{ "@context": "https://schema.org", "@type": "NewsArticle", "@id": "https://badiyaa.com/clapping-cat-meme-origin-ai/#article", "mainEntityOfPage": "https://badiyaa.com/clapping-cat-meme-origin-ai/", "headline": "The viral clapping cat is an AI clip from Instagram; a Short comparing its versions hits 12 million views", "description": "The slow-clapping black cat with human hands was posted by @merkurianin on September 25, 2026 and became a green-screen reaction template within days; @KittyPOVs lines up original, reversed and keyed versions.", "datePublished": "2026-11-02T08:24:00+00:00", "dateModified": "2026-11-02T08:24:00+00:00", "author": { "@type": "Organization", "name": "Badiyaa Editorial Desk", "url": "https://badiyaa.com/author/editorial-desk/" }, "publisher": { "@type": "NewsMediaOrganization", "@id": "https://badiyaa.com/#organization", "name": "Badiyaa", "url": "https://badiyaa.com/", "logo": { "@type": "ImageObject", "url": "https://badiyaa.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/10/badiyaa-logo-color-600x60-1.png", "width": 600, "height": 60 }, "email": "badiyaavideo@gmail.com", "publishingPrinciples": "https://badiyaa.com/editorial-policy/", "correctionsPolicy": "https://badiyaa.com/corrections/", "actionableFeedbackPolicy": "https://badiyaa.com/contact/", "ownershipFundingInfo": "https://badiyaa.com/about/#ownership", "sameAs": [ "https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61595518283625", "https://www.instagram.com/badiyaa.com.ai/", "https://www.threads.net/@badiyaa.com.ai" ], "parentOrganization": { "@type": "Organization", "name": "Rezilient Digital", "url": "https://www.rezilientdigital.com/", "address": { "@type": "PostalAddress", "streetAddress": "Fl No 3, Nav Shyam Sadan, Plot No 38, Pestom Sagar, Chembur", "addressLocality": "Mumbai", "addressRegion": "Maharashtra", "postalCode": "400089", "addressCountry": "IN" }, "sameAs": [ "https://www.linkedin.com/company/rezilientdigital" ] } }, "isAccessibleForFree": true, "inLanguage": "en-US", "wordCount": 619, "image": [ "https://badiyaa.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/11/Domestic_cat_2011_G02.webp", "https://badiyaa.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/11/Domestic_cat_2011_G02-1024x683.webp" ], "articleSection": "Offbeat", "keywords": "AI video, cat memes, clapping cat, green screen, internet culture", "articleBody": "The slow-clapping black cat that has been pasted into thousands of reaction videos this autumn is not a real cat. It is an AI-generated clip, first posted on Instagram on September 25, 2026 by the creator @merkurianin, and a 43-second YouTube Short from @KittyPOVs that lines the meme up against the “original,” a reversed cut and the green-screen version has now been watched 12.1 million times. The clip shows a black cat with a human smile and human hands, applauding slowly after being handed food. According to the meme-tracking database that catalogs the entry as confirmed, the Instagram post passed 2.5 million likes in just over a week, and within three days TikTok users were cutting the cat out on a green screen and dropping it into their own videos. How a clip becomes a template Three things turned this cat into a stock reaction. First, the gesture is universal: a slow clap reads as sarcasm in any language. Second, the subject sits against a plain background, which makes it easy to key out and overlay. Third, it is short and loops cleanly, so it can sit in the corner of a video for as long as the editor likes. The spread followed a familiar path. On September 28 a TikTok account posted a green-screen version that drew 3.8 million views in a week. On September 30 another used it under the line “I answered correctly and bro started clapping,” which pulled 1.7 million views in five days. By October 1 a third version had 1.5 million. Each remix taught the next user what the cat “means”: someone applauding bad behavior, or applauding you for doing the bare minimum. The @KittyPOVs Short, posted October 8, is part of a series on meme origins and adds the twist of playing the clip backward, which is why the comments are full of people arguing about which version came first. The answer is the Instagram post; everything else is an edit. Where the clapping cat sits in cat-meme history Cats have been internet currency since the 1990s, when pictures were passed around by email. The first cat video on YouTube was uploaded by a co-founder of the site in May 2005. Grumpy Cat began as a single Reddit photo in September 2012 and ended up on magazine covers; her owner said the scowl came from an underbite and feline dwarfism. Maru, the Japanese Scottish Fold who loved boxes, racked up more than 578 million views before his death in 2025. The clapping cat is different in one important way: it never existed. Earlier stars were real animals whose owners stumbled into fame. This one was built to be funny, and it joins a wave of AI animal clips, from a pigeon doctor to a cat with hands, that meme catalogers now file under their own category. A Badiyaa rule of thumb for spotting the next one: if an animal has human hands, a perfect symmetrical smile and a face that never blinks across a loop, treat it as generated until the creator says otherwise. In this case the creator’s own caption framed it as a comedy video, and the meme site records the clip as AI-made. The creator’s Instagram bio lists him as a creative partner of Higgsfield, a San Francisco AI video studio launched in 2025 that says its users now produce roughly two million generated videos a day, which gives a sense of how many more clapping cats are on the way. The @KittyPOVs channel’s comparison Short was published on October 8 and passed 12 million views by November 2. Further reading Wikipedia: Cats and the Internet Image: George Chernilevsky, Public domain via Wikimedia Commons This article was produced with AI assistance and reviewed by our Editorial Desk. How we work.", "markdown": "https://badiyaa.com/clapping-cat-meme-origin-ai.md" }