Nobody remembers electing cats as our furry overlords, yet here we are serving breakfast on demand.

Cats may technically be called pets, but anyone who has ever lived with one knows who's actually in charge. Hoomans pay the rent, buy the food, clean the litter box, and provide around-the-clock service while their feline overlords supervise from the comfiest seat in the house.

The arrangement starts innocently enough. You adopt a cute little cat and promise to give them a wonderful home. Fast-forward a few months and you're standing in the kitchen at 6 AM because your new boss has decided breakfast should be served early. Try explaining that the bowl isn't empty. Go ahead. See how far that gets you.

Furniture ownership also transfers quickly. Your chair becomes their chair. Your bed becomes their bed. Your laptop becomes a heated throne conveniently placed wherever you were hoping to work. If you're lucky, your cat might leave six inches of mattress available at night. Please remember to thank them for their generosity.

Even affection happens on feline terms. Want cuddles? Request denied. Need to finish something important? Suddenly there's a cat sprawled across your chest demanding 45 uninterrupted minutes of pets. Attempting to move before they're finished could result in a strongly worded meow or, in serious cases, claws.

Cat pawrents eventually learn that resistance is futile. We rearrange our bodies because the cat looks comfortable. We apologize when we accidentally disturb them. We buy expensive beds only to watch them sleep in the cardboard box they arrived in. Somehow, we're delighted to keep funding the entire operation.

So yes, humans may have opposable thumbs, jobs, and legal ownership of the house. Cats have something far more powerful: complete control over the humans with opposable thumbs.

All hail our furry feline overlords. The treat tax is due immediately.

For little kittens that are trying to survive outside, something as simple as a safe place to sleep and a full belly can change everything, and all it takes is the right person noticing them at the right moment.

Nothing can be as heartbreaking as finding little kittens inside trash bags, among piles of garbage. Instead of finding people who are willing to take care of them, some prefer to take these measurements and move on with their day. Luckily for these little furry felines, a kind soul appeared and rescued them. For some reason, they spotted a living trash bag and realized that something was inside there… something that was alive and needed help as soon as possible.

And the most amazing thing happened after that.

These kind people decided to take all four cats home and take care of them as if they were their own. They were so small that they needed to drink milk out of a bottle and could barely open their eyes. They were probably days (or maybe hours) old. They have the kitties a warm bed, milk, and lots of love for them to thrive until they are old enough to be adopted by people who are willing to take care of them.

These types of rescue stories are very helpful and really make us realize that there are good people out there… people who are observant and can spot these little cries for help from tiny beings that cannot speak or scream too loudly. And these cats were fortunate enough to have that woman walk by and be super careful to notice how they were calling for help.

Are you sure Harvey isn't a creature you summoned by accident from a meowsterious tome in the "restricted book" section?

We've all seen the glorious glow-up pictures of cats before and after they get adopted. The kitties always look so sad and distraught, with matted fur, a haze over their eyes, and usually more than one sign that their lives have been nothing but survival. It's heartbreaking to see them so full of distrust and fear, jumping at every little noise, or even worse, the feeling that they've just given up. But then, they learn what it's like to be safe, to be loved, and to truly live, and then everything about them changes. You see a light behind their eyes that wasn't there before, their fur gets healthier, and they start to show you their true purrsonality.

But our story today from Reddit user SwagzBagz features a different kind of feline glow-up. One that will transport you to a realm filled with fairies, fae, and meowstical creatures! We think it's time we introduced you to Harvey Danger, the kitten that arrived as the scraggly runt and left as a fairytale creature.

Harvey was taken in by her foster family at just 6 - 7-weeks old, and weighing only 1 pound! During her time with them, she ate (a lot, as all kittens do), and grew. But some parts of Harvey grew more than others, most notably her outrageous ears and whiskers! Despite Harvey looking like a weird crossover between a gremlin, a fairy, and a kitten, a family looking for a kitten saw her and decided that this little goblin kitten was the purrfect pet for them.

