Snoopy

Snoopy — often written "Snoopybabe" after his social-media handle — was an Exotic Shorthair from Chengdu, China, who became one of Asia's first great feline internet stars in the early 2010s. With the squashed, round face and enormous wide-set eyes typical of the breed, he looked uncannily like a living plush toy, and photographs shared by his owner (known online simply as Miss Ma) spread rapidly across the Chinese platform Weibo before jumping to Facebook and Instagram in the West. At his peak he counted well over a million followers, and his particular blend of grumpy-yet-adorable expressions made him a template for the "flat-faced cute cat" aesthetic that later stars like Smoothie and countless others would follow. Snoopy's fame also drew attention to the Exotic Shorthair breed itself — the short-coated cousin of the Persian — and, less comfortably, to the ethics of breeding cats for the extremely flat faces that generate viral appeal but can cause breathing and tear-duct problems. Snoopy remains a landmark example of how a single photogenic pet helped build the modern, globally connected culture of the internet cat.