The year was 2011, a time when YouTube was still in its infancy, attracting a lot of pioneers to the video-sharing platform to share their content and imagination with the world. Back then, Youtube's old slogan, "Broadcast Yourself," reflected people's freedom to post many hilarious and memorable videos that are still available to this day.
These videos include the likes of the infamous Rickroll song, Rick Astley's "Never Gonna Give You Up," Sweet Brown's "Ain't Nobody Got Time For That" video, tayZonday's "Chocolate Rain", the video of Russian singer Eduard Khil's (Mr. Tololo) "I Am So Happy to Finally Be Back Home," to name a few.
2011 also saw an addition to these greats — a video featuring an animated cartoon cat with the body of a Pop-Tart that leaves a rainbow trail while it flies through space, singing "nyanyanya" in a squeaker-like voice. This video is what brought Nyan Cat to the world and a level of prominence so high that it eventually became one of the first NFTs.
Here's the story of the cat that sang "nya."
Nyan Cat Details and History
The meme that would later be known as Nyan Cat was uploaded as a video in April 2011 by YouTube user "saraj00n," per the meme's Know Your Meme page. The background music came from the song "Nyanyanyanyanyanyanya!", which was uploaded by user "Daniwell-P" to Nico Nico Douga on July 25, 2010. The song was originally sung by Vocaloid Hatsune Miku, per the Nyan Cat Fandom.
However, the meme's origin goes a lot earlier than the video. The pop-tart cat animation that inspired Nyan Cat was posted on the daily comics site LOL-COMICS run by illustrator Chris Torres. The original drawing was based on Torres' Russian Blue cat named Marty and was drawn after Torres received two separate suggestions for a cat and a pop tart during a Red Cross charity drawing event.
Marty passed away in November of 2012. Naturally, the internet mourned the death of the beloved cat.
The video that popularized the Nyan Cat meme was later featured on many popular blogs and social networking sites like Facebook, Tumblr, and Memebase. It even appeared on one of CollegeHumor's videos at one point.
Nyan cat would later inspire a dedicated website, nyan.cat, which featured a non-stop Nyan cat counter, and video games based on the meme, such as Nyan Cat Lost in Space, Snake Nyan Cat, and Nyan Cat Fly.
The video that popularized Nyan cat was briefly taken down due to a person impersonating Chris Torres flagging the video for copyright infringement. The video was taken back up again the following day after Chris Torres confirmed he didn't flag the video.
The meme would later become one of the first NFTs, with Chris Torres selling the first Nyan Cat NFT on digital art marketplace Foundation in February 2021 for 300 Ethereum, or about $587,658 at the time, after a 24-hour auction.
The Nyan Cat of Today
Nyan Cat has since joined the metaverse following the sale of the first Nyan Cat NFT. Interested customers can go to the Nyan Cat Collection website to view the many unique Nyan Cats for sale, including the original Nyan Cat NFT.
YouTooz also sold a limited edition Nyan Cat in 2020 for $29.99 but had since sold out. The Nyan Cat YouTooz measures 4.5 inches wide and 2 inches tall and is as colorful as its YouTube video counterpart.