Her foster family took some pictures of Harvey in the car on her way to get adopted, and she looks nothing like the tiny, scrungy kitten who first wobbled through those doors. With her meowrvelously wispy ears, her firework whiskers, and her piercing eyes, Harvey looks more like a familiar summoned from another world than a kitten. But regardless of how she looks, we're sure she and her new family are going to get along just purrfectly.

The summer heat may have melted all of you into a hooman pile of goop, but not us. We're cat people. We don't do outdoors unnecessarily. We stay inside, in the AC, with our cute cats curled up next to us. If we wanted to go outside, we would have adopted a dog.

Some people prefer to be hot, some prefer the cold, but we're like Goldilocks - we prefer to be "just right". And you know what the beauty of modern technology is? We can make the inside of our homes literally any temperature we want. When it's scorchingly hot outside, we can turn our thermostat down to 60 degrees and be as cool as a cucumber. If it's freezing outside, we can turn it up to 78, and feel all toasty and warm. This is why we love staying indoors with our cats - because not only do we get to spend more quality time with our kitties, but we never have to sweat or shiver if we don't want to.

But for all of you adventurous feline folks, or dog people out there, you're probably sweating through your shirts and pretending you're enjoying it. Not us. We're safely tucked away under a blanket, even a little chilly, with the air conditioning blasting at full strength. The purrfect scrolling temperature, honestly. We've got one cat in between our legs and another resting near our head, so we have more than enough reason to make our house colder than the inside of a refrigerator. 

If you're feeling the heat and miserable because of it, we have one suggestion for you: why not enjoy these wholesome friday felines for an adorable air-conditioned meowment of cooling cat cuteness? They're like rubbing an ice cube on the back of your neck, but with more shedding and a lot more cuteness. They may not be the oasis of your dreams, but they sure do beat the heat and make you smile while doing it. 

Or you can continue to burn under this sweltering heat; the choice is yours. I know which one I'd make.

Outdoor cats are fierce hunters. Indoor cats… try their best. 

The difference between indoor and outdoor cats is so stark. My husband's cat, who lives in a rural community, has always been indoor-outdoor, and although she is scared of almost everything and will stay away from every cat and human and car in the area, when it comes to small animals, she is the fiercest huntress. Countless times, screams around the house erupted when she came in running with a small bird or a mouse in her teeth. She is truly fierce. And then, there is my cat. My purrfect chonky senior house-cat, who doesn't can't even manage to catch those chunky large flies who bump into everything. 

I'll give my cat credit, she does try. When she sees those flies or a bird on the windowsill, she… makes noises. She chirps. She lets me know that there is a thing in the house that does not belong there. But she doesn't hurt. She's never had to, so she doesn't know how. And the cat in today's story is exactly the same. 

When a mouse ran into this cat's house, it didn't understand that one of the things that he is supposed to do, as a cat, is catch the thing. How would he know? But he did know that this thing does not belong in this house. And so, he did the one thing he knows always gets his human's attention. He screamed. He screamed his little heart out for weeks, trying to let the human know that there is a rat running around the house, hiding in corners unseen and unknown. The human didn't understand. The human thought something was wrong, so they took the cat to the vet, over and over, to no avail. The realization was relieving when it happened, of course, but boy, was it an expensive one. 

When we bring a cat to a shelter, we imagine it will be safe there until it's adopted…

Every once in a while, we will come across stories of cats being abandoned by owners who didn't want them anymore or couldn't take care of them anymore. The cats whose stories we find are generally cats who have been found and rescued, but we're sure there are many more stories like these that we don't hear because the cats are not found. So, every time we cover a story like this one, we make sure to remind people - to educate them - that there are better options than throwing your cat out onto the street, one of them being bringing your cat to a shelter. 

Shelters are sacred places in the cat community. They take in cats in need of help and give them what they need until they get forever homes. Or at least that is what we thought. Today's story has, unfortunately, shown us otherwise. The abandoned kitten in today's story was one who was already rescued once before. A couple found her on the streets, decided, for whatever reason, that they couldn't adopt her, and did the right thing - bringing her to a shelter. 

