Eyebrow Cat

Submission 42,959

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About

Eyebrow Cat is a nickname given to Sam, a white cat with black eyebrow-like markings on his head, who became internet famous after his pictures were uploaded to the image-sharing site Instagram in December of 2012.

Origin

On December 13th, 2012, the first picture of Sam (shown below) was uploaded to the Instagram feed @samhaseyebrows,^[1] which received over 430 likes and 40 comments within the next two months. By the end of January 2013, Sam’s Instagram feed had gained more than 14,500 followers.

Precursor

Eyebrow Cat (Japanese: 眉毛猫) is a white Japanese cat with similar markings, who rose to fame on the Japanese web in 2011.

Spread

On January 28th, 2013, Redditor ertdgaf posted a gallery of photos from the @samhaseyebrows Instagram feed to the /r/pics^[2] subreddit, receiving over 12,000 up votes and 150 comments within a week. On the following day, photos of Sam were published on several Internet and tech news blogs, including Mashable,^[6] Laughing Squid,^[8] BuzzFeed^[9] and Gawker.^[7]

By January 30th, Sam had reached over 7,000 followers on Instagram, according to the International Business Times.^[10] The same day, Redditor osrule86 submitted several photos of Sam in a Imgur photo gallery to the /r/aww^[3] subreddit, while claiming to know Sam’s owner in person. Several hours later, Redditor Madhatter24 submitted a photo of Sam to the /r/AdviceAnimals^[4] subreddit with the caption "I don't always use the Internet / but when I do, eyebrows" (shown below), following the caption format of The Most Interesting Man in the World advice animal character.

On January 31st, The Daily Mail^[11] published an article about Sam’s newfound Internet fame, comparing him to Kitler. The same day, The Huffington Post^[12] noted that Sam had accumulated more than 10,000 Instagram followers.