Caturday Meme Meaning and Origin

Caturday is a combination of the words cat and Saturday. What began as a small internet habit in the mid-2000s eventually spread from 4chan to LiveJournal, I Can Has Cheezburger, Tumblr, Twitter, and other social platforms. Unlike many memes that disappear after a few months, Caturday survived because the joke is easy to understand and even easier to join.

What Does Caturday Mean?

Caturday simply means Saturday for cats. The word is a playful combination of “cat” and “Saturday.”

The original idea was to post pictures of cats on Saturday, particularly funny cat images and LOLcat-style image macros. Early versions often used deliberately bad spelling and strange grammar, a style commonly called lolspeak.

For example, an old-style Caturday meme might show a cat with a caption written as if the cat were speaking in broken English. The humor came from giving the animal a personality and making it appear to be commenting on an ordinary situation.

Modern Caturday posts are usually much simpler. Someone may just post a picture of their cat on Saturday and add #Caturday. The complicated captions are optional now.

Information	Details
Meme name	Caturday
Meaning	A Saturday tradition of posting cat pictures and cat memes
Origin	4chan’s /b/ board
Approximate origin	2005
Creator	Unknown
Type	Weekly internet tradition / image macro meme
Common content	Cat photos, LOLcats, funny cat memes and image macros
Popular platforms	4chan, LiveJournal, Tumblr, Twitter, Instagram and Reddit
Common hashtag	#Caturday
Related meme culture	LOLcats and I Can Has Cheezburger

Where Did the Caturday Meme Come From?

The exact person who invented Caturday is not known. Internet records are also incomplete because many early 4chan threads were temporary and were not preserved.

Most meme histories trace the Caturday tradition to 4chan’s /b/ board around 2005. Users began treating Saturday as a regular day for posting cat pictures and LOLcat images. The tradition became one of the early examples of an internet “theme day,” where users collectively post a particular type of content on a specific day.

There is evidence of the name being used outside 4chan during the same period. The domain Caturday.com was registered in April 2005, while a Blogspot site called “Caturday” appeared later that year. That blog was focused on ordinary cat stories and photographs rather than the LOLcat tradition, so it is better viewed as an early use of the name rather than proof of a single creator.

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The Early Caturday Tradition

By 2006, Caturday had become easier to identify as a specific internet tradition. A LiveJournal Caturday community was created on February 5, 2006, giving cat lovers another place to share the weekly posts.

Urban Dictionary recorded a definition for Caturday on October 24, 2006. An early archived Caturday thread on 4chan also dates from December 2006. These records help show that the practice was already established by that point.

At this stage, Caturday was closely connected to the growing LOLcat style. Cat photographs were paired with intentionally misspelled captions, creating a distinctive form of internet humor.

How I Can Has Cheezburger Helped Caturday Spread?

Caturday might have remained a small imageboard tradition if it had not arrived during the huge rise of LOLcat culture.

In early 2007, I Can Has Cheezburger? launched and helped bring cat image macros to a much larger audience. The site published funny animal content throughout the week, but it also embraced Caturday. Its first Caturday-tagged image appeared on January 13, 2007, just two days after the site launched.

From there, the idea moved beyond 4chan. Caturday references appeared on sites such as MetaFilter and Fark, and the trend even received attention from the University of Pennsylvania’s student newspaper.

This was an important moment for early internet meme culture. People did not need to be regular 4chan users to understand the joke. They only needed a cat and a Saturday.

Why Were Early Caturday Memes So Funny?

Part of the appeal came from the contrast between the serious-looking format of a traditional image macro and the completely silly behavior of a cat.

Early LOLcat captions also developed their own style. Words were deliberately misspelled, grammar was simplified, and cats were presented as if they could think and speak like humans.

That style became known as lolspeak. It was not simply random bad spelling. The format developed recognizable patterns that made the captions immediately associated with internet cats.

The classic Caturday meme therefore had two parts: a funny cat and a funny way of presenting what the cat was supposedly thinking.

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How Caturday Changed Over Time

Caturday gradually changed as social media replaced many of the older forums and imageboards where the tradition began.

By the late 2000s and 2010s, Caturday had reached platforms such as Tumblr and Twitter. The hashtag #Caturday made the idea even easier to participate in. Instead of creating a traditional LOLcat macro, users could simply upload a photograph of their pet.

That change actually helped the meme survive. People no longer needed to understand 4chan culture or know how to create an image macro. They could participate by sharing a normal photograph of their cat.

The older lolspeak style became more of a nostalgic reference, while the basic Saturday cat-posting tradition remained recognizable.

How to Use the Caturday Meme

There is no complicated rulebook for Caturday today. The basic idea is to share something involving a cat on Saturday.

• Take a funny picture of your cat.
• Share an amusing cat video or image.
• Use an old-fashioned LOLcat caption if you want the classic meme style.
• Add #Caturday when posting on a platform where hashtags are useful.

The traditional version is more closely tied to Saturday, although modern users are often less strict about the day.

Caturday and the Rise of Internet Cat Culture

Caturday matters because it appeared at an important point in the development of internet culture. Cat pictures were not invented by Caturday, but the tradition helped turn them into a recognizable part of online humor.

There was already a much older tradition of photographing cats in funny or human-like situations. Photographer Harry Whittier Frees, for example, created staged photographs of kittens in human situations in the early 20th century. The internet simply gave that type of humor a new format and a much larger audience.

Caturday also helped create the environment in which LOLcats became mainstream. Once sites such as I Can Has Cheezburger brought the format to a wider audience, cat memes moved far beyond their original communities.

Is Caturday Still Popular?

Caturday is no longer the same underground tradition it was in the mid-2000s, but the idea has not disappeared.

The hashtag has continued to appear on social media, and cat photos are still regularly shared under #Caturday. The biggest change is that today’s posts are often simple photographs rather than the heavily captioned LOLcat images associated with the original era.

That may be the reason Caturday has lasted so long. It does not depend on one particular picture, catchphrase, or celebrity. Every cat owner can make a new version every Saturday.

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The Meaning Behind Caturday

At its heart, Caturday is not really a complicated meme. It is a small piece of internet culture built around a shared joke: Saturday belongs to cats.

The tradition began in the rough, experimental world of early internet forums and eventually became something much more universal. The original LOLcat captions may feel dated today, but the basic idea still works because funny cats never really went out of style.

That is what makes Caturday unusual among old memes. It did not need to stay exactly the same to survive. The format changed, the platforms changed, and the people posting it changed, but the Saturday cat tradition remained.