It starts as a small nap and somehow becomes a full bed takeover. 

Tiny kittens have a way of taking over an entire bed like it was always meant to be theirs. It doesn't matter how big the bed is or how small they are, the result is always the same. One tiny kitten, fully stretched out in the middle, acting like they need every inch of space for very important nap purposes.

They always start off small. Curled up into a neat little ball, barely taking up any room, looking completely harmless. Then the expansion begins. One paw stretches out, then the back legs, then the full body stretch like they are hitting some kind of nap PR. Before long, they have gone from tiny to full sprawl, reaching peak purrfessional bed coverage.

Trying to move them isn't an option. They are deep in sleep, fully committed, probably dreaming about snacks or chasing something imaginary. You try to shift them a little, and they somehow stretch even more, like it is part of the plan. So you adjust instead, squeezing into whatever space is left while they stay exactly where they are.

It's impressive. A tiny kitten with the confidence to take over a whole bed without question. No sharing, no compromise, just full control. Tiny but powerful, living their best nap life.

She was supposed to be released, but she had other plans. 

The rescuer had just finished TNR'ing four cats and brought them back to where they came from. Everything was supposed to be routine. Open the traps, let them go, and they'd run off together. But one of them didn't. She stayed in the trap for a bit, like she wasn't ready to leave.

When she finally came out, it wasn't to run off. She went for the food, then stayed close. While the others left, she didn't follow. Instead, she started sticking near the rescuer, walking after them, not trying to hide or get away. It didn't feel like hesitation, it felt like a choice.

She had the chance to leave and didn't take it. She stayed close, like she had already decided who she trusted. Sometimes it really is that simple. A cat picks you and that's it.

So she didn't go back outside. She went home with the rescuer and now she's being adopted. What started as a routine release turned into something else completely, just because one cat decided she wasn't leaving.

Caturday is here, and you're about to start it on the right paw with the best cat content of the week! 

Caturday is finally here. We have been waiting, impatiently, all week. Every day, we have been walking around, daydreaming about the workweek being over, so that we could spend today doing the things that we actually want to do. That includes, of course, a whole bunch of quality time with our pawdorable kitty cats, and it also means catching up on all the purrfect cat content that we have missed throughout the week. 

This is what the weekly cat meowgazine is for. Here, we bring you all the things you might have missed. From the most viral cat tweets to the silliest and most wholesomest cat stories. You've been avoiding social media throughout the week because it's been too stressful lately, we get it, but that doesn't mean that you, as cat people, should not be in the loop of the cat world. Have a pawmazing Caturday, friends, and see you here next week for more!

When this kitty went into labor, there was one creature who she wanted by her side more than anyone else - her best friend, Bully the pitbull. She needed her gentle giant to protect her. 

We know exactly what people say, both about pitbulls as a breed and about cats and dogs being friends in general. They say "no". They say that pitulls shouldn't be around cats, for the cats' safety. And they say that cats and dogs cannot be friends at all, that the cats would be mean to the innocent doggos. This story proves both of these things wrong. 

Of course, we, as people who love both cats and dogs, see this cat and pitbull best friends, and we are not surprised. But many people would be. Many people would look at this pair and see their situation as ridiculous, but who are they to judge? We choose our friends carefully. It's important for us to surround ourselves with people who we trust. The same is true for cats. Maybe even more than it is for us. They choose very carefully, and this cat chose this pitbull not only as her best friend, but also as her midwide and her kittens' babysitter. 

It's always the ones who protest the most that fall the deepest in love. Insisting for years that he will never live with his girlfriend's cat because he "has allergies" and he's "never liked cats", she slowly watches their relationship grow into a bromance that will go down in history as the cutest cat-dad relationship ever.

Bromances have been a part of hooman relationships since the beginning of time, but only recently have we had a word to describe them. Men aren't known for being the most emotionally open with their male friends, as many of us were still raised with the "real men don't cry" method of teaching. Expressing your feelings as a man, especially to other men, was seen as a sign of weakness. Men don't feel things; they act. 

Maybe this is why men have resisted loving cats for so long. Cats require you to be patient and listen to the feline's subtle language to understand what it wants, whereas dogs are more direct in their communication. When a dog wants something, it barks or alerts you to the problem. A cat can do the same, but mostly, they require a purrfectly nuanced understanding of feline body language. It already sounds kind of gendered, doesn't it? Men act, and so do dogs. Cats listen, and think, and so do women.

However, all of this changed with bromances. Men have become more willing to express themselves to each other, even daring to say "I love you". To us, it's purrfectly natural, but we understand that everyone has their own journey to go through. Our journey today involves two men, but one has two legs, and the other, four, and lots of "I love you"s.

