cats and the independent web

[dogbrain]

i'm aware of how silly this sounds, but has anyone else noticed that lots of spaces associated with the small/indie/whatever-you-wanna-call-it web have a running cat motif?  i first noticed it with Neocities' Penelope, but there's also "Neko"web and Bitty the Kitty (32bit.cafe's mascot). you could maaaaayyyyybee count GitHub's Octocat and the Scratch cat by a stretch...

regardless of whether or not this is intentional, it made me think about connections between cats and concepts we associate with the independent web. cats are often elusive and shy away from the spotlight; they're most comfortable doing their own thing. personal websites are catlike to me in the sense that you can't really force it to be something they aren't, rather they grow alongside you. cats are also often associated with old internet due to their memetic virality. AND....they can fill any container like liquid!

i'm just spitballing here, but i thought it was pretty funny.. cats are truly the animal of the internet 

[Seryndelle]

Good observation! I wonder if it’s got anything to do with the lolcats of yore (sidenote: I need to add “The Lolcats of Yore” to my band name list).

It’s sometimes hard to believe, given the proliferation of all the various types of memes nowadays, that there was a time that most memes were just funny pictures of cats in the form of a “demotivational poster”—I Can Haz Cheezburger? is a great example.

Perhaps the association of cats with the “old internet” is rooted in that, and when choosing mascots, sites like Neocities and Nekoweb wanted to choose one that reminded people of what the web could be like once more.

[chilblands]

I like to think it's because cat lovers love ALL cats- breed or fur colour (some may call it catoscope like orange cats are stupid, but fur does not correlate to intelligence) cat is cat. Whereas dog owners are specific about the breed, size and gender.

Cat lovers may love all breed but dog lovers have a preference of breed and size. Also, the silhouette of a cat is iconic  . Dogs have different silhouette depending on the breed