Surprised Kitty

Examples

Two cosplayers on grass imitate Surprised Kitty: a black-clad person in a yellow-and-black helmet lies back and raises both hands as a white-shirted person tickles them. No visible caption.

Surprised Dully cosplay animation

Source ↗
Credit & details

No visible caption. Two cosplayers on grass imitate Surprised Kitty: a black-clad person in a yellow-and-black helmet lies back and raises both hands as a white-shirted person tickles them. No visible caption.

Original visible artwork and credit marks retained in source bytes.

Source media ↗
A gray-and-white shark plush lies on patterned fabric while a hand tickles it and lifts its fins, imitating Surprised Kitty. No visible caption.

Surprised Shark animation

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Credit & details

No visible caption. A gray-and-white shark plush lies on patterned fabric while a hand tickles it and lifts its fins, imitating Surprised Kitty. No visible caption.

Original visible artwork and credit marks retained in source bytes.

Source media ↗
A tickled kitten raises both paws, with a red-and-yellow spiky cartoon face digitally overlaid on its head. A 4GIFs.com watermark remains visible. No visible caption.

Surprised Kitty cartoon-face edit

Source ↗
Credit & details

No visible caption. A tickled kitten raises both paws, with a red-and-yellow spiky cartoon face digitally overlaid on its head. A 4GIFs.com watermark remains visible. No visible caption.

hosting mark, not authorship proof.

Source media ↗
About & sources

A tiny kitten opens its front paws whenever the tickling pauses: a repeatable gesture turns a short pet video into an instantly readable reaction.

Date

A 2009 YouTube kitten clip, documented circulating through blogs that November.

History

The selected 2009 marks the clip’s early circulation, not the 2010 creation of its Know Your Meme entry. That retrospective account attributes an October 13, 2009 upload to rozzzafly and identifies the kitten as Atilla Fluff; this archive has not independently authenticated that first-upload date or identity. Contemporary corroboration is narrower: Boing Boing’s November 30, 2009 post, “Surprised kitten is surprised,” links the YouTube clip and Sean Bonner’s recommendation of its 17 seconds. Know Your Meme describes late-November sharing and later television reenactment, showing how a small recurring movement became a recognizable performance. The preview is a representative still, not a playable preservation of the gesture or an authenticated first-upload frame. Video and image rights remain uncleared for public reuse; this is a private research preview.

Know Your Meme — Surprised Kitty chronology and source links
Catalog image
Surprised Kitty representative image