Nyan Cat

Nyan Cat is one of the internet's most enduring memes: a pixel-art grey cat with the body of a frosted, sprinkled pop-tart, trailing a shimmering rainbow as it loops endlessly across a starry sky. It was created in April 2011 by American artist Christopher Torres, who posted the animation on his website under the name "Nyan Cat" — a mash-up inspired partly by his own Russian Blue cat, Marty.

The meme exploded when the drawing was paired with a hyper-cute, endlessly looping Japanese pop song, and the combined video was uploaded to YouTube. Within days it had racked up millions of views, and it went on to become one of the most-watched videos of 2011. "Nyan" comes from the Japanese onomatopoeia for a cat's meow, and the tune's relentless "nya-nya-nya" refrain burrowed into millions of heads worldwide.

Nyan Cat became a cultural touchstone of the early meme era, spawning countless remixes, parodies, video-game cameos and merchandise. In 2021, on its tenth anniversary, Torres sold a unique remastered version of the original animation as an NFT for a headline-grabbing sum, cementing Nyan Cat's place as one of the first truly iconic internet cats.