Except that this shelter apparently has a time limit on the stay of the kittens there. When the kitten was found and rescued again, she was 6 months old and had been on the streets for at least 3 weeks. The shelter didn't have her for long. It was lucky that she was found again, and most likely, it was even bigger luck that this person went ahead and found this kitten a real foster, one that will wait for the right person to adopt her, rather than bringing her back into the shelter that dumped her for a second time. 

There's nothing cuter or more stylish than an adorable little kitty showing off their tiny hat.

We all have come across a photo of a cat wearing a hat… and somehow that image never left our minds. That actually happened to me yesterday, while scrolling on social media. I saw two little kitties, a white one and a black one, wearing two little helmets made out of fruit, and I thought it was the most adorable thing ever.

Before we jump into these fashionable cats, I'd like to leave a little disclaimer. Have you ever had those days when everything is blue, and somehow, there's no way out of it? Well, if that sounds familiar and you need a quick fix to move on with your day, scrolling through a bunch of pictures of cats with hats might make your day better. Of course, I'm not promising it will change your mood, not at all. But at least there will be a tiny smile coming out of your face, that in days like that, is obviously a good sign.

I hope you can find them as cute and as funny as I do. There's something so funny about creating that little piece of clothing that goes on top of a cat's head… I found the idea absolutely ridiculous but extremely cute, all at the same time. And cats know they are looking super fine: that's why they let us put those things on them, because we know how they can get sometimes. Anyways, I'll leave you with the other cats!

Friday is here, and we need a little feline-shaped pick-me-up to finish this week strong.

Oh, Friday. Both the best day and the worst day of the week. The weekend is so close. Caturday is almost here. We need to survive just a little bit longer, and finally, we will be able to do all the things that we want to do during the weekend. Which are nothing. We want to do nothing. Just rest, chill with our cats, and scroll through endless cute cat pictures and videos online. That is our ideal weekend, but to get there, we need to get through Friday. And for that, we have some purrfect cat memes to purrk you up.

We are simple people. We don't need much for our mood to be uplifted. Just some internet cats. That's what we are here for - online, on social media, and of course, on ICHC. We are here for all the goodness that internet cats bring into our lives. Without them, we would be lost. Without them, every Friday would be a day full of nothing but staring at the clock and watching time crawl away. We need these purrfect memes in our lives, and we know that so do you. 

The cat distribution system listens to you, so never fear speaking out into the universe for what you want. 

Sometimes all we have to do is ask. It may seem like it's too simple to be true, but it is. Of course it's not a science, and it can't be applied to everything in life. But there's some element of manifestation and the law of attraction in simple things. Sometimes you just need to imagine it and it happens to you, which is sort of what happens in this story of fate and cat distribution fun. If you've been following our stories, then you know how often the cat distribution system and fate work hand in hand. A wife and her husband contemplated getting a cat, but they have two dachshunds who are still young and learning how to behave. The wife told her husband yesterday that, "unless a cat comes and adopts us, I don't see us getting a cat." And like the universe listens, those were the magic words. Their AC unit broke and the little doggos were kept in a separate room sequestered from the main house. Since repair men were in and out, their door was wide open, and of course a cat comes crawling in to answer their hopes. She was skittish and cautious, but she cozily got comfortable on the husband's lap and fell asleep. They slowly are carefully introduced the kitty to their dogs, and after some tension everyone calmed down and relaxed together. 

This woman never believed she'd have a cat, and certainly didn't think the cat would come so quickly after her wish. The kitten is only 2-3 months old and they decided to name her Terry. They actually discovered that the cat is their neighbors, but decided that it's better for the cat's sake and health to be inside with them and they keep her. The story is inspiring and beautiful, and feel free to comment if you have a similar story regarding the cat distribution system. 

Things happen, but cats will always be there to make you smile. 

