Grumpy Cat’s Death Marks the End of the Joyful Internet

Since being posted, the cute cat pic has received 38,000 upvotes, along with comparisons to grumpy-faced stars and famous misers. On October 10, Reddit user Diana (u/MickPawsome) shared a snap of her kitten Mick to the r/Aww forum. Despite describing him as a “little bundle of joy,” Mick’s hilariously “angry” expression grabbed both Redditors’ attention and stole their hearts.

Born in 2012, the cat’s unique expression—which was the result of feline dwarfism and a pronounced underbite—spawned countless memes and allegedly made his owner, Tabantha Bundeson, a wealthy woman. Tardar Sauce was born the runt of her litter on 4 April 2012, with a combination of feline dwarfism and an underbite thought to be behind her disgruntled expression. She was launched into internet superstardom when Bundesen’s brother, visiting from Ohio, put a photo of “Grumpy Cat” on Reddit that September. “Besides being our baby and a cherished memory of the family, Grumpy Cat has helped millions of people smile all around the world – even when times were tough.

Grumpy Cat became one of the first internet-famous pets, raking in hundreds of millions of dollars throughout her life. At the time of her death, Grumpy Cat had 2.4 million Instagram followers and 1.4 million Twitter followers. Grumpy Cat had a form of dwarfism that yielded a perpetual frown. She rose to prominence after a photo of her was posted to Reddit. Tardar Sauce, better known as internet celebrity “Grumpy Cat,” has died at the age of 7 from a urinary tract infection.

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The seven-year-old cat, real name Tardar Sauce or Tard, became one of the internet’s first “petfluencers” after gaining fame online for her perpetually gloomy gaze, launching an empire worth millions. She died in the arms of her owner, Tabatha Bundesen, in Phoenix, Arizona, on Tuesday morning after complications from a urinary tract infection. The biggest memes were funny looking cats like Tardar and Lil Bub, or Mohawk Guy, and “Call Me Maybe.” Memes weren’t yet weapons of mass disruption and we still knew what a troll was. Now, Grumpy Cat is dead—the feline’s owners announced her passing today on Twitter—and with her goes an era in which the internet was more a place of joy than hate, uplift rather than harassment. The first Avengers movie came out, and Hunger Games premiered. Hope was high, and Reddit—the web’s “front page”—was where anyone with a cute pet could get thousands of upvotes.

• What began as a simple cat photo morphed into a sprawling business that sold an endless array of useless online products.
• On June 11, 2014, it was announced that Lifetime would produce a film starring Grumpy Cat, entitled Grumpy Cat’s Worst Christmas Ever.
• The pieces are scheduled to be auctioned off online between May 27th and May 31st, culminating in a one-night exhibition at the art center on the closing night of the event.
• The sourpuss with the piercing look of contempt quickly became a meme, and placing bold words above and below her frown became a common way for humans to express grumpy thoughts.

Cats were the most popular, but occasionally a dog or two would slip in. Then, in September of that year, Bryan Bundesen posted a picture of his sister Tabatha’s cat, Tardar Sauce, an 11-month old tabby with feline dwarfism that perpetually looked annoyed. On September 17th, 2013, American pet food company Nestle Purina PetCare announced via its Facebook page that Tardar Sauce has been hired as the official “spokescat” for its Friskies brand of cat food. The announcement also revealed that the celebrity cat will make her first official appearance on October 15th at the annual Friskies Cat Video Contest Awards, where she will receive a lifetime achievement award. Grumpy Cat, an internet celebrity because of her upset facial expression, died from complications that arose from a urinary tract infection.

The “Don’t Read the Comments” rule applied, but the comments didn’t automatically show up in your Twitter mentions. The challenges were about ice buckets and “Gangnam Style”—things far less dangerous than eating Tide Pods. Yes, we still have Drake and Beyoncé to give us challenges—some stars will always burn bright—but even their presence online only feels like small shafts of light in an otherwise shadowy, and shady, abyss.

While plenty of cats have been famous online, Grumpy Cat’s standing in the pantheon of Online Cats is unique. For most cats, their fame rests entirely in a specific, memeable image that they’re known for — see keyboard or lime cat. But Grumpy Cat was a meme unto herself, because her look was carried with her everywhere she went. What’s so bad about Grumpy Cat raking in all that money for a family that surely loved her? But in many ways, the rise and fall of Grumpy Cat in the past decade mirrors the rise and fall of the internet itself. It used to be a place you could go to watch stupid videos and indulge in cat photos.

Meet grumpy cat

Fans of the popular feline can buy Grumpy Cat merchandise including clothing, pillows, mugs and phone cases. At the height of her popularity, she starred in the Lifetime movie, “Grumpy Cat’s Worst Christmas” and was featured in a Honey Nut Cheerios commercial. The cat was even featured on the cover of New York Magazine and had a best-selling book. Diana told Newsweek that the photo she recently shared of Mick as a kitten was actually taken two years ago, when the family first brought him home. Now an internet star in his own right, Mick has 23,000 followers and 21,000 page likes on Facebook. Real name Tardar Sauce, the original “Grumpy Cat” was an internet sensation.

In May 2013, Broken Road Productions optioned Grumpy Cat for a “Garfield-like feature film” adaptation. Film producer Todd Garner said, “We think we can build a big family comedy around this character”. Licensed merchandise like T-shirts and mugs are advertised on the Grumpy Cat website and sold at Hot Topic.

