At the end of 2024, Billie Eilish sat cross-legged on stage and began to meow, her fans joining in. This is because her Oscar-winning track 'What Was I Made For?' has become the default soundtrack for a new breed of AI-generated cat video. These bizarre fantasias feature cartoonishly fat or buff cats with human bodies, telling condensed soap opera tales of cheating, revenge and violence.
One video shows Mr Whiskers, wearing a red flannelette shirt, accidentally cutting off his paw at work. He is fired, his wife divorces him, and he attempts to rebuild his life in 30 seconds. His ex-wife later tries to kill him with an axe, but falls into a puddle and humiliates herself. In another, a muscly cat in Capri pants saves a baby from shark-infested waters, adopts it, and takes it to his Beverly Hills mansion.
These cats are not quite feline—they have rugged, athletic human physiques, live in mansions, drive convertibles, and work corporate jobs. Yet they routinely face grief, sickness, and danger, soundtracked by uncanny pop covers. They are pushed off ships, caught in house fires, drug-addled, arrested, and bullied. Each video is a lurid domestic catastrophe: a father propelling his kitten into a ceiling fan, a cheating wife ignoring her husband, a teased kitten becoming jacked.
Some videos are disturbingly dark. One depicts a cat-lady in the antebellum South picking cotton before being lashed by a white cat in overalls. Another features 'Luigi Meowgione', whose cat-grandmother collapses in a grocery store. After her health insurance is denied, he scales the insurance company building, fills it with catnip gas, and hacks the system before entering the CEO's office—presumably for revenge. Part two has not yet been released.
These videos, viewed millions of times, raise questions: are they cautionary tales about affluence, betrayal, and forgiveness? Shakespeare by way of Neighbours meets Euripides? Biblical parables for our time? Or simply the final form of the anthropomorphic kitty, following in the pawprints of 'I can haz cheezburger?' and Grumpy Cat?
