Chris Hansen Cat

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About

Chris Hansen Cat is an advice animal image macro series featuring a photo of a cat positioned as if it is seated at a table accompanied by feline-related puns and LOLcat jokes. The macros often begin with the phrase "Why don't you have a seat" popularized by Chris Hansen, the former host of reality TV series To Catch a Predator.

Origin

On March 4th, 2012, Redditor BrettBr0wn submitted a post titled "Chillin at the kitchen counter"^[8] with a photo of a cat posed as if it were sitting like a human. In the thread, several photoshopped variations of the image were posted.

The same day, a post in the /r/funny^[7] subreddit titled "it was you…. it was you this entire time!" included an animated GIF of a cat playing with a feather (shown left below). The following day, Redditor DarkCoyote submitted a post titled "Introducing, Chris Hansen Cat"^[2] with an image macro (shown right below) captioned with "Why don't you have a seat / how long have you controlled the feather?"

Spread

On March 5th, BuzzFeed^[5] posted the template image for users to add their own captions and I Can Has Cheezburger^[3] posted a compilation of notable derivatives. The same day, MSNBC^[6] writer Helen Popkin posted the original feather image macro in a technology news round-up post. On March 6th, the web culture blog UpRoxx^[4] posted an article outlining the meme's origins on Reddit and included a slideshow of examples of the series. As of March 9th, 2012, the Quickmeme^[1] page has accumulated over 800 submissions.