Persian Cat Room Guardian — White Persian cat sculpture with outstretched arms sitting on a cardboard box, next to a close-up of its face.

Persian Cat Room Guardian

2013reaction imageclassic

Published September 21, 2026

Persian Cat Room Guardian, also known as Cat-Monkey, is a reaction image series built from photos of a wide-eyed stuffed toy cat perched on a box with its arms flung open. Artist AnyaBoz sewed and photographed the plush in 2013 as a decorative art piece, but the pictures sat unnoticed for nearly three years before Instagram accounts turned the pose into shorthand for exaggerated disbelief in February 2016.

reaction memes cats deviantart memes delayed virality memes facial expression memes

Overview

The format pairs the stuffed cat's open-armed, wide-eyed pose with captions describing frustrating or embarrassing everyday moments, using the toy's expression to convey stunned disbelief1. Common setups include girlfriend arguments, parental scoldings, gym etiquette failures, and any situation where the poster feels blindsided2. The plush has a mouth stitched into a permanent gape and long, spindly limbs, giving it the vaguely primate look that early viewers latched onto with the nicknames Cat-Monkey and Monkey-Cat2.

Beyond straight image macros, the photos fueled Photoshop battles where redditors pasted the guardian into film stills, historical paintings, and unrelated memes2. The pose is flexible enough that the same shot works for annoyance, shock, or mock outrage depending on the caption.

Origin & Background

Platform
DeviantArt (source), Instagram / Reddit (viral spread)
Creator
AnyaBoz
Date
2013

DeviantArt artist AnyaBoz uploaded the photograph titled "Persian Cat Room Guardian" on August 5th, 2013, describing room guardians as "small creatures that protect one's home from negative spirits and energies"2. The piece was a handmade plush art project rather than an attempt at a meme, and the post drew little attention outside AnyaBoz's regular DeviantArt audience for the next two and a half years.

How It Spread

The photos finally broke out on February 5th, 2016, when Instagram account @ratchetpeoplemeet reposted two of them with the caption "When you ask your girl what's wrong and she gets mad even more and says 'you're supposed to know'," pulling more than 8,500 likes within four days2. AnyaBoz answered the sudden traffic the next day with a Tumblr post admitting the four-year-old cat had gone viral, adding a watermark to the originals and asking future posters to credit her artist pages1.

On February 7th, Redditor captainchase submitted the photograph to /r/photoshopbattles as "whatever this monkey looking thing is," and the thread cleared 2,100 upvotes at 91% approval inside a day, with commenters producing dozens of edits2. That same day a post to /r/OutOfTheLoop asked where the "stuffed white monkey" came from, and Instagram meme page @gymmemesofficial ran a gym-etiquette version of the format captioned "When you get done with the dumbbells and see someone else racked theirs in place of yours"2. AnyaBoz used her Tumblr note to point readers to her Facebook, DeviantArt, and Tumblr pages, though she acknowledged the original meme creator never credited her1.

Timeline

2013-08-05

AnyaBoz uploads the handmade plush photo "Persian Cat Room Guardian" to DeviantArt.

2016-02-05

Instagram page @ratchetpeoplemeet posts the first widely shared image macro, gaining 8,500+ likes in four days.

2016-02-06

AnyaBoz posts on Tumblr acknowledging the plush has "gone viral," watermarks the originals, and asks for credit.

2016-02-07

Redditor captainchase submits the image to /r/photoshopbattles, drawing 2,100+ upvotes and dozens of edits within 24 hours.

2016-02-07

A /r/OutOfTheLoop thread asks about the "stuffed white monkey," and @gymmemesofficial posts a gym-themed macro the same day.

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