He (the boyfriend) resisted loving his girlfriend's cat for as long as he could. He always said that if they moved in together, she would have to get rid of him. Well, she watched that barrier break down, and his love for her cutie-patootie cat grow day after day. He went beyond saying "I love you" to this Siamese cat - he got them matching shirts with each other's faces on them. That's one relationship full of love, and we can safely say that that silly Siamese isn't going anywhere.

Does your cat have a special spot that sets them out from the crowd of cute kitties?

All cats are beautiful - this is a fact. If you don't agree with us, the meowtaphorical door is that way. Even the most basic of standard-issue cats are awwdorable, in their own way. But the reality is that, the closer you look, you realize that each cat is unique in its own way. Maybe your tortie has more yellow spots than black, or purrhaps your calico cat looks like a Frankenstein of different patchwork parts, but to the random observer, they might never notice.

However, some fabulous felines are born with markings so unique that you could spot (see what we did there?) them from a mile away. Like a cat that looks like it's wearing pants, cats with eyebrows (this is our favorite rare marking, tbh), or cats with spots that look like the night sky full of stars. You don't see these kinds of kitties very often, but they're always such a feline feast for our cat-loving eyes. 

Since they're rare and purrfectly difficult to find, we scoured the internet for some of the most meowrvelous felines with unique and rare fur patterns and markings. You can thank us later, but for now, it's time to gobble up all of these cute cats (with your eyes), and enjoy the supreme beauty of the feline species. Dog lovers can only wish their puppers were as beautiful as these cool cats and kittens.

Adopting a cat is always great. But adopting a cat with special needs is a grand deed of kindness. And adopting a cat with special needs who was abandoned for having them is an awesome act of a pure heart.

We honestly think anyone who has ever adopted a cat in need of a home is a great person. A person who is capable of showing big empathy for a tiny creature in their hour of need. That's probably why these people are chosen by the meowsterious Cat Distribution System to be the perfect match for these cats. It's like the CDS works closely with the Karma office - if you're a good person, good things will happen to you. And if a cat just so happens to cross your path, that's a good thing. Because cats are always a good thing.

Some cats come with more than the simple demand for a permanent home, which they all deserve regardless. Some cats come with a special need, and it can make the situation much more complicated than the regular adoption process. Each cat adoption process has its own difficulties, but when your cat is a special needs one, it takes great courage and a big heart to take the cat in. But luckily for these cats, the CDS knows to make a good match. Even if the kitten is deaf, like this one below here.

When you're a kid, you want to be a teenager. When you're a teenager, you want to be an adult. When you're an adult, you want to be a cat.

It's the circle of life, laid out as expected, making its way downtown, walking fast, stray cats pass and you're homebound. And when you're finally at home, after being an adult all day long (we know, exhausting), all you want to do is hang out with your cat. That's the purrfect hangout for tired people who have already passed their 30th birthday, and just want to rest their aching bones under the live-in weighted blanket they have that's known as a cat. But then another thought creeps in - "why the cat, and not me?"

You work your fluff off every week, and you're tired - why can't you nap whenever you want, like your cat? You have to postpone meals, heating a soggy piece of chicken in the office microwave - why can't you have as many snacks as your tummy desires, as your cat meows for when they want to? And at night, who said we need to sleep at night? What if we want to zoomie like a cat, just because? Just feels so unfair that only cats can be cats. Almost as if the more adult we get, the less cat we become.

But as the famous song says, "Everybody wants to be a cat", but unfortunately, not everybody can. But we have something, a little gem, that even cats don't have… cat memes. Once we remember that, it all feels good again. We have cats whenever we want! And they come with the package deal of human humor for us to enjoy right from the comfort of our couch, or ready on that little screen we have in our pockets. At least we're lucky for online feline funnies.

Cats don't play Uno for fun, they play to win.

Cats playing Uno don't believe in mercy. It starts off calm, like maybe this will be a normal game. Everyone's sitting there, paws on the table, acting like they get it. One cat taps a card down like it's being respectful. Another one's already trying to chew the corner. You think it's under control. It's not.

The second someone drops a +2, it's over. Now it's personal. Cats aren't just playing, they're targeting. One hits you with a +4 like they've been waiting all day. Another stacks on top with zero hesitation. No guilt, no hesitation, just pure chaos. You finally get a good hand and then a paw comes out of nowhere and wipes your entire deck off the table. Gone. Just like that.

And they don't even pretend to follow rules. One cat sits on the discard pile like that's a valid move. Another guards the deck like it's treasure. You try to grab a card and suddenly you're getting side-eye like you're cheating. Meanwhile, someone's hiding cards under their paw like a little cheater.

