For some reason, cats are extremely popular on the internet, and none more so than the so-called Grumpy Cat. Since photos of the frowny feline appeared online in September 2012, she has become a ubiquitous meme and a worldwide sensation.
Tardar Sauce (which is the cat’s real name) owes her expression to an underbite and a form of feline dwarfism, but her massive success nevertheless shows how one can take advantage of unusual features and imperfections – but also that the internet is really weird. Her owner, Tabatha Bundesen, was working as a waitress in Arizona when the Grumpy Cat became famous, and now reportedly earns huge sums of money – as much as $100 million, according to some recent reports. But is that figure accurate?
Well, Grumpy Cat has a sizeable online following, with 7 million fans on Facebook and almost 200,000 subscribers on YouTube (a channel which has amassed 30 million views). She’s also “authored” a couple of reasonably successful books and sells a lot of merchandise. Finally, Grumpy Cat also makes paid appearances, has starred in a Lifetime movie, and has an endorsement deal with Friskies. Is this enough for the cat to have earned more than Oprah or Steven Spielberg in the past year? Probably not. For her part, Tabatha Bundesen denied the figure and said she would be providing more details in the future.
Whatever the sum, we’re still talking about millions of dollars here – nothing to be grumpy about, surely!
