In celebration of International Cat Day, we decided to take a closer look at cats on YouTube. This year, more than 18 million videos related to cats have already been uploaded to Youtube, and we still have a lot of year left to go! To get to 18 million, over 90,000 videos related to cats get uploaded each day. That’s a lot of cats! While every cat is, without a doubt, special in their own way. Here’s a selection of trends-worthy cats who have stood out on YouTube this year.
That Little Puff
That Little Puff is the latest in a long line of cats with unique personalities and talents. Puff’s earliest fans would’ve been drawn to Puff’s cooking skills, but more recent fans are just as likely to have been introduced to Puff through experiments with life hacks. With over 6 billion views and over 7.5 million subscribers added this year alone, That Little Puff may be one of the most visible cats on YouTube right now.
El Gato
In late March, we began to see an increase in daily uploads of videos with “El Gato” in the title. While it’s not unusual to see videos with that phrase in the title since it just means “the cat,” this increase came from the birth of a new meme. On YouTube, El Gato was a computer-rendered and animated model of Paperized Craft’s papercraft model of a Munchkin Kitty. El Gato can often be found dancing in different contexts from “Gangnam Style” to The Backrooms.
Mylo The Cat
Mylo The Cat’s 2011 upload, the one-second-long “Shortest Video on Youtube,” has been viewed over 35 million times. 16 million of those views were from this year alone. Interestingly, that video kicked off a Mylo “Shortest Video on Youtube” series that ceased in 2013 after 15 videos before being resumed in 2021 and ultimately transitioning to an animated series that has topped 750 episodes. This channel, based on one-second-long videos, has accrued over 64 million views this year.
Stray
One of the more highly anticipated video games to be released this year is Stray, a game that allows people to play as a stray cat. The cat from Stray must be one of the year’s most-viewed cats since videos related to Stray have been viewed over 225 million times since its July launch, with content ranging from gameplay to Shorts of people’s pets watching Stray.
Breakdancing Cat
El Gato isn’t the only cat breaking out the moves this year. Toward the end of June a new cat emerged on the scene. That’s when we began to see an uptick in daily uploads of videos with Breakdancing Cat in the title. Breakdancing Cat is a meme built around a clip from the video game SAKURA School Simulator paired with the song “Only You” by Intense. There have been hundreds of uploads of videos with “Breakdancing” and “Cat” in the title, garnering over 5 million views. This is not a definitive tally because videos that feature the Breakdancing Cat meme without those words in the title wouldn’t factor into our count.
Chef Cat ChangAn
Like That Little Puff, Chef Cat ChangAn is also into food. On YouTube, Chef Cat ChangAn has over 2 million subscribers for ASMR cooking content. 99% of those subscribers were gained just this year. ChangAn has also topped 1 billion views, primarily from Shorts, this year. It’s been quite a year for this oddly satisfying chef.
OwlKitty
OwlKitty is not having the same type of year as Chef Cat or That Little Puff, but the creativity of inserting OwlKitty into different movies made it difficult to avoid giving at least an honorable mention to OwlKitty, a channel that has uploaded these kinds of videos since 2018 and has gained over 2 million subscribers.
Even more Cats!
For more cool cats, check out this playlist of iconic cat videos.