Woman Yelling at a Cat

Origin

Woman Yelling at a Cat pairs two completely unrelated photos side by side: on the left, a woman screaming through tears; on the right, a white cat sitting in front of a plate of salad with a thoroughly unimpressed look.

The left image is from season 2, episode 14 of The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills, "Malibu Beach Party from Hell," which aired on December 5, 2011, and shows cast members Taylor Armstrong and Kyle Richards. The cat on the right is Smudge, from Ottawa, Ontario. His owner, Miranda, took the picture at a 2018 dinner after he claimed an empty chair, and the photo posted to Tumblr by user deadbefordeath on June 19, 2018, captioned "he no like vegetals," drew 50,300 likes and reblogs within a year.

The two were first put together by Twitter user @MISSINGEGIRL on May 1, 2019, with the caption "These photos together is making me lose it." The tweet collected 78,900 retweets and 276,800 likes in two months.

Spread

A captioning format appeared almost immediately. On May 2, @lc28__ posted the first known version with dialogue added, and on June 2 a Reddit version with object labels helped it take off. After a template was posted to r/memes on June 9, one post passed 38,600 upvotes in twelve days, and the format became one of the defining memes of 2019, used for everything from complaints about spiders to protests against a mining company in Guatemala, and on October 13, 2019, a remix video posted by Thurston Waffles passed 727,000 views.

The cat became a star too. The Instagram account smudge_lord was created on May 27, 2019, identifying the cat as Smudge, and it grew to 1.4 million followers. Merchandise profits went to support the cat rescue nonprofit Furry Tails. On May 3, 2020, Taylor Armstrong and Smudge won Meme of the Year at the 12th Shorty Awards.

The Story Behind the Scene

The moment that became a joke was filmed during the hardest period of Armstrong's life. In a WBUR interview published in November 2021, she explained that the episode was filmed after her husband Russell's abuse had come to light on the show, and that he had died by suicide in August 2011, three weeks before season 2 premiered. "All the words that were coming from me were based in pure fear," she recalled.

Even so, when she first saw the meme in 2019 she felt confusion mixed with amusement, and tweeted that the woman was her. "It doesn't hurt me anymore," she said, adding that she did not want people to feel guilty about it and crediting time and a lot of therapy for her healing.

Usage

• A two-panel caption contrasting an overheated accusation on the left with a calm or absurd reaction on the right
• Mocking arguments between fandoms or sports fans by labeling one side with objects or names
• Cropping out Smudge alone as a reaction image for looking wronged

Sources

• Know Your Meme, "Woman Yelling at a Cat" — air date and episode, the June 19, 2018 Tumblr post and its reach, the May 1, 2019 @MISSINGEGIRL tweet and figures, spread dates for @lc28__, Reddit and r/memes, the smudge_lord account creation date, the Thurston Waffles remix
• Wikipedia, "Woman yelling at a cat" — Smudge of Ottawa, how the photo was taken, examples of use, Instagram following and merchandise donations, the Meme of the Year win at the 12th Shorty Awards on May 3, 2020
• WBUR Dear Sugars, "The painful, untold story behind the 'Woman Yelling at a Cat' meme" (November 20, 2021) — Taylor Armstrong's situation during filming and her own view of the meme