Lil Bub, Colonel Meow and the rise of the cat celebrity

It wasn’t too long ago that the funniest thing on the Internet was a website full of pictures of cats with blocky white text plastered on them, saying hilariously human and grammatically incorrect things (because they’re cats, get it?). The website I Can Has Cheezburger blew up, to the point where a television show (that would later fail) was created about the behind-the-scenes of the website.

Despite the internet’s undeniable love of cats, the cat-loving masses have today gone elsewhere, and memes no longer hold the crown of internet cat royalty. That title belongs to modern cat celebrities — cats who are impressive and individualistic enough to generate their own devoted following and sometimes even generate their own income.

Take Lil Bub, for example. She’s a two-year-old cat with a deformed lower jaw, enlarged eyes and a bad case of osteopetrosis. She also has over 22,700 followers on Twitter, her own clothing line and a Vice-magazine-made documentary. The documentary, called “Lil Bub and Friendz,” also features the likes of Grumpy Cat — perhaps Lil Bub’s more famous counterpart — and Colonel Meow, a consistently angry-looking gray furball of a cat. 

This documentary marks an important milestone in the history of Internet cats. For the first time, people care who these animals are. They follow their every move through various social-media outlets, they stop on the street when they see these animals walking from various meet-and-greets and they wear their faces on T-shirts, selling their images to the world. 

So what changed? As with many things, we mostly have social media to blame. Yes, we had things like YouTube back in the “Cheezburger Era,” but the trend of the era was quantity, not quality. These cats, albeit funny, were essentially anonymous. This marks a huge change from today, where the cats are characters we know and love. Thanks to new social-media platforms such as Instagram and Vine, the owners of these cats can make accounts that share more intimate information about these animals, allowing followers to get to know them, in a way. 

That’s the trick to celebrity Internet cats: By simply subscribing to these animals’ various social-media feeds, people are essentially considering these animals a part of their lives. We’ve created an entirely new class of celebrity, akin to Hollywood stars. One day we very well may have celebrity-cat paparazzi, as well.

But until that day, you still have some time to find a cat celebrity of your own. Here are some tips to finding a future cat celebrity:

1. The key is genetic mutations. That sounds really dark, but it’s true. Grumpy Cat, Lil Bub, Princess Monster Truck — one thing they all have in common is that their faces are messed up. This will set your cat apart from the rest. Imagine a world where Grumpy Cat’s mouth had been formed in the right way. How sad, right?

2. If you can’t find a cat with genetic mutations, your next-best shot is to find what I call an Instagram-able cat. These cats tend to have flat faces, big eyes and super fluffy fur. They tend to be popular because of a scientific concept known as neoteny. Neoteny describes adult animals that still appear young (like Lil Bub). These animals tend to attract humans due to their never-aging cuteness.

3. Make sure you have Twitter, Tumblr, Instagram and Vine accounts for your cat. All are necessary to increase the exposure of your kitty. Do not share an account with your cat. Your cat is the celebrity here, not you.

4. Make friends with another up-and-coming Internet cat celebrity. The two cats can easily gain traction using each other’s fame. This is a cat-eat-cat world, after all. For example, Smoosh the cat was friends with Lil Bub, and now that Lil Bub is a celebrity, Smoosh is famous, as well. You can even buy Smoosh and Lil Bub Christmas cards. Now that’s fame.

Just remember: Though the economy might be in shambles, the Internet cat bubble has yet to burst. So get out there and adopt a soon-to-be famous cat of your own.