Cat celebrities are rising on the internet

If there's one thing the internet has done, it's to prove that cats are the most popular creatures among humans. This is important, because pre-internet it was generally held that dogs were the best, with people saying they were "man's best friend". This may still hold true, but the amount of internet traffic devoted to cats shows that if they are not our best friends exactly, they are our best obsession.

The rise of cat celebrities is proof of this. Cats such as Grumpy Cat, Confused Cat and Hitler Cat have all made headlines in the past 10 years. Hong Kong got in on the action with "Tsim Tung Brother Cream", a convenience store cat in Tsim Sha Tsui who has 110,000 followers and attracted crowds of tearful well-wishers when the store was recently forced to close due to exorbitant rent.

So what is it that endears cats to people so much? It is surely not mutual love. Unlike dogs, cats do not play the game of pleasing their owners - except inasmuch as pleasing themselves happens to please their human caregivers.