick doodle of a cat with a pastry body and rainbow trail, based on his own Russian Blue cat named Marty[2]. That same evening, he turned the sketch into his first-ever 8-bit animation and posted the GIF to his Twitter, Tumblr, and his webcomic site LOL-Comics[7]. Three days later, on April 5, 2011, YouTube user saraj00n (real name Sara June) took Torres' animation and set it to "Nyanyanyanyanyanyanya!," a Vocaloid song by Japanese producer daniwellP[5]. The track had originally been composed for Hatsune Miku, but the version used in the video was a cover by the UTAU voice Momone Momo, uploaded to Niconico on January 30, 2011 by a user called "Momomomo"[5]. Saraj00n titled the upload "Nyan Cat," and it hit one million views within two weeks[4]. Torres had no grand plans for the GIF. He'd used it as his Twitter avatar and moved on. Then overnight his inbox filled with hundreds of emails and the view counter kept climbing. As he told Trend & Chaos in 2021: "It was born out of pure randomness and love for everything cats, space, and the Internet"[7]. - **Platform:** 4chan/YouTube - **Creator:** Christopher Torres (artist, aka prguitarman), Sara June / saraj00n (YouTube video creator), daniwellP (original song composer) - **Date:** 2011-04 ## Overview Nyan Cat is a pixel-art animation of a gray cat with a cherry Pop-Tart for a body, zooming through a star-filled sky while leaving a bright rainbow trail behind it. The animation loops endlessly, paired with the high-energy Japanese Vocaloid track "Nyanyanyanyanyanyanya!" by daniwellP[3]. "Nyan" is the Japanese onomatopoeia for a cat's meow, the equivalent of "meow" in English[5]. The character's design is deliberately simple: big eyes, a cheerful expression, stubby legs that appear to run mid-flight, and a rectangular pastry torso in pink with sprinkles. That simplicity made Nyan Cat instantly recognizable and easy to remix. The whole package, cute cat plus catchy music plus hypnotic loop, created something weirdly addictive. People would leave the video running just to see how long they could stand it[2]. Torres originally called the character "Pop Tart Cat" before the internet collectively decided on Nyan Cat after saraj00n's YouTube upload[5]. Torres accepted the name change, saying he'd "continue to call it" Pop Tart Cat while being "happy with that choice, too"[5]. ## How It Spread By April 10, 2011, Nyan Cat had been picked up by Memebase, BuzzFeed, Tumblr, and Facebook[4]. Two days later, the Tosh.0 blog, CollegeHumor, and G4TV all posted about it[9]. Business Insider ranked the video ninth in its top ten viral videos for April 2011, with 7.2 million total views that month[5]. One early driver of spread was a comment on the original video by YouTuber xDaZJMx, who told viewers to play Slipknot's "Psychosocial" music video (muted) alongside the Nyan Cat audio. The stunt worked. Tens of thousands of users flooded Slipknot's video with "NYANNYANYANYANYANYANYANYANYANYANYANYANYA" comments, confusing the metal band's fanbase and dragging Nyan Cat into a completely different corner of YouTube[4]. On April 13, the site nyan.cat launched, originally as an unauthorized knockoff called "Toast Cat" that swapped the Pop-Tart for toast[2]. Torres criticized it as plagiarized, but by 2012 he'd gained control of the domain[5]. The site turned into a landing page where visitors watch the loop and rack up a "nyan time" score, with high-scorers displayed on an arcade-style leaderboard[2]. Sprint featured Nyan Cat in its Nexus 4G "Cats" commercial[4]. Remixes flooded YouTube in every genre imaginable. Fan-made games started appearing, including "Nyan Cat: Lost in Space" for iOS and Android, "Snake Nyan Cat," and a Robot Unicorn Attack variant called "Nyanicorn"[4]. Someone even built a working NES tech demo of Nyan Cat that ran on original hardware emulators[4]. By the end of 2011, the video was the fifth most-viewed YouTube video of the year[5]. It kept climbing, eventually passing 205 million views by May 2023[5]. ## How to Use Nyan Cat isn't a traditional exploitable template like Drake Hotline Bling or Distracted Boyfriend. It's more of a cultural reference and aesthetic that people drop into various contexts: 1. **The endless loop:** Share or embed the Nyan Cat video or GIF when something feels repetitive, hypnotic, or absurdly cheerful. The nyan.cat website is the classic way to do this[2]. 