Jorts the Cat

Submission 29,487

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

About

Jorts the Cat, also known as Buttered Jorts, refers to a cat named "Jorts" who became known online from a viral Reddit post in December 2021. The post relayed a story from a Redditor who worked in an office that had two cats: an orange cat named "Jorts" and a tortoiseshell cat named "Jean." In short, the Redditor was accused of "perpetuating ethnic stereotypes" in regards to thinking that the orange cat (Jorts) was dumber. Additionally, it was revealed in the post that her co-worker had been buttering Jorts with margarine.

Origin

On December 13th, 2021, a Redditor named throwawayorangecat made a post to the subreddit /r/AmItheAsshole^[1] that relayed a story about two cats that live in their office: an orange cat named "Jorts" and a tortoiseshell cat named "Jean." The cats are fed inside a closet within the office where one cat (Jorts) always locks the other cat (Jean) inside the closet. This is because, according to the Redditor, Jorts is perceivably dumber. One of their coworkers (anonymously referred to as Pam) actively tries teaching Jorts lessons to become smarter. After the Redditor cut out a hole in the closet door in order to prevent the cats from being locked inside, Pam confronted them about it, causing the Redditor to joke, "You can’t expect Jean’s tortoiseshell smarts from orange cat Jorts." This led Pam to allegedly send a company-wide email, claiming that the Redditor was "perpetuating ethnic stereotypes by saying orange cats are dumb."

Overall, the post (shown below) is identifiable as a cringeworthy Karen story. It received roughly 7,400 upvotes over the course of one week.

Spread

The next day, December 14th, 2021, u/throwawayorangecat posted an update^[2] to their original post. Within it, they detailed how they had conversations with HR about Pam who agreed that Pam's actions were irrational. Towards the end of the post, u/throwawayorangecat revealed that Pam had also been putting margarine (butter) on Jorts' fur as an attempt to teach him to clean himself better. This was most likely the cause of the other cat (Jean) having diarrhea because she often helped Jorts groom himself by licking him. This was also a problem that needed to be stopped, according to the post.

The update post (shown below) received roughly 5,500 upvotes over the course of six days. Additionally, u/throwawayorangecat plugged a Twitter account that they created for Jorts called @JortsTheCat.^[3]

On December 14th, Redditor DoodlingDaughter made a post to /r/BestofRedditorUpdates^[4] titled, "The saga of Jean and Jorts," that provided links to all of u/throwawayorangecat's updates. The post received roughly 4,500 upvotes over seven days and spread awareness of the story further.

Jorts The Cat Official Twitter

Much of the attention surrounding Jorts the Cat migrated to Twitter after @JortsTheCat was created. For instance, on December 14th, 2021, @JortsTheCat^[5] tweeted, "I don’t need to be buttered, Pam," (shown below). The tweet received roughly 5,900 likes over one week.

Other Twitter users started posting memes and tweets about Jorts, Pam and the buttering of Jorts on December 14th. Formats like Time Person of the Year Parodies were used by Twitter users like @no_dead_weight^[8] whose meme (shown below) was posted on the 14th and received roughly 27,500 likes over one week.

Twitter^[6] user @LouNoDear tweeted a poem about Jorts the Cat on the morning of December 15th (shown below, left). It received roughly 6,700 likes over six days. Twitter^[7] user @DentLizzy also posted a meme on December 15th that had text reading, "I can't believe she fuckin buttered Jorts." The meme (shown below, right) received roughly 3,800 likes over the course of six days.

More and more memes surfaced on Twitter in the days following, as well as migrating to other platforms like Instagram ^[9] and Facebook. ^[10] Memes^[11] also started to reference the "sweet potato" nuance within the update Reddit post (that Pam used a photo of a sweet potato in Jorts' bio on the company website for unknown reasons).

Jorts The Cat Ableism Accusations

On October 18th, 2022, Jorts The Cat's official Twitter account @JortsTheCat^[12] posted a tweet responding to a person complaining about their experience with an Instacart personal grocery shopper, saying "Idea: Go get your own groceries." The tweet gathered over 12,000 likes and 600 responses in a day (seen below, left). The tweet received several replies from Twitter uses accusing the account of being ableist, as shown in a tweet reply addressed to "Jorts" posted by @LasciviousFox. The reply gathered over 2,000 likes in a day (seen below, right).

The inital replies to @JortsTheCat's tweet were from people accusing the account of ableism towards those who cannot grocery shop on their own, as well as accusing the account of being a milkshake duck. A compilation of replies was posted by Twitter^[13] user @kimpossiblefact on October 18th as well, gathering over 9,000 likes in a day (seen below).

On October 19th, Twitter^[14] user @merrittk posted a tweet commenting on how chronically online this discourse is, gathering over 3,000 likes in a day (seen below).