Caturday

2005Weekly image posting tradition / image macroclassic

Also known as: Caturday Meme · Caturday

Caturday is a 2005 4chan /b/ tradition of sharing cat photos and LOLcat memes every Saturday, evolving into an internet ritual observed globally with the hashtag #Caturday.

Caturday is the internet tradition of posting cat images and LOLcat memes every Saturday. The practice started on 4chan's /b/ board around 2005, spread through communities like LiveJournal and I Can Has Cheezburger, and turned into a weekly internet ritual still observed across social media. The hashtag #Caturday trends on Twitter most weekends, with users sharing photos and memes of their cats1.

lolcat memes2005 memesweekly tradition memesi can has cheezburger memescaptioned animal memes

TL;DR

Caturday is the internet tradition of posting cat images and LOLcat memes every Saturday.

Overview

Caturday is Saturday, but for cats. Every week, users across platforms post cat photos, cat memes, and LOLcat image macros with intentionally misspelled "lolspeak" captions1. What started as a 4chan posting habit grew into a weekly internet holiday for feline appreciation2.

Classic Caturday posts feature a cat photo with an Impact-font caption in broken English. Lolspeak reads like baby talk mixed with internet slang: "I CAN HAS CHEEZBURGER?" or "IM IN UR KITCHN, EATN UR FOODZ"2. The humor comes from imagining cats speaking in this childlike dialect about their everyday situations. Modern #Caturday posts usually skip the captions and just showcase people's cats with the hashtag1.

Tracing the exact birth of Caturday involves multiple threads. The domain "caturday.com" was registered on April 30, 2005, and Time magazine's Lev Grossman placed the concept's roots in early that year after reader feedback corrected his initial estimate5. One of the first non-4chan uses of the name was a Blogspot blog called "Caturday" created November 16, 2005, by a New Hampshire user named Sharyn who posted stories and photos of her own cats rather than LOLcat macros4.

The meme tradition itself, posting LOLcat image macros on Saturdays, took root on 4chan's /b/ board1. A LiveJournal community launched on February 5, 2006, with the rallying cry "Post some fucking cats!"3. Urban Dictionary's first definition appeared on October 24, 20066, and one of the earliest archived Caturday threads on 4chan dates to December 12 of that year4.

Origin & Background

Platform
4chan /b/
Creator
Unknown
Date
2005
Year
2005

Tracing the exact birth of Caturday involves multiple threads. The domain "caturday.com" was registered on April 30, 2005, and Time magazine's Lev Grossman placed the concept's roots in early that year after reader feedback corrected his initial estimate. One of the first non-4chan uses of the name was a Blogspot blog called "Caturday" created November 16, 2005, by a New Hampshire user named Sharyn who posted stories and photos of her own cats rather than LOLcat macros.

The meme tradition itself, posting LOLcat image macros on Saturdays, took root on 4chan's /b/ board. A LiveJournal community launched on February 5, 2006, with the rallying cry "Post some fucking cats!". Urban Dictionary's first definition appeared on October 24, 2006, and one of the earliest archived Caturday threads on 4chan dates to December 12 of that year.

How It Spread

I Can Has Cheezburger launched in early 2007 and blew open the doors for LOLcat culture, posting cat content daily rather than just on Saturdays. The site's first Caturday-tagged image went up on January 13, 2007, two days after launch. That same year, the trend appeared on MetaFilter, Fark, and in the University of Pennsylvania's student newspaper. By mid-2007, search interest for the term hit its all-time peak.

A Caturday Tumblr blog appeared on June 1, 2009, billing itself as "probably the best cat blog in the world". Through the 2010s, #Caturday became a regular trending hashtag on Twitter. By 2021, Metro News reported it was trending most Saturdays, with users sharing cat photos to an audience well beyond 4chan's original community.

Platforms

4chanRedditTumblrTwitterInstagram

Timeline

2009-08-13

Entry published on Know Your Meme

View on Google Trends

How to Use This Meme

Joining Caturday is straightforward:

1

Wait for Saturday (though the day-of-week rule is loosely enforced these days)

2

Take a photo of your cat or find a funny cat image

3

For the classic format, add an Impact-font caption in lolspeak ("I IZ IN UR HOUZ, EATIN UR FUDZ")

4

Post with #Caturday on Twitter, Instagram, Tumblr, or your platform of choice

Create Your Own

Cultural Impact

Caturday kicked off the LOLcat movement that turned cats into the defining animals of internet culture. The weekly tradition fed directly into I Can Has Cheezburger, one of the biggest humor websites of the late 2000s. LOLcats spread from imageboards to college campuses and mainstream news within a year of ICHC's launch.

The term "lolcat," which grew from the same culture, was a runner-up for the American Dialect Society's "Most Creative" Word of the Year, losing to "Googlegänger". The #Caturday hashtag itself became a weekly fixture on Twitter, trending most Saturdays as of 2021 with users proudly showing off their cats.