2. **Rainbow trail edits:** Photoshop or animate the Nyan Cat rainbow trail onto other objects, animals, or characters flying through space. 3. **Audio mashups:** Layer the Nyan Cat song over other videos for comedic contrast. The Slipknot "Psychosocial" mashup is the most well-known example of this format[4]. 4. **Reaction/nostalgia use:** Drop Nyan Cat into conversations about early 2010s internet culture, YouTube nostalgia, or the golden age of weird memes. 5. **Game/UI mods:** Replace progress bars, loading screens, or game elements with Nyan Cat animations, following the tradition of the original Windows progress bar mod[4]. ## Cultural Impact Nyan Cat was one of the defining viral hits of 2011, ranking fifth among the year's most-viewed YouTube videos[5]. It won the Webby Award for Meme of the Year in 2012[5] and drew coverage from CNN, BBC, The New York Times, and basically every internet culture outlet that existed at the time[12]. The 2013 Torres-Schmidt lawsuit against Warner Bros. and 5th Cell was one of the first high-profile cases of meme creators successfully enforcing copyright over their viral creations[10]. The settlement established that meme characters could be treated as intellectual property worth protecting and licensing. In 2021, the NFT sale of the remastered Nyan Cat for approximately $590,000 was one of the earliest major examples of a classic internet meme being sold as crypto art[1]. The sale came during the early NFT boom and helped normalize the idea that digital memes could hold real monetary value. Torres noted that NFT platforms let creators "retain their copyright and trademarked work," which he saw as important for artists in the meme space[1]. Nyan Cat appeared in the 2021 Sony Pictures film *The Mitchells vs. the Machines*[3] and inspired official merchandise collaborations with companies like Youtooz[3]. ## Fun Facts - Torres drew the original Nyan Cat doodle during a Red Cross charity livestream, making it one of the few iconic memes born from a fundraiser[7]. - The real cat behind Nyan Cat, Torres' Russian Blue named Marty, died in November 2012 from feline infectious peritonitis[5]. - Torres' original name for the character was "Pop Tart Cat," and he said he'd keep calling it that even after the internet picked "Nyan Cat"[5]. - When the original video was briefly taken down due to a copyright claim Torres didn't file, he received death threats from fans who blamed him. He spent hours contacting YouTube, saraj00n, and the song's creator daniwellP trying to get it restored[13]. - The nyan.cat domain was originally hijacked by someone trying to monetize the meme without Torres' permission, using a knockoff "Toast Cat" design[2]. ## Frequently Asked Questions ### What is Nyan Cat? Nyan Cat is a looping pixel-art animation of a gray cat with a cherry Pop-Tart body flying through space and leaving a rainbow trail, paired with the Japanese song "Nyanyanyanyanyanyanya!" by daniwellP[8]. It became one of the most recognizable internet memes of the early 2010s[2]. ### Where did Nyan Cat come from? Christopher Torres created the original animation on April 2, 2011 during a Red Cross charity drawing livestream, combining viewer requests for "cat" and "Pop Tart"[5]. YouTuber saraj00n (Sara June) paired it with the Vocaloid song and uploaded the combined video on April 5, 2011[8]. ### What does Nyan Cat mean? "Nyan" is the Japanese onomatopoeia for a cat's meow, similar to "meow" in English[5]. The name stuck after saraj00n titled the YouTube upload "Nyan Cat," replacing Torres' original name of "Pop Tart Cat"[8]. ### How do you use Nyan Cat? Nyan Cat is typically shared as a GIF or video loop for nostalgic or absurdist humor. Common uses include embedding the animation in conversations about early internet culture, creating rainbow trail