Wawa Cat — Round tabby and white cat with grumpy expression sitting on a wooden table

Wawa Cat

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Published November 9, 2026

Wawa Cat, also known as Oh The Misery Cat, is a photo edit of Japanese cat Kotaro with his pointy ears digitally erased, turning a quiet 2021 Instagram pet post into one of the stranger feline edits of its year1. By early 2022, YouTubers were pairing the earless face with lyrics from Imagine Dragons and J.I.D.'s Arcane song Enemy, giving the image a second name across the platform3.

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Overview

A typical Wawa Cat edit keeps Kotaro's face intact while photoshopping over his pointed ears, leaving a smooth, slightly uncanny forehead that reads as both innocent and unsettling1. Fans grew a small vocabulary around the look, calling him a 'wawa' and spinning off side jokes like the 'wawall,' an architectural pun that appeared on Reddit's r/wawacat sub in October 20219.

Oh The Misery variants are video edits. Creators sync a zooming earless Kotaro to the lyric 'Oh the misery, everybody wants to be my enemy' from the Arcane theme by Imagine Dragons and J.I.D., often using the CapCut 3D Zoom Effect for the push-in on the cat's face7. Because Kotaro's expression already reads as defeated once his ears are gone, the lyric plays like an inner monologue over a sad little blob of a head.

Origin & Background

Platform
Instagram (source photo) / Twitter (viral spread)
Date
2021

Wawa Cat is based on Kotaro, a real cat living in Japan with housemates Niko and Toro on the shared Instagram page @nikoandkota.toro3. Kotaro's owner posted the source photo of him sitting on a desk on May 5, 2021, where it collected roughly 5,200 likes over the next year1. The creator of the earless edit stays unidentified, though Twitter user @OwlPower669 made the earliest confirmed public posting on June 22, 20212. A since-deleted tweet from the suspended account @Isnt__Jerry, captioned 'Hear no evil,' is a likely earlier source preserved in screenshots from late June 20218.

How It Spread

Early reposts moved across Twitter and Instagram before landing on Reddit. @NlGHTGUARDS shared the earless photo with the word 'Bitch' written across it on June 29, 2021, though the tweet earned no likes4. On October 9, 2021, Instagram account @zeldas.butt set the image to a Kanye West song and picked up roughly 55,200 views and 14,100 likes over eight months5.

The subreddit r/wawacat saw its first Wawa Cat image on October 23, 2021, when Redditor NyanSquidd shared a 'wawa biology' post that earned five upvotes6. The same day, NickTheMelonLord posted a 'wawall' image to the sub9.

The Oh The Misery alias arrived in 2022 after Arcane's November 2021 debut put Imagine Dragons and J.I.D.'s Enemy in heavy rotation7. YouTuber Joe Ballin uploaded the earliest documented Oh The Misery Cat video on March 11, 2022, with YouTuber Crexlon posting a different cut a day later. By May 12, YouTuber Shotgun9009 was sourcing GIFs from a 4chan thread for an edit that reached around 11,000 views in four weeks3.

Timeline

2021-05-05

Kotaro's owner posts the original desk photo on the Instagram page @nikoandkota.toro.

2021-06-22

Twitter user @OwlPower669 shares the earliest confirmed posting of the earless Wawa Cat edit.

2021-06-29

Twitter user @NlGHTGUARDS posts a Wawa Cat edit with the word 'Bitch' written over it.

2021-10-09

Instagram account @zeldas.butt posts a Wawa Cat video set to a Kanye West song, drawing around 55,200 views.

2021-10-23

Redditor NyanSquidd posts the first image to r/wawacat; NickTheMelonLord shares the 'wawall' pun the same day.

2022-03-11

YouTuber Joe Ballin uploads the earliest documented Oh The Misery Cat video.

2022-05-12

YouTuber Shotgun9009 posts a Wawa Cat edit using GIFs from a 4chan thread.

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