By the end, no one knows what's going on. The cards are everywhere, half are missing, and one cat is asleep on top of the pile like it won. No mercy, no rules, just full chaos from start to finish.

Cats will always be playful, smol, and adorable kittens in the eyes of their cat-loving hoomans. 

Blinded by eternal cuteness and hypnotized by every cat's innate ability to meownipulate their emotions, cat lovers gladly look at every cat, even the strays on the street, as their fur babies to care for and love forever. Once a pawrent, always a pawrent. 

A random cat made herself at home and had a kitten within minutes.

This person were just at a friend's house getting their car tuned when a tuxedo cat ran inside like she already lived there. At first it seemed like she belonged to the house, until she jumped on the couch, started meowing, and gave birth right there. When this person told his friend, his reaction said it all. He didn't have a cat, at least not until that exact moment.

Out of nowhere, this completely random cat just became theirs. No planning, no buildup, just a cat walking in and deciding this was the place. Instead of panicking, they just went with it and figured out how to help her through it.

When the daughters got home, they immediately stepped in and made a box for her in their room so she could be more comfortable. They gave her a space and stayed with her, making sure she was okay. It went from a surprise to something they were fully involved in.

She had only delivered one kitten by the time they left, but it was clear more were coming. She found her way inside at the right time, and now she has people around her who stepped up without hesitation.

Do you know what's even better than a cat? More cat.

Look, we're not here to endorse cat obesity. It's a hard situation to deal with, both for the cat and for their human pawrents. But we also know that some cats just stay the relative size of a fridge, no matter what diet we put them on. It's the case of one of the other I Can Has Cheezburger writers - she has the cutest cat, who simply refuses all and any physical activity. She tells us that her cat gets so bored with toys, and might consider moving a little only if it's a catnip toy - but only one type of catnip ever worked. And food-wise? She has a problematic stomach, approved by the vet. She can only eat certain foods that, unfortunately, don't make her lose her extra floof. But you know what our colleague gets? More of her cat to love.

And while your cat might just have big bones, other hefty felines are simply… fat. And it's true that they need to lose weight to live a healthy life, but until they crush their diet like champions, we can enjoy the fact that there's more cat to love. More dangling floofy parts, more belly to pet, and the same amount of cat love and appreciation that we have for any feline friend out there.

If there's anything we've learned in our many years on the internet, making cute cat content for the legendary I Can Has Cheezburger, and engaging with the meowgnificent online feline family - is that cat people are the funniest people online. Maybe it's because we all share the crazy experience of raising cat children, ot maybe it's because our cats' coo-coo has rubbed off on us, but either way - it makes all of you cat pawrents the most hilarious people on the internet. And it shows in silly examples such as this one, where a cat mom painted her cat's paw and posted it as if the cat had opened an OnlyBeans account to start helping with the bills. 

This shelter employee took an accident and turned it into something good, actions that will benefit generations of cats to come.

Life is full of tragedies, but it's how we deal with those tragedies that define us. That's a simple fact of life. There is no good without bad, and no happy without sad. You cannot erase one without the other. But you have two choices when faced with tragedy: either wallow in despair and let it consume you, or accept it and turn it into something good. Use those feelings to create something good in the world. That, to us, is the definition of a strong person.

You can't avoid disaster, even accidental ones, like that happened to our animal shelter employee below. They accidentally hit a stray momma cat while driving past a house one day. It consumed them, until they realized that they could transform that grief into help. The next day, they drove past the same spot, and found a litter of kittens. They took them in, got them fixed up, and adopted. 

Every year, driving past that house, they found more kittens and continued to help them. At the very least, they could help the cats that crossed their path, when they couldn't help the momma years before.

But after years of helping get kittens adopted, they noticed some similar features in each purrfect litter… too many similarities to ignore. They were all connected, back to that same incident two years ago. They were all from the same family.

Fate has a funny way of weaving itself into our lives, especially around felines. Without that initial accident, generations of kittens to come might have suffered a similar tragedy. It's beautiful. Transformative, even. They documented all the litters over the years, and thanks to them, they're all with loving families, with those iconic glowing blue eyes. Now this is an inspiring story!

There are three things we do on Fridays to make sure we have a great weekend: move all of our Monday meetings to Tuesday, ignore all emails until Monday morning, and scroll through heartwarming cats and kittens to bring some joy to the last day of the work week.

For those of us with a tendency to worry about anything and everything, learning how to manage our moods is one of the most impurrtant skills you can learn. Maybe you search for inner peace within through movement, like in yoga, practice breathing techniques through meditation, or take a walk to clear your head when the noise of life gets too loud. All of those things are great, but none of them work as well for us as the simplest (and cutest) thing of all - cat pictures.

