24 Cats That Seem Stopped Working—A Playful Look at the Viral Cat Meme

The internet is constantly putting creative spins on pethood with cats as incorrectly assembled Ikea furniture, and dogs as video game bosses. One of the funnier types of memes to trend of late is cats as computer operating systems who have paused and need to be turned off and powered back up again. However ridiculous, that very concept spurred a massively popular thread on Twitter earlier this week when Elle Em, an American living in Spain who operates a sanctuary for street cats, tweeted out a request for funny cat pictures.

"One of my favorite type of Cat Photo is Cat Has Stopped Working Properly And Must Be Restarted do you have any of these photos I would very much like to see them please."

Em followed up the request with some examples of the form — think funny shots of cats caught mid-yawn, pre-wiggle, or a state of awkward indecision before they tear off in a zoomed-out state. Photogenic and graceful these cats were not.

1. "Zubat has stopped working properly and must be restarted."

2. "Embrujo has stopped working properly and must be restarted."

3. "Loudred has stopped working properly and must be restarted."

4. "Snorlax has stopped working properly (again) and must be restarted (again)."

5. "Exeggcute has stopped working properly and must be restarted."

6. "Luxray has stopped working properly and must be restarted."

7. "Psyduck has stopped working properly and must be restarted."

8. "Butterfree never worked properly, to begin with."

9. "Despite appearances, Empoleon is working properly."

Em's 60,000+ followers quickly volleyed back with a sprawling assortment of pics (and captions) that fit her concept frame. The best of which have been curated below.

10. "Somehow caught this magic moment on video of my boy Nicky taking a spill. 😂"

11. "He chose to sit like this, then looked angry about it. 😂"

12. "(CompileError.)"

13. "I think I need to turn this cat off and on again."

14. "Poppy.exe has crashed"

15. "She went into shut down mode unexpectedly."

16. "My kitty Shaindl, in the midst of midnight crazies."

17. "Miss Priss is often in need of a reboot."

18. "She just...gets stuck like this sometimes? Have to pet her to reboot!"

19. "Little Bug is not catting at the moment."

20. "I don't know why, but sometimes Pippin just does these off things. This is the smallest thing he has done it on before."

21. "ERROR 404: Kaylee cat not found, pls restart or call an exorcist."

22. "No one tells her that such an unflattering photo has so many likes."

23. "Kitten.exe has crashed and will need to reboot."

24. "Here’s Auri, complete brain crash when the feather she licked got unexpectedly stuck to her velcro tongue."

With responses continuing to pour in more than two days after the thread went viral, it seems clear that the idea of cats as glitchy software — is not without some merit!