Full History

Putting funny captions on cat photos didn't start with the internet. Photographer Harry Whittier Frees created staged photos of kittens in human situations in the early 1900s, including the well-known "Five O'clock Tea" image. Caturday gave this long-standing impulse a digital home and a weekly schedule.

When 4chan users adopted Saturday as cat posting day, the practice quickly developed its own language. Lolspeak wasn't random misspelling. It followed consistent internal rules for conjugation and spelling, blending baby talk, internet slang, and references to other memes. The format proved durable enough that volunteers translated the entire Bible into lolspeak at lolcatbible.com, complete with guides on proper translation technique.

The LiveJournal community that formed in early 2006 showed how seriously early adopters took their weekly cat holiday. Rules demanded images in every post, required image counts under cuts for dial-up users, and banned cat-themed icons, colorbars, and layouts. Animal abuse images meant an instant ban, and disabling comments got your post deleted. The community described Caturday as "the greatest holiday on the internets" and grew to over 2,196 members.

I Can Has Cheezburger's 2007 launch took the concept far beyond imageboards. The site reportedly sourced its first image from the Something Awful forums and quickly became one of the most popular humor destinations on the web. LOLcat culture spread to college campuses, mainstream blogs, and news outlets within the year.

By the 2010s, most people posting #Caturday had no connection to 4chan or lolspeak. The tradition simplified: share a photo of your cat on Saturday. The captioned image macro format faded outside of intentional throwbacks, but the core ritual endured. I Can Has Cheezburger evolved into a broader funny-animal content hub that still publishes daily.

Fun Facts

Photographing cats in funny poses with humorous captions dates to the early 1900s, with Harry Whittier Frees creating staged kitten photos like "Five O'clock Tea".

Caturday is older than the public versions of Facebook and Twitter, and almost as old as YouTube.

The LiveJournal community required posters with multiple images to list how many were under the cut, specifically to help "those who still use dial up or have shitty pcs".

Urban Dictionary defines Caturday as "the greatest holiday on the internets".

The LiveJournal Caturday community strictly banned any content that wasn't an actual cat photo or macro, including cat-themed icons, colorbars, and decorative layouts.

Derivatives & Variations

Themed Caturday Variations

Specific types of cat content (illegal smol cats, cats doing jobs, etc.) shared on Saturdays

(2005)

Frequently Asked Questions

Caturday

2005Weekly image posting tradition / image macroclassic

Also known as: Caturday Meme · Caturday

Caturday is a 2005 4chan /b/ tradition of sharing cat photos and LOLcat memes every Saturday, evolving into an internet ritual observed globally with the hashtag #Caturday.

Caturday is the internet tradition of posting cat images and LOLcat memes every Saturday. The practice started on 4chan's /b/ board around 2005, spread through communities like LiveJournal and I Can Has Cheezburger, and turned into a weekly internet ritual still observed across social media. The hashtag #Caturday trends on Twitter most weekends, with users sharing photos and memes of their cats.

lolcat memes 2005 memes weekly tradition memes i can has cheezburger memes captioned animal memes

TL;DR

Caturday is the internet tradition of posting cat images and LOLcat memes every Saturday.

Overview

Caturday is Saturday, but for cats. Every week, users across platforms post cat photos, cat memes, and LOLcat image macros with intentionally misspelled "lolspeak" captions. What started as a 4chan posting habit grew into a weekly internet holiday for feline appreciation.

Classic Caturday posts feature a cat photo with an Impact-font caption in broken English. Lolspeak reads like baby talk mixed with internet slang: "I CAN HAS CHEEZBURGER?" or "IM IN UR KITCHN, EATN UR FOODZ". The humor comes from imagining cats speaking in this childlike dialect about their everyday situations. Modern #Caturday posts usually skip the captions and just showcase people's cats with the hashtag.

Tracing the exact birth of Caturday involves multiple threads. The domain "caturday.com" was registered on April 30, 2005, and Time magazine's Lev Grossman placed the concept's roots in early that year after reader feedback corrected his initial estimate. One of the first non-4chan uses of the name was a Blogspot blog called "Caturday" created November 16, 2005, by a New Hampshire user named Sharyn who posted stories and photos of her own cats rather than LOLcat macros.

The meme tradition itself, posting LOLcat image macros on Saturdays, took root on 4chan's /b/ board. A LiveJournal community launched on February 5, 2006, with the rallying cry "Post some fucking cats!". Urban Dictionary's first definition appeared on October 24, 2006, and one of the earliest archived Caturday threads on 4chan dates to December 12 of that year.

