Cat Crunching / Crunchy Cat

Submission 23,970

Part of a series on Cats. [View Related Entries]

About

Cat Crunching, also known as Crunchy Cat, Cat Crunching, Cat Chewing or Cat Eating Something, refers to a greenscreen template of a cat crunching on something in its mouth. The original video was posted in mid-2022, and the cat is named Luna from the TikTok account Crunchycat Luna (@monkeycatluna). Many meme creators on TikTok used a CapCut template, pairing the crunching cat with different captions about humorously eating inedible items like marbles and uranium, for example. The trend became commonplace in October 2023.

Origin

On July 28th, 2022, TikToker^[1] @monkeycatluna posted a video of their cat Luna crunching on a piece of food, gaining roughly 2.2 million plays and 380,400 likes in one year (shown below).

Despite a 2022 origin, the video of Luna crunching didn't become a meme template until September 15th, 2023, when CapCut^[2] user Guerreiro/MS made a greenscreen template with the video, gaining roughly 148,000 uses and 1,300 likes in one month. The user showcased the template in a TikTok^[3] video also uploaded on September 15th, which received roughly 1,000 plays in one month (shown below).

Spread

Going into October 2023, videos using the template became increasingly viral as well as videos using a remake of the template made by CapCut^[4] user HuggieFett October 4th, 2023, which received roughly 148,000 uses and 1,300 likes in 13 days.

An early viral usage was posted by TikToker^[5] @rizzbrigitte on October 5th, 2023, referencing being silly and eating uranium, gaining roughly 275,100 plays and 60,800 likes in 12 days (shown below, left). On October 6th, TikToker^[6] @papunk__ posted a copycat iteration, gaining roughly 9.8 million plays and 2.1 million likes in 11 days (shown below, right).

Viral iterations persisted during early October, such as a video posted by TikToker^[7] @_nuggetlord on October 5th, 2023, which referenced crunching on bones in the Paris catacombs, gaining roughly 895,800 plays and 219,200 likes in 12 days (shown below, left). On October 6th, TikToker^[8] @savannahdeso posted an iteration that referenced the game Mancala, gaining roughly 673,400 plays and 136,400 likes in 11 days (shown below, right).

The videos then started to spread across social media platforms. For instance, two videos were reposted to iFunny ^[9]^[10] in early October, gaining 9,100 smiles and 10,800 smiles, respectively, over the course of 10 and eight days. Cat Crunching videos were also reposted on Instagram^[11] in October 2023.