There are moments in our lives that mark us furrever. It could be a bad breakup, a career choice, meeting someone you never thought you could meet, or something serendipitous. We all have bad spells, times where we're down on our luck and try our best to pick ourselves up. Sometimes it feels like nothing seems to go right, and the weight of small frustrations and bigger disappointments presses down like a storm cloud you can't shake. During these times, it can feel impossible to imagine the light returning. But lifting yourself out of a bad spell is less about the sudden or dramatic shift in your life, but about the little deliberate steps that slowly reclaim your sense of agency. 

And sometimes a cat can be that shift. It may sound silly or dramatic, but it's not. Cats really have the whole package to help us grow, even if we don't realize it at the time. We don't necessarily know how bad we feel until we compare ourselves to someone else, someone who seems to have everything together. We might even look at our cats and think to ourselves, "wow, if only I was as happy and content as he is." And although it's unnecessary to compare ourselves or draw conclusions about others, cats really do have all the answers! Even if they don't go out and tell you, they're keeping secrets of life and happiness to themselves. But with a little bit of love, petting, and tuna they will reveal everything you ever wanted to know. So enjoy these adorable cats and remember life will get better.  

People don't understand how lucky they are if a kitten chooses them as their furrever family.

One of the biggest qualities cat owners will tell you is necessary to adopt a fiest feline is patience. Even though cats can be extremely loyal, they need time to gain trust and become comfortable with their owners, which some people (ahemdogownersahem) don't have the patience for.

But every cat owner will also swear that gaining a cat's trust is one of the best feelings in the world, because once they do, my friends, you gain a companion for life. A cat that trusts you is a cat that will give you their hearts and soul, and you will want to do everything in your power to ensure that they choose right, that they are happy with the bond you two have created.

It's rare to find that connection with a cat, and it's even rarer to do so with a kitten. Even though you might think that a kitten is easier to impress, they can actually be a lot more cautious, not to mention difficult to find. Kittens are skiddish and weary, and even though they haven't been out in the world that long, they wouldn't lower their guards for just anyone.

So if a kitten chooses you as their hooman, consider yourselves the luckiest people in the world.

That is how we imagine the Reddit user u/nikolasdimitroulakis feels at the moment, after he found a 4-week-old kitten in his garden, and formed a bond with her that many would be envious of. The sweet kitten he named Delia seemed to instantly trust the hooman, including trusting him to ensure she is a happy, healthy kitten, and to find her a place in his home.

The two are now inseparable, and their story is truly inspiring. Keep scrolling to read the full furrtastic tale!

We often mention how varied and unexpected cat distribution encounters often are, but this one truly takes the biscuit as it were. In the middle of nowhere Australia, in the middle of a scorching summer, in an area that is fully anti-cat. But where there is will, the CDS finds a way.

Originally posted to r/CatDistributionSystem, this story is a shining example of the CDS at work. Oftentimes the stories we hear from the CDS, while magical in their own right, are not all too different from being lucky and finding a cat in a box by the roadside. But in this tale the cat literally jumped on his chosen hooman's roof and sang the song of his people until the hooman came out to help him off the roof. He marked his territory, claimed his hoomans and was welcomed with open arms. It cannot get any more CDS than that.

However, what is even more curious is how this feline, in such a cat hating community, found itself free and running around on this hooman's roof. For this we turn to our CDS delivery's origin story. The tail of a feline who started life in a really tough spot, was saved from that life, but given a new one that simply didn't suit. No matter how much he tried, no matter how much his family helped, there was no click and this cat needed to move on. So much so that he himself went ahead and chose his own home, a neighbor next door. 
 

I've said it before but this time I mean it in a much more clinical, much less meow-aphorical way. I don't just relate to these cats. I am these cats. These cats are me

There's no separation between us anymore, no gap where the hooman ends and the cat begins.

Another week has almost finished passing us by and the weekend joyfully awaits us in just a few short hours. But seeing as the work week has filled us with frustrations we figured it might be nice to quickly flush them away with the help of some hilarious felines.

