If you’ve been on Twitter, Steam, Tiktok, or Reddit recently, you may have come across a 3D model of a black-and-white cat. This is Maxwell, and while the cat’s become very popular among modders and gamers over the last few months, its origins date back before 2023. So why is a low-poly model of a cat from years ago popping up everywhere? Well, I can explain.
Maxwell is a cat. The internet loves cats. Done. That’s it. A short explanation, I know, but there you go. See you next time!
Okay, there’s more to the story of why Maxwell the spinning cat has become a meme. It started back in November 2017 on photo-sharing website Imgur. That’s when user Voidhawk42 posted a simple image of a black-and-white cat laying on a piece of paper, which said “Please do not bend.” Cats don’t give a shit about your rules, and indeed, the cat was deforming the paper. But it was from that first Imgur post that others found and re-shared the image of the cat.
Cut to October 12, 2022. After years of people re-sharing the image from Imgur—often giving the cat different names—a Steam user uploaded a low-poly model of Maxwell to the Garry’s Mod Steam Workshop. Now anyone could download and add this cute cat to the classic PC game. The model became fairly popular, racking up over 20,000 views and 500 likes.
Later that month a different Steam user, ScottRim, tweaked the original model and made it a holdable object that players could run around with in Garry’s Mod. In about a month, this new version of the cat brought in over 100,000 views and over 6,500 faves. This second mod is also where the name Maxwell became the cat’s most popular online moniker.
From here, Maxwell the spinning cat exploded across the internet. YouTubers began making videos featuring the cat and viral tweets began popping up. Then on November 4, 2022, Maxwell the cat started spinning. Twitter user blastycat posted a GIF of Maxwell spinning that quickly got thousands of likes and retweets. The next day another Twitter user edited the spinning cat GIF and made it appear as an in-game Final Fantasy item. This tweet was even more popular, and likely introduced a lot of people to Maxwell.
