The most famous frown on the internet belonged to a cat who, according to her own family, was not grumpy at all. She was calm and liked being held. Yet her face earned her a movie, a wax figure and a court win worth over $700,000. So how did a small house cat from Arizona pull that off?
Tardar Sauce
Her real name was Tardar Sauce. She was born on April 4, 2012, in Morristown, Arizona, in a litter of four kittens. Two of them, Tardar Sauce and her brother Pokey, had flat faces, big round eyes and short tails. Only Tardar Sauce had the frown.
What was really behind the scowl
The expression had nothing to do with her mood. Her owners said it came from an underbite combined with feline dwarfism, a genetic condition that affects how a cat’s bones grow. Dwarf cats are often smaller and can have shorter legs. For Tardar Sauce, it shaped her face so she looked annoyed every second of the day.
From Reddit to everywhere
On September 22, 2012, owner Tabatha Bundesen’s brother Bryan posted her photos on Reddit. Within 24 hours the post had more than 25,000 upvotes, and the image page passed about one million views in two days. Some people claimed the photo was edited, so the family uploaded videos to prove the face was real. The internet gave her a new name: Grumpy Cat.
- March 2013: first official appearance at South by Southwest in Austin. Fans lined up around the block; she slept through most of it.
- 2013: official spokescat for Friskies, and her first book hit the New York Times bestseller list.
- November 29, 2014: Lifetime aired Grumpy Cat’s Worst Christmas Ever, with Aubrey Plaza as her voice. Critics didn’t like it.
- August 2015: Madame Tussauds announced a moving wax figure, the first cat ever to get one there.
How much money did she make?
In December 2014, a British newspaper reported close to $100 million. Tabatha Bundesen called that completely inaccurate and never shared the real figure, though she said she quit her waitressing job shortly after the cat went viral.
One number is confirmed. In 2013 the family licensed Grumpy Cat’s image to a beverage company for an iced coffee. The company later put her face on ground coffee and T-shirts without permission. The family sued, and on January 22, 2018, a California jury awarded them $710,001. Exactly one dollar of that was for breach of contract.
Goodbye, Grumpy Cat
On May 14, 2019, Tardar Sauce died at home from complications of a urinary tract infection. She was seven. Her family shared the news on May 17 with a message that opened, “Some days are grumpier than others.” Within hours she was the top trending topic on Twitter worldwide.
A lesson for every cat owner
A cat’s face doesn’t tell you how the cat feels. Tardar Sauce spent seven years looking unhappy while being, by every account, a relaxed and affectionate pet. To know how your cat is doing, watch its ears, tail, posture and behavior, not just its expression.