There is no denying that out of any pet that people have normalized having in their home, our feline friends are by far the feistiest. And it is just that feisty nature that allows them to constantly release their frustrations as they arise in real time. Often allowing them to also show the pawson who has done them wrong that it is them who has caused this and pawhaps even teach them a lesson. It is something that for the sake of decorum, we hoomans have abandoned entirely, but it is something that we could do with more of. After all, it is not healthy to hold things in and the more you do, the more you hurt yourself.

So while we do not expect you to suddenly 180 and start being sassy the moment someone wrongs you, we do think you should kick back and enjoy these feline funnies and let your laughs flush those frustrations far away one at a time. And with time, you might even start adopting some of our sassy feline friends' strategies to stay stress free. They might be feisty but would you rather be happy or miserable? Sometimes you've gotta think more about number 1.

 

It is one thing to wake up to the Christmas-like joy of finding a cat in a box plonked outside your front door. But it is a whole different story when that happens 3 times and you hardly have space to make the latest arrival to your cat rescue comfortable. But that is the story of u/Chuphojaabhai the heroic hooman who has dedicated his life to the love of cat kind.

You can tell that this rescuer is a truly lover of cats, if not only for the fact that he posted this story on Reddit's r/OneOrangeBraincell, a place for fans of brainless felines converge to cackle at the hilarity of a cunning cat with no concept of three dimensional space for example. So not quite the place you would usually post a rescue story. Nonetheless, the tale of this orange idiot is an endearing one and one that shows just how important it is to show up for cats, no matter the cost.

It is a story that shows how little you need to make an impact, and how vital people like this rescuer are. Without him in the picture and as a known member in his community, this kitten could have very well found itself on the side of a road, in a dump, or far worse. But thanks to this rescuer's fame in the community there was another, no guilt option available to at least attempt to ensure a decent continuation of life for the tiny cat who suddenly had no home. 
 

The internet doesn't make cat memes like it used to. But we do.

The landscape of the internet has changed quite a bit since I was a kid, to say the least. Gone are the days of the 5-minute loading time while your dial-up modem connected you to the internet, when we made the original memes on Microsoft Paint or the early versions of Photoshop, before YouTube was even a seed of an idea in someone's brain. Now anyone with a phone has immediate access to the internet, and memes are a dime a dozen. It's so easy to make them that the internet is literally saturated with them, and they've lost a bit of the soul they had when they were first created.

It's natural that the internet today looks completely different from what it looked like 20+ years ago. Technology advanced, and so did our tastes. No one has the attention span to watch hours of Nyan Cat racing through his pixelated universe or the patience to hear the Hamster Dance play over and over again while scrolling. But there is a big part of me that misses the human element that went into the creation of all of these early memes of the internet. They weren't purrfect, they weren't tailored for viral success - they were just silly and caught on because they were ridiculous. 

So for all you aging millennials or folks born in the 1990s or earlier, I brought back some nostalgic cat memes that you might recognize that I feel really encompass the taste of the early internet. They would fail horribly if I posted them on social media, but for you true fans, they might transport you back to those days on your family computer and clogging your phone line, all for the sake of a little harmless fun on the World Wide Web.

And if you recognize some of them, it's time for your 40+ multivitamin and your daily stretches so you don't accidentally throw out your back.

Hungry? Grab a cat meme.

Food makes the world go round. We all need it to survive, but it's more than that. It's an emotional process of memories, tastes, and a sign of love for many. It's more than just a need to survive. Cats are often compared to loaves of bread when they sit in a specific shape, paws tucked under them, and rounded back like a loaf of bread. Bread baking dates back over 30,000 years. It started with unleavened flatbread made by hunter-gatherers to a staple food revolutionized by Egyptian fermentation and modern industrialization. Ovens were invented in ancient Greece. 

