Grumpy Cat was a cat named Tardar Sauce whose face, thanks to feline dwarfism and an underbite, looked permanently furious. Her photo was posted to Reddit on 22 September 2012, and within a year she had an agent, a book deal, a Friskies endorsement and a film. She died on 14 May 2019, aged seven, and her frown is still licensed, printed and sold. This is the history of the cat who made a million dollars, at minimum, by looking unimpressed.
She was the last great cat of the image-macro era and the first meme to be run as a business from the start. Both halves of that matter for understanding why she lasted and why the dictionary lists her as dead: the meme died with the format, the brand did not.
April to September 2012: A kitten in Arizona
Tardar Sauce was born on 4 April 2012 in Morristown, Arizona, to Tabatha Bundesen, a waitress, and named by her daughter after the sauce. The kitten had a form of feline dwarfism and an underbite, which gave her short legs, a small body and a mouth set in a downturn. She was, by every account, a calm and unbothered cat; the face had nothing to do with her mood.
On 22 September 2012, Bundesen's brother Bryan posted a photo of her to Reddit with the title "Meet grumpy cat", and the thread reached the front page within hours. Commenters demanded proof that it was not Photoshop, so the family posted video the next day, and the video did the rest. By the end of the week she had a name, a subreddit and a caption format: the cat's face above a line of disapproval, usually ending in "no".
Late 2012: The macro
Grumpy Cat arrived at exactly the right time for the Advice Animals format. Impact-font image macros were the dominant meme style of 2011 and 2012, with Bad Luck Brian, Success Kid and the Scumbag Steve hat all in circulation, and the Lolcat tradition from I Can Has Cheezburger meant a captioned cat was already a genre. Her first macro, "I had fun once. It was awful", set the tone: absolute negativity, delivered flatly.
The macros spread through Reddit, Tumblr, Facebook and, especially, the 9GAG and iFunny end of the internet, where she became a staple. By December 2012 she was on television, and Bundesen had been contacted by Ben Lashes, the talent manager who represented Keyboard Cat and Nyan Cat. Lashes had made his name arguing that memes could be managed like celebrities, and Grumpy Cat was the proof.
2013: The year of Grumpy Cat
In March 2013 Tardar Sauce appeared at South by Southwest in Austin, where a line to see her wrapped around the Mashable house and reporters compared her draw to that of the festival's actual stars. She won the Webby Award for Meme of the Year in May. In September she became the official "spokescat" for Friskies, with a run of ads and a tour. Her book, "Grumpy Cat: A Grumpy Book", came out that summer and made the New York Times bestseller list. A coffee drink called Grumppuccino was licensed.
Bundesen was able to quit her job. The cat travelled with a handler, appeared on morning shows and had a fixed rule of limited public exposure because she tired easily. A Grumpy Cat merchandise line ran from calendars to plush toys to a wine. In 2013 the joke was that the cat was more professionally managed than most human celebrities, and it was not much of a joke.
2014 to 2015: The movie and the hundred million dollars
The Lifetime film "Grumpy Cat's Worst Christmas Ever" aired in November 2014, with Aubrey Plaza voicing the cat's inner monologue. It was reviewed as exactly what it was, a made-for-television cash-in, and it drew a respectable audience. A Madame Tussauds wax figure followed in 2015, and the cat made more appearances at trade shows than any actual animal should.
In December 2014 a British tabloid reported that Grumpy Cat had earned 100 million dollars, a figure that spread through every news site and became the number most people still associate with her. Bundesen said it was "completely inaccurate" and declined to give a real one. The dictionary's honest answer is that the total is unknown and certainly in the millions: the Friskies deal, the book, the film and the licensing were real, and the six-figure court award that came later was public. Whatever the number, she was the most commercially successful meme animal in history.