Origin & Background

Platform
4chan /b/
Creator
Unknown
Date
2005
Year
2005

Tracing the exact birth of Caturday involves multiple threads. The domain "caturday.com" was registered on April 30, 2005, and Time magazine's Lev Grossman placed the concept's roots in early that year after reader feedback corrected his initial estimate. One of the first non-4chan uses of the name was a Blogspot blog called "Caturday" created November 16, 2005, by a New Hampshire user named Sharyn who posted stories and photos of her own cats rather than LOLcat macros.

The meme tradition itself, posting LOLcat image macros on Saturdays, took root on 4chan's /b/ board. A LiveJournal community launched on February 5, 2006, with the rallying cry "Post some fucking cats!". Urban Dictionary's first definition appeared on October 24, 2006, and one of the earliest archived Caturday threads on 4chan dates to December 12 of that year.

How It Spread

I Can Has Cheezburger launched in early 2007 and blew open the doors for LOLcat culture, posting cat content daily rather than just on Saturdays. The site's first Caturday-tagged image went up on January 13, 2007, two days after launch. That same year, the trend appeared on MetaFilter, Fark, and in the University of Pennsylvania's student newspaper. By mid-2007, search interest for the term hit its all-time peak.

A Caturday Tumblr blog appeared on June 1, 2009, billing itself as "probably the best cat blog in the world". Through the 2010s, #Caturday became a regular trending hashtag on Twitter. By 2021, Metro News reported it was trending most Saturdays, with users sharing cat photos to an audience well beyond 4chan's original community.

Platforms

4chanRedditTumblrTwitterInstagram

Timeline

2009-08-13

Entry published on Know Your Meme

View on Google Trends

How to Use This Meme

Joining Caturday is straightforward:

1

Wait for Saturday (though the day-of-week rule is loosely enforced these days)

2

Take a photo of your cat or find a funny cat image

3

For the classic format, add an Impact-font caption in lolspeak ("I IZ IN UR HOUZ, EATIN UR FUDZ")

4

Post with #Caturday on Twitter, Instagram, Tumblr, or your platform of choice

Create Your Own

Cultural Impact

Caturday kicked off the LOLcat movement that turned cats into the defining animals of internet culture. The weekly tradition fed directly into I Can Has Cheezburger, one of the biggest humor websites of the late 2000s. LOLcats spread from imageboards to college campuses and mainstream news within a year of ICHC's launch.

The term "lolcat," which grew from the same culture, was a runner-up for the American Dialect Society's "Most Creative" Word of the Year, losing to "Googlegänger". The #Caturday hashtag itself became a weekly fixture on Twitter, trending most Saturdays as of 2021 with users proudly showing off their cats.

Full History

Putting funny captions on cat photos didn't start with the internet. Photographer Harry Whittier Frees created staged photos of kittens in human situations in the early 1900s, including the well-known "Five O'clock Tea" image. Caturday gave this long-standing impulse a digital home and a weekly schedule.

When 4chan users adopted Saturday as cat posting day, the practice quickly developed its own language. Lolspeak wasn't random misspelling. It followed consistent internal rules for conjugation and spelling, blending baby talk, internet slang, and references to other memes. The format proved durable enough that volunteers translated the entire Bible into lolspeak at lolcatbible.com, complete with guides on proper translation technique.

The LiveJournal community that formed in early 2006 showed how seriously early adopters took their weekly cat holiday. Rules demanded images in every post, required image counts under cuts for dial-up users, and banned cat-themed icons, colorbars, and layouts. Animal abuse images meant an instant ban, and disabling comments got your post deleted. The community described Caturday as "the greatest holiday on the internets" and grew to over 2,196 members.

I Can Has Cheezburger's 2007 launch took the concept far beyond imageboards. The site reportedly sourced its first image from the Something Awful forums and quickly became one of the most popular humor destinations on the web. LOLcat culture spread to college campuses, mainstream blogs, and news outlets within the year.

By the 2010s, most people posting #Caturday had no connection to 4chan or lolspeak. The tradition simplified: share a photo of your cat on Saturday. The captioned image macro format faded outside of intentional throwbacks, but the core ritual endured. I Can Has Cheezburger evolved into a broader funny-animal content hub that still publishes daily.

Fun Facts

Photographing cats in funny poses with humorous captions dates to the early 1900s, with Harry Whittier Frees creating staged kitten photos like "Five O'clock Tea".

Caturday is older than the public versions of Facebook and Twitter, and almost as old as YouTube.

The LiveJournal community required posters with multiple images to list how many were under the cut, specifically to help "those who still use dial up or have shitty pcs".

Urban Dictionary defines Caturday as "the greatest holiday on the internets".

The LiveJournal Caturday community strictly banned any content that wasn't an actual cat photo or macro, including cat-themed icons, colorbars, and decorative layouts.

Derivatives & Variations

Themed Caturday Variations

Specific types of cat content (illegal smol cats, cats doing jobs, etc.) shared on Saturdays

(2005)

Frequently Asked Questions