We missed you hissed the LOLCats

I'm a little behind the curve when it comes to Internet fads. Well, what do you expect? I'm an old man. I'll be 40 in a few months. Now, you kids get outta my yard! Why, if my lumbago wasn't actin' up...

Anyhoo, I've been coming across cute little pictures of cats with funny little sayings written across them. They're funny and weird, and seemed to be from a world I wasn't a part of. I occasionally heard the name "LOLCats" associated with them. So yesterday I did some digging.

Somehow, my first stop along the was was this five-part article from mentalfloss.com. It's a pretty thorough exploration of the phenomenon and gives lots of links and jumping-off points. It also reproduces some images I haven't seen elsewhere in my research, possibly because I haven't looked too hard. (The last page also explains where the "DO NOT WANT" tag came from.)

One of the first places I jumped off to was ihasabucket.com. If this doesn't make you laugh, you may not get the rest of the LOLCats stuff. Note that while the creature pictured is usually referred to as a walrus, some have identified it as a female elephant seal. The bucket appears repeatedly in other LOLCats images.

There are many sites that carry LOLCats-style images, but two sites stand out. One is lolcats.com, and the other is icanhascheezburger.com. The latter is named after an often repeated phrase and theme in LOLCats images, and has the more user-friendsly interface.

Here are my own attempts at LOLCats-style images, aping what I've seen on the sites. The originals for both of these images, which feature my cat Nicki, are from November 2005.



Title reference: Paraphrase of "Lovecats" by The Cure.