There's something about seeing a tiny, floofy, fluffball kitten being held in the palm of someone's hand that just resets our nervous system and puts it on a cruise control to calm. It's like taking a deep breath after a good cry or an exhale after a stressful day. No matter how many things we have left to do before 5 PM on Friday, we always make time to recenter ourselves with a hearty scroll of heartwarming kitties.

If you're looking for something filled with more funny felines, you'll get a hefty haha out of all of the cat memes below these pictures. No shame in continuing to make yourself happy. It's called self-care, and it's just as important as eating if you want to avoid burnout.

Why look at the news when you can spend your time much more productively and look at cat memes instead? 

In times like these, when social media feels super toxic, we tell people to not look at the news. Socials are hard right meow. To stay sane and healthy, we need to look at the things that matter. We need to focus our attention on the things that we're actually searching for. We don't want endless doomscrolling. We want to find the adorable viral cat stories online that are making people smile. We want to find the cutest cat pictures that people took that week. 

We want to smile throughout our day, and as every cat person knows, the best, most low-effort way to make that happen, is by happy-scrolling through a whole bunch of silly cat memes. They're always there, online, floating among the things that you don't want to see. Because people are always sharing cat memes. And we, here at ICHC, simply remove all the noise from them and put them into pawdorable little collections. 

Considering how much cats hate going to the vet, sometimes, they force us to take them there for the silliest reasons. 

If you are a cat owner, then you have most likely been through the experience of taking your cat to the vet for some ridiculous reason. Of course, it doesn't seem ridiculous at the time. If you take your cat to the vet, it's for an actual reason. It's because they did something that spooked you into doing it. You're willing to pay the money - the hundreds of dollars - for that visit, just to make sure that your cat is okay. You can't know that you're about to pay hundreds because your cat has a tummy ache or because your cat is just a picky eater. 

Sometimes, it's silly reasons like this. Other times, it's serious things. And that couple of hundred stacks up to a couple thousand. Our cats are worth every penny. Their health is worth it. More time with them is worth it. If it's a couple hundred bucks for something silly or $10,000 for something very serious. 

The white tabby is already a bit reluctant to go to the vet, so it doesn't help that the vet negligently leave the door open. 

She brought her cat to the vet because the cat had a suture sticking out from her incision and wanted to check it. She claims her cat is adorable "happy bun" at home, but at the vet she becomes angry. A usually cuddly cat turns enraged when she is in a medical atmosphere, and she especially doesn't like men (and the vet is a man). She brings her to the vet, and the vet brings her to the examination room but leaves the door open. An absolutely avoidable issue. She follows her cat, and hasn't started to panic yet, but then realizes that even the main door of the vet office is wide open. The office is right on a big district and main road, there are tons of cars going full speed. The cat runs out the door and that's when the owner starts to panic. She runs after the cat, and luckily finds her tucked away in a garden. 

She doesn't know what could have happened if the cat had run into the street or somewhere else. She questions whether to trust the current vet after this fiasco, and decides that maybe it's best to change vets. 

Cats aren't meant to deal with such harsh temperatures, and that's what makes this rescue so necessary. 

This woman was already fostering three other abandoned kittens who were around the same age as him (5-6 weeks). A coworker found him and brought him to her, and she took to him immediately. The coworker was walking with her kids and he came running up to them meowing. It was the middle of August in the SoCal desert. If you've ever experienced that kind of heat and sun then you now how unbearably hot it can be, even so early in the year. It was 117 degrees that day, so this little guy must have been overheated and parched. The woman knew her coworker cat lady would take him in despite having 3 other cats to foster. 

He was a feisty orange, possessive of food, and a playful little guy. Her original goal was to raise all the kittens to an adoptable age before finding suitable homes. But there were two that she fell in love with. This orange guy (who she named Taco), and another cat, Ramen. She would play with all the kittens, and these two became inseparable. She bathed them together, snuggled them together, and decided to keep them. Read the full story below. 

If you thought a group of college students would be too immature to rescue and care for a litter of kittens, this story stands to prove you wrong.

For when one of the stray cats on their campus had to leave the area for some vet treatment, this collection of college students noticed that a litter of kittens had been left behind. If left to their own devices one would assume these kittens would not last all too long, especially with their mother not nearby to protect them. So seeing the potential problem looming over these kittens, the students stepped in to help you. Each one taking on a kitten to care for secretly in their dorm room.

They did so in the hopes that when momma cat came back she would seek out her kittens and the fur family would be reunited. However, it seems that her treatment and time away caused her to move on in life and when she was presented with her kittens once more the allure of family life had worn off. The rest of the story we leave you to discover for yourself, but one truly wonders what would have happened to those kittens had those kind cat loving students not been there.