Captain Kitteh

About

Captain Kitteh is an advice animal image macro series featuring a photograph of a cat sitting in a box dressed in a flight captain’s uniform. The captions are typically written from the perspective of a commercial airline pilot who happens to be a cat, in similar vein to other anthropomorphic feline characters like Business Cat and Aristocat.

Origin

On February 22nd, 2012, Redditor toastercookie submitted a post titled “Captain Kitteh” to the /r/aww^[1] subreddit, featuring a picture of a cat dressed in a captain’s uniform (shown below, left). Prior to being archived, the post received over 8,100 up votes and 210 comments. The same day, Redditor khdutton submitted an image macro using toastercookie’s photo to /r/AdviceAnimals^[2] with the caption parodying an airline captain’s flight safety announcement before takeoff (shown below, right). The post received over 10,900 up votes and 95 comments prior to being archived.

Spread

On February 23rd, 2012, FunnyJunk^[6] user stroef reposted Redditor khdutton’s image macro, receiving over 82,000 views and 5,300 up votes within the next 10 months. The same day, the image was shared again by 9gag^[7] user zenox, which gained more than 56,100 up votes and 4,900 Facebook shares in 10 months. On the following day, the Internet news blog UpRoxx^[3] published a slideshow of notable Captain Kitteh image macros. On February 26th, the Cheezburger site Animal Memes^[4] highlighted a Captain Kitteh image macro bearing the caption “Fasten your seatbelts / that cloud looks like a ball of yarn” (shown below).