Cheeseball the Wizard Cat

About

Cheeseball the Wizard Cat refers to several AI-generated images of a fat orange cat wearing a pointy wizard hat and holding a staff in its paw. Shared online in late August 2024, the image achieved virality in September and October 2024, inspiring fan art, animations and memes.

Origin

On August 24th, 2024, the X^[1] gimmick account gatos fazendo gaticies (@gatainarios) posted an AI-generated image of a fat orange cat in a pointy wizard cat holding a staff in its right paw (author currently unknown). The post (shown below) received over 12.4 million views, 41,000 reposts and 223,000 likes in two months.

Spread

Later on August 24th, 2024, the X^[2] account @KediOzelHarecat, the Facebook^[3] page catecore and others reposted the image. On August 25th, X^[4] user @_4uck reposted the image, calling the cat, "치즈볼 더 위자드" (Kor. "Cheeseball the Wizard"). The post received over 21,000 reposts and 30,000 likes in two months.

On August 26th, 2024, X^[5] user @BBIM_official posted the earliest discovered fan art based on the image, a drawing of Cheeseball surrounded by baby birds that gained over 120 reposts and 190 likes in two months (shown below).

On September 5th, 2024, X^[6] user @masom_mamen shared two GIFs of a 3D model of the cat (shown below). The post garnered over 17,000 reposts and 26,000 likes in one month.

On October 1st, artist and X user @doro_daro posted a 3D animation of Cheesball the Cat jumping from one foot to the other (shown below) that gained over 268,000 likes on Instagram^[7] and saw viral spread on social media in the following week.

For example, on October 1st, 2024, the X^[8] account @catswithaura reposted the animation, with the post gaining over 28,000 reposts and 172,000 likes in one week.

Following the post, the character achieved viral popularity on X / Twitter in early October 2024, with users sharing memes, fan art and AI-generated images and videos of Cheeseball the Wizard Cat.

Various Examples

Templates

Search Interest

External References