edits, and making audio mashups with other songs[4]. ### Is Nyan Cat still popular? Nyan Cat's viral peak ran from 2011 to 2013, and it saw a resurgence in 2021 with the NFT sale for approximately $590,000[12]. As of late 2023, the original video had reached over 210 million views before being moved to a new channel[8]. ### Who created Nyan Cat? Christopher Torres, a Dallas-based artist known online as prguitarman, created the original animation[5]. The YouTube video version was created by Sara June (saraj00n), who combined Torres' GIF with daniwellP's Vocaloid song[8]. ### What is the Nyan Cat song? The song is "Nyanyanyanyanyanyanya!" composed by Japanese artist daniwellP, originally featuring the Vocaloid virtual singer Hatsune Miku[8]. The version in the viral video uses a cover by the UTAU voice Momone Momo, uploaded to Niconico on January 30, 2011[8]. ### How much did Nyan Cat sell for as an NFT? Torres sold a remastered version of the Nyan Cat GIF as an NFT on the Foundation platform in February 2021 for 300 ETH, worth approximately $587,000-$590,000 at the time[12]. ### What happened to the original Nyan Cat video? In November 2023, the saraj00n YouTube channel took down the original video and posted a call to free Palestine, changing the channel bio to "the meme you seek has been forcibly displaced"[2]. Torres moved the video to his own channel. ### Did Nyan Cat win any awards? Nyan Cat won the Webby Award for "Meme of the Year" in 2012[8]. It also ranked fifth among the most-viewed YouTube videos of 2011[8]. ### What was the Nyan Cat lawsuit about? In May 2013, Torres and Keyboard Cat creator Charles Schmidt sued Warner Bros. and 5th Cell for using their meme characters in the Scribblenauts video games without permission or payment[10]. The case settled in September 2013 with both creators being compensated[10]. ### What was the cat behind Nyan Cat? Nyan Cat was based on Torres' pet Russian Blue cat named Marty, who died in November 2012 from feline infectious peritonitis[8]. ### What is Tac Nayn? Tac Nayn is a dark-colored parody of Nyan Cat that flies in the opposite direction, created by a YouTube user in 2011. It's framed as Nyan Cat's evil counterpart[13]. ### What is nyan.cat? Nyan.cat is the official website where visitors can watch the Nyan Cat animation loop while accumulating a "nyan time" score[2]. It was originally launched by someone who tried to profit from the meme without Torres' permission, but Torres gained control of it by 2012[8]. ### What is Nyancoin? Nyancoin is an officially licensed cryptocurrency that launched in January 2014 based on the Nyan Cat meme[8]. A separate, unrelated ERC-20 token also called NYAN launched on Ethereum in 2021[6]. ## References 1. [Nyan Cat Meme — Origin, Meaning, History | MemesGuy]() 2. [Meme History: Nyan Cat]() 3. [The Origins of the Nyan Cat Meme: Uncovering the Creator Behind the Viral Sensation - JustCatCafe]() 4. [Nyan Cat - Know Your Meme]() 5. [Nyan Cat - Wikipedia]() 6. [Nyan Cat (NYAN) Price, Market Cap, Chart & Info | Coinpaprika]() 7. [Interview: “Nyan Cat” 10 Year Anniversary with Artist/Creator, Chris Torres - Trend & Chaos]() 8. [NyanSliders - TheBigBoss.org - iPhone software, apps, games, accesories, ringtones, themes, reviews]() 9. [◕ ◡ ◕]() 10. [Keyboard Cat and Nyan Cat Come Out Ahead in Lawsuit Against Warner Bros.]() 11. [Nyan Cat Party! | Tosh.0 Blog]() 12. [Nyan Cat Was Originally Called Pop-Tart Cat]() 13. ['Nyan Cat' flying Pop-Tart meme sells for nearly $600,000 as one-of-a-kind crypto art]() 14. [Nyan Cat Meme cursor – Custom Cursor]() 15. [Nyan Cat and the Rise of Internet Memes in Pop Culture]() 16. [Exploring Nyan Cat and Tac Nayn: The Viral Memes That Changed Internet Culture - WellBehavedCat.com]() 17. [What Is a Nyan Cat? The Internet Meme Explained]() 18. [Nyan Cat]() 19. [Flying Rainbow Pop-Tart Cat - CollegeHumor Video]() 20. [NYAN.CAT!]() 21. [? ? ?]() 22. [Juicy Beast Studio]() 23. [Sh**ty Viddy Saturday: Nyan Cat - Cheezburger - Funny Memes | Funny Pictures]() --- Source: https://meme.com/memes/nyan-cat Published by meme.com — The Internet Meme Library