Woman Yelling at a Cat

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About

Woman Yelling at a Cat (not to be confused with Screaming Cat) refers to a meme format featuring a screen cap of The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills cast members Taylor Armstrong and Kyle Richards followed by a picture of a confused-looking cat sitting behind a dinner plate. The format gained significant popularity across the web in mid-June 2019 and the cat was later identified as Smudge the Cat.

Origin

Taylor Armstrong Crying and Pointing

On December 5th, 2011, episode 14 "Malibu Beach Party From Hell" of season two of The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills reality TV series premiered in the United States.^[1] In the episode, cast member Taylor Armstrong cries during an argument, with cast member Kyle Richards attempting to calm her down. (shown below).

On December 6th, Daily Mail published an article describing the events of the episode, posting a still of Armstrong pointing and crying and Richards hugging her (shown below).^[2]

Confused Cat at Dinner

On June 19th, 2018, Tumblr user deadbefordeath posted a photograph of a white cat with a confused expression sitting in a chair in front of a plate with vegetables in it, titling the post "he no like vegetals." The post gained over 50,300 likes and reblogs in one year.^[3]

Following the popularity of the reaction image, on May 27th, 2019, smudge_lord Instagram account was created for the cat,^[13] with the cat's name revealed to be Smudge.

Woman Yelling at a Cat

Until May 1st, 2019, both images saw moderate use as reactions on Twitter, 4chan and other websites.^[4]^[5] On May 1st, 2019, Twitter user @MISSINGEGIRL made a post containing both images, writing "These photos together is making me lose it."^[6] The tweet gained over 78,900 retweets and 276,800 likes in two months (shown below).

Spread

On May 2nd, Twitter user @lc28__ made the first known meme based on the format, gaining over 20 retweets and 180 likes (shown below, left).^[7] On June 2nd, 2019, Redditor PerpetualWinter made the first known object-labeling meme based on the format, gaining over 310 upvotes in one month (shown below, right).^[8]

On June 9th, Redditor 69- posted a template for the format to /r/memes subreddit.^[9] On the same day, Redditor Apple-Trump posted a meme based on the format which gained over 38,600 upvotes in twelve days (shown below).^[10]

In the following days, the format gained significant spread on Reddit, with several highly-upvoted posts appearing in /r/dankmemes^[11]^[12] and other subreddits. On November 4th, EbaumsWorld^[14] published a collection of notable examples titled "49 Best 'Woman Yelling at a Cat' Memes That Have Taken Over the Internet."

Thurston Waffles Video

On October 13th, 2019, Facebook user KucingMenangid posted a remix video of the Woman Yelling At Cat meme that places the cat Thurston Waffles in Smudge's place. In a little over one week, the post received more than 727,000 views, 25,000 shares, 12,000 reactions and 3,500 comments (shown below).