It was a photo Bundeson’s brother shared to Reddit that launched Tardar Sauce’s career as an influencer and professional internet meme. Eventually, Bundeson left her day job at Red Lobster to manage her pet’s soaring success. Grumpy Cat has helped millions of people smile all around the world — even when times were tough,” her family wrote in the Twitter and Instagram posts announcing her death. The Reddit post was instantly met with photoshopped parodies and image macros from others, reaching the front page with more than 25,300 up votes in the first 24 hours. Meanwhile, the Imgur page gained nearly 1,030,000 views in the first 48 hours.

Business Cat

On October 3rd, an official Twitter account, @RealGrumpyCat, was also launched. As of August 2013, Grumpy Cat’s official Facebook fan page has more than 1.1 million likes. Grumpy Cat was born in Morristown, Arizona on April 4th, 2012 to her owner Tabatha Bundesen. The original photos of Grumpy Cat were posted to the /r/pics subreddit by Bundesen’s brother Bryan on September 23rd, 2012 . What began as a simple cat photo morphed into a sprawling business that sold an endless array of useless online products. Far from her humble beginnings as a simple Reddit meme, Grumpy Cat became completely commoditized.

Although she had a “grumpy” appearance and was called “Grumpy Cat”, according to the Bundesens, “Ninety-nine percent of the time she is just a regular cat.” Last year they won $750,000 in damages from a US coffee company for violating the terms of their agreement to use the cat’s image on a line of iced coffee drinks called “Grumppuccinos”. “Besides being our baby and a cherished member of the family, Grumpy Cat has helped millions of people smile all around the world — even when times were tough,” according to the post. Beloved internet-famous petGrumpy Cat has died at the age of 7 after “complications from a recent urinary tract infection that unfortunately became too much for her to overcome.” The pieces are scheduled to be auctioned off online between May 27th and May 31st, culminating in a one-night exhibition at the art center on the closing night of the event. On May 17th, 2019, the official social media accounts for Grumpy Cat announced that Grumpy Cat died at age seven after contracting a urinary tract infection.

Elon Musk has discussed putting all of Twitter behind a paywall

The same day, three video clips of the cat playing indoors were uploaded to YouTube by Bundesen the same day. Tardar Sauce was one of a litter of four kittens born to a calico mother and a blue-and-white tabby putative father at the home of her owner, Tabatha Bundesen of Morristown, Arizona. The Bundesens said that Tardar Sauce’s face appeared grumpy because the feline had a form of dwarfism. Though the mother and father were described as “normal-sized domestic short-hair cats”, Tardar Sauce was undersized and had hind legs that are “a bit different”. Both she and her brother, Pokey, were born with “a flat face, bubble eyes, and a short tail”.

She, like any good meme, brought us joy—and that won’t be forgotten. Should you need it, you can always meander over to Grumpy Cat’s Instagram (which still has 2.7 million followers) to try to feel something again—you’ll just have to dodge a ton of ads to do it. Noting that Grumpy Cat had met the recently deceased Marvel Comics leader Stan Lee — who mimicked her frown in several photos — Twitter user Greeshma Megha wrote, “Hope they meet in heaven.” Her meteoric rise, propelled by users on Reddit and other outlets, included a visit to the SXSW Interactive Festival in 2013, where people lined up around the block to take a photo with her.

Born in 2012, Grumpy Cat became a darling of memes, cat fanciers and anyone who needed to be reminded that somewhere out there, there was a cat who looked as grumpy as they felt. Grumpy Cat, an Internet celebrity and meme darling, has died. She’s seen here posing on the set of Cats on Broadway in 2016.

‘Grumpy Cat Reborn’

At one point, Lifetime even made a https://cryptolisting.org/ holiday movie, Grumpy Cat’s Worst Christmas Ever. It was directed by the guy who made the 2007 Alvin and the Chipmunks movie, and it had Aubrey Plaza voicing Grumpy Cat. It’s legitimately inspired casting, even if it’s a little bewildering that this all happened. Her wild success came with a price—capitalism ruined Grumpy Cat.

Today is the final day of our hard-won fall fundraising drive. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones when your gift will be doubled and go twice as far. They all add up to make our independent journalism possible. It’s fitting that What is Grumpy Cat‘s death comes so close to the shuttering of the website YTMND. You’re the Man Now Dog, like Reddit or Know Your Meme, was a place where, not too long ago, people went online for collective amusement.

Stuffed toys are also available, the original official plush was produced by Gund, though as of August 2018, no Grumpy Cat merchandise was available on the Gund website. Ganz, the company behind Webkinz, produced a small Grumpy Cat plush which allowed anyone to play with her electronic likeness on the Webkinz website. CNN, CBS News, and CNET called Grumpy Cat the undisputed “biggest star” of SXSW Interactive over Elon Musk, Al Gore, and Neil Gaiman. Over 600 fans waited for hours in the line, which was nearly three blocks long, to take a photo. Among the crowds were Internet entrepreneur Dennis Crowley, singer Andrew W.K., and actor Ian Somerhalder.

Grumpy Cat, the ubiquitous internet celebrity whose permanent scowl spoke for all of us in our darkest moments, died in the arms of her “mommy” on Tuesday, her family said on Friday. Over a year later on February 19th, 2013, the image was reposted on the Cheezburger site Memebase with the title “Grumpy Grandma is Grumpy.” In the following three weeks, the post gained more than 460 upvotes. On September 27th, Grumpycats.com was created as the official homepage for Grumpy Cat, blogging videos, images and news mentions of the cat.

In 2018, Ms. Bundesen won $710,000 in a copyright infringement suit against a coffee company that made Grumpy Cat Grumppuccino. It’s no secret that the internet loves cats, as well as joking-not-joking about clinical depression; really, the frowny-faced creature was practically destined for stardom. On September 30th, 2012, an official t-shirt line was launched through Clothes That Kill, marking the beginning of Grumpy Cat’s commoditization.