Grumpy Cat (real name: Tardar Sauce) has been a Famous Cat On The Internet since 2012, when her picture was uploaded to Reddit. The combination of her underbite and feline dwarfism gives Grumpy Cat the appearance of being, well grumpy. That’s it. That’s the whole schtick. This cat looks displeased with the world around her. Sure, some Grumpy Cat memes were funny enough, but the problem is that they kept — they keep — going.
Memes usually burn bright and fast, dying just as quickly as they lived, eventually relegated to oversized T-shirts on the clearance racks at Hot Topic. But Grumpy Cat has prevailed for two years now, long after general interest has waned, relegating her to appearances on The Bachelorette and, last night, as guest host of WWE’s Monday Night Raw.
There are so many inherently funny things about Grumpy Cat’s appearance on Raw, but none were intended to be. It makes complete sense why Grumpy Cat would appear on morning news shows or E!’s The Soup, which covers the most ridiculous aspects of pop culture, but where is the overlap with wrestling? What’s more is that Grumpy Cat was there to promote her Christmas special (because Grumpy Cat has her own Christmas special) that’s airing on Lifetime next week. To reiterate: In order to promote a program on Lifetime, the television network for women that airs makeover shows and Aaliyah biopics, Grumpy Cat appeared on WWE Raw, a wrestling program that regularly features giant dudes pummeling each other in steel cages.
In the mercifully short segment, wrestler The Miz (you might know him from The Real World) tries to convince Grumpy Cat to co-star with him in a summer blockbuster. Grumpy Cat, being a cat and all, fails to respond so The Miz, then bribes her with the promise of a stunt double (a stuffed animal). That’s the whole segment. Throughout the thing, the crowd boos loudly. When a cat is being booed by a group of people who paid an extraordinary amount of money to watch the TitanTron display a giant picture of shirtless of Vladimir Putin, then maybe Grumpy Cat is past her prime.
It was a painful segment, and I have watched over a decade of painful segments on Raw, that spoke to the tiredness of Grumpy Cat — both literally and figuratively; the cat sleeps most of the day and was barely awake during her appearance. Add in all the claims that this constant parading of Grumpy Cat is actually animal abuse, and it’s definitely time to retire this meme, two years too late.
But, of course, that isn’t happening anytime soon. Lifetime’s Grumpy Cat’s Worst Christmas Ever, in which the sourpuss cat is voiced by the always-sarcastic Aubrey Plaza, airs on November 29 and follows around a surly cat who, at the end, just may learn the true meaning of Christmas! It’s a total cash grab, as everything either Lifetime- and Grumpy Cat-related seems to be (it’s actually amazing they haven’t come together prior to this), that is guaranteed to be an unfunny disaster. But, because of the cat’s ubiquitous owners and manager (who also manages Keyboard Cat and Nyan Cat), we’re probably still going to get sequels for every holiday.