Whether your cat loaves or not isn't the point. And whether you're a bread fanatic or gluten-free doesn't matter either. The point is that you appreciate a good cat meme when you see one. If you scroll below, you'll find a list of hilarious, wholesome, and adorable cat memes that are just waiting to be gobbled up, just waiting to be looked at and laughed at. Even if you're on a diet and you're not eating bread right now, you can still indulge in the cat memes. The internet thrives on cat memes, as well as food. Have you noticed how popular cooking videos have become? Or ASMR mukbang videos, people make all kinds of crazy money just by filming themselves eating. It's a strange world we live in, and no one knows where the future is headed. But cat memes will always be there to cheer up anyone in need of a hug. 

No amount of time with our cats will ever be enough time. 

Spending 18 years with your cat is an amazing feat. It's something that we wish we could have with our cats. I look at my little fluffball, 11 years old, and I pray every day that she lives so many more years. But at the same time, I know that if I'm lucky enough to have her live till 18, I will still not feel like it was enough time. Because it never is, is it? 18 years were certainly not enough for the person whose story we'll be talking about today. Cats should live forever. 

You can never know how long you have with your feline. That's why we say that you should always make the best out of every second with them. Some cats live unexpectedly short lives, some cats live to be super seniors, and some cats even break records. I'm talking about you, Flossie, the oldest living cat who, just last week, celebrated her 31st birthday. 

Ginger was loved his entire life by his owner. For 18 long and beautiful years, this cat was spoiled and loved, and his life was everything that it was supposed to be. But the day he crossed the rainbow bridge, of all days, was a day his soul-human wasn't with him. She was at the airport, and she arrived half an hour after she passed, heartbroken that she wasn't able to say goodbye. 

But her beautiful kitty wasn't mad. If anything, looking at her own story in retrospect, she figures that he was worried. About her. He's always been there to watch over her, the same way that she watched over him. That last day didn't count. He wasn't upset. And he showed that to her by arranging a CDS delivery for her. 

When a cat spots their forever person, they will do anything and everything to get to them. 

And we do mean anything. We have seen some amazing stories like this. Cats come to their humans in the most unexpected ways sometimes. You could be having a completely normal day, on a walk, when a cat will follow you home - no warning, no question. They will walk right through the front door with you. They will even do more than that. A cat can seek you out. You might be someone who has never wanted a cat, someone who would need some convincing, but if you are chosen by a cat, then don't worry, a cat will take its time convincing you to let it into your home. A cat could spend months convincing you, but eventually, you will cave. 

Cats choose their humans, and when a cat knows who their human is, they will not give up on that human. The person whose story we'll be covering today learned that the… interesting way. It was a normal day, as it always is when someone gets unexpectedly adopted by a cat. They were on a walk with their dog when, out of the corner of their eye, they spotted a tiny kitten screaming across the river, but between them and the kitten was a ditch filled with water. They knew immediately that they were going to do whatever it took to save the kitten, but just as they started thinking about solutions, the kitten spotted them back. And she knew - instantly - that this was her human. A little ditch was not going to stop her from going home, so… she hopped right in. She swam across that ditch and ran into the hands of her human, knowing she was on her way home. 

Move over Mufasa, Scar, and Simba - there's a new legendary lion(ess) in town, and her name is Josie.

We've all heard it before, probably for the first time in your 8th-grade biology class: "survival of the fittest". Only the strongest survive; mercy for none. By all accounts, Josie should not have lived to be 17-years-old, which is far longer than the average lifespan of a generic lioness. At the age of 12, she started going blind and her body started to slow down. Her pride, valuing the survival of the group over the individual, left her behind. 

But not everyone left. Her daughters, Dawn and Duffy, stayed with her. 

Thanks to a viral post on X from @Rainmaker1973, we learned that Josie's daughters protected her from scavengers or a bold predator hoping to take down an easy catch, they made sure she always ate first, and helped direct her through rough terrain with soft calls. 

These three legendary lionesses made history in Addo Elephant National Park, and will not soon be forgotten. Their story of feline family, survival, and determination to survive is one that we can all look at and collectively say, "Wow."