2015 to 2018: The slow fade and the lawsuit
By 2015 the meme was ageing with its format. The Impact-font macro gave way to reaction images, Twitter screenshots and video, and Grumpy Cat, who could only ever do one expression, had nothing to do in the new formats. She stayed famous, in the way a 2012 celebrity stays famous, but new Grumpy Cat jokes stopped appearing around 2015 and the dictionary marks the meme as dead from roughly that point. Doge had taken the "animal with a face" throne in 2013 and would hold it for a decade.
The business continued. In 2015 the family's company, Grumpy Cat Limited, sued Grenade Beverage, the maker of Grumppuccino, for going beyond its licence and selling Grumpy Cat roasted coffee and shirts. The case went to a jury in January 2018, and the jury awarded the cat's company 710,000 dollars in damages. It was reported everywhere as "Grumpy Cat wins 710,000 dollars", which is roughly accurate and is the only precise number in her financial history.
May 2019: Death
Tardar Sauce developed a urinary tract infection in early May 2019 and died of complications on 14 May, at home, aged seven. The family announced it on 17 May. The obituaries were extensive: the New York Times, the BBC, a segment on the evening news, and a wave of tributes from people who had spent 2013 captioning her face. Most noted the same thing, that the cat with the angriest face in the world had by all accounts been gentle and slightly shy.
The reaction online was sincere, which is unusual for a dead meme. Grumpy Cat had never had a villain moment, never been co-opted the way Pepe the Frog was, and her "no" had aged into affection. Cat-tax posts, the practice of paying a Cat Tax in photos, filled with pictures of her for a week.
2019 to 2026: The estate
The brand outlived the cat. Grumpy Cat Limited kept licensing the face, and it appears on merchandise, in a 2020s run of children's books and in occasional promotions. The Friskies relationship ended, but the trademark is enforced, and the company has continued to pursue unlicensed use. Memorials in Morristown were modest; the internet's memorial is the macros, which still circulate on every "remember 2013" thread.
The estate has also had to manage the problem every dead meme faces: the face is public property in practice and private property in law. A generation that captioned her for free in 2012 does not read licensing terms, and the company has mostly chosen its battles, going after commercial products rather than fans. That is roughly the line Chris Torres drew for Nyan Cat, and it is the line that lets a meme brand survive its subject.
There is a case that she was the last of her kind. The meme animals that came after her, from the Doge dog to the cats of TikTok, were famous on platforms that pay creators directly, so nobody needed a Friskies deal to make a living from a pet. Grumpy Cat's business existed because 2012 Reddit paid nothing, and the only way to turn a front-page post into money was to leave the internet and sign contracts. She was a print-era celebrity born on a website.
Her real legacy is the model. Before Grumpy Cat, meme animals belonged to whoever posted them; after her, a meme could have a manager, a trademark, a merchandise line and a court record. Every creator who has since licensed a cat, from the Polite Cat to the succession of TikTok cats, is working in her wake. Business Cat, the 2011 macro of a cat in a tie, turned out to be a prophecy.
And the face still works. Put it under any headline in 2026 and it says the same thing it said in September 2012, without a caption: no.
FAQ
What was Grumpy Cat's real name?
Tardar Sauce. She was born on 4 April 2012 in Morristown, Arizona, and her permanent frown came from feline dwarfism and an underbite.
When did Grumpy Cat become a meme?
Bryan Bundesen, the brother of her owner Tabatha, posted her photo to Reddit on 22 September 2012. The image macros followed within days.
How much money did Grumpy Cat make?
Nobody outside the family knows. A 2014 report of 100 million dollars was denied by her owner as inaccurate. Confirmed income included a Friskies endorsement, a bestselling book, a Lifetime film and a 710,000-dollar jury award in 2018.
When did Grumpy Cat die?
On 14 May 2019, of complications from a urinary tract infection, aged seven. Her death was announced on 17 May.
Is Grumpy Cat still licensed?
Yes. Grumpy Cat Limited, the family's company, continues to license her image for merchandise and books and to enforce the trademark.
