‘The cutest being to ever exist’

Atop a weathered blue and gold-patterned carpet, a cat eyes her prey.

There’s something different about this cat. Maybe it’s her bulging eyes, six-toed paws or the underbite so severe her tongue permanently sticks out.

Her name is Lil BUB.

She eyes the cat toy taunting her, in the hand of someone just offscreen. Though she’s afflicted with feline dwarfism, which left her limbs far smaller than they should be, her predator’s instinct remains intact.

The leap that follows causes Lil BUB to land just short of the toy, but she still manages to seize her prize.

In the weeks since the video premiered on Instagram on Sept. 17, over 19,700 users have liked the post. Hundreds flocked to the comments to express their love for the cat on screen.

“They could teach a Master Class on pouncing using her technique,” one said.

“The cutest being to ever exist,” another said.

A good portion of commenters left nothing but a flurry of heart emojis.

Almost every one of the 537 reactions to the post celebrated Lil BUB for all that she is. Ninety posts have been made about BUB in 2025 alone, and it appears her over 2.4 million followers aren’t getting sick of her anytime soon.

It’s impressive, considering Lil BUB has been dead for over six years.

•••

When Lil BUB was born, no one could have predicted her rise on Instagram, the breakthrough nonprofit she’d inspire or the countless lives she would impact years after her death. On June 21, 2011, beneath the roof of a Unionville, Indiana, toolshed, she was just a newborn kitten.

Despite being born in a litter of feral kittens otherwise completely healthy, BUB came into the world with a laundry list of afflictions. Her feline dwarfism in particular meant even as an adult years later, she would only grow a bit bigger than she was at birth.

Because of her physical deformities, she bounced from owner to owner before eventually landing in the care of recording studio owner Mike Bridavsky in July 2011.

Bridavsky, now 45, had experience adopting cats, but it was obvious Lil BUB would be a different beast.

“She had that special magic, that charisma,” he said. “It was inevitable that if people saw her and found out about her, they would be obsessed with her.”

It wasn’t long before that obsession manifested in Bridavsky’s hometown of Bloomington. BUB’s presence at the time was small, but her unique appearance quickly captivated the hearts of locals.

“We made shirts for fun because she was like a pretend celebrity in town,” Bridavsky said. “It was like a running joke.”

Originally, Lil BUB simply went by BUB — a name Mike cites as the first thing he said to her when the two met. The “Lil” was added to reinforce her celebrity attitude.

In a few short years, the small-town celebrity became known nationwide.

BUB began receiving coverage from all angles. An article from BuzzFeed. An interview on ABC News. A documentary from VICE.

For around seven years, BUB was at the forefront of feline fame on the internet, and fans couldn’t get enough. At her peak, Bridavsky said posts were averaging 200,000 likes, 7,000 comments, and 400 messages a day.

For a time, she butted metaphorical heads with Grumpy Cat, another well-known internet pet.

“Grumpy Cat was like the McDonald’s, you know what I mean?” Bridavsky said. “And BUB was, like, a cool restaurant.”

While animal celebrities such as Grumpy Cat converted fame into mainstream merchandising and advertising, BUB found her fanbase in the counter-culture scene.

“She’s world famous to select people,” Bridavsky said. “They don’t just know BUB. She’s like a staple in their pop culture.”

Instagram hit the app store around the same time BUB began her path toward stardom. At a time before recording videos became the heart of internet culture, BUB found her humble beginnings in photo posts online.

“BUB was the first pet influencer before there was a word for it,” Bridavsky said.

When Bridavsky was first contacted about trying a Chinese short-form video sharing app in 2018, it hadn’t even gained large appeal internationally. With BUB in the spotlight, he was likely one of the first people in the United States to use it.

The app would soon become TikTok.

•••

On a September morning in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, Bridavsky stands with his family under an open blue sky.

The Bridavsky family is situated on a small paved road in the heart of a forest in Morgan County. Joined by Chris and Sam Hopcraft, both hardcore BUB fans, the Bridavskys wait patiently as the Hopcrafts assemble the components of a weather balloon.

Birds chirp beneath the laughter of Mike and his wife Stacy’s children, both of whom are wearing feline-themed clothes. The older of the two, Roscoe, is wearing a T-shirt with cat-shaped popsicles on them.

The Bridavskys brought a small vial of BUB’s ashes with them, along with goodbye letters and drawings sketched out in a child’s handwriting. Completing the package is a small BUB plush, equipped with a cosmonaut helmet.

Today, they’ll be sending BUB to space.

Lil BUB’s motif had always been about space. The Bridavskys had been calling her a “magical space cat” for as long as they could remember. Mike said the motif came naturally from her unique appearance and the idea that she felt otherworldly.

Though the balloon trip will last only around two hours before it pops, BUB is set to travel over 20 miles up into the atmosphere.

“It’s the closest we’ll get to space without a rocket ship,” Mike said.

As the balloon rises with BUB’s ashes in tow, an eccentric blend of violins and horns plays in the background of the video. It’s a custom track composed under the name of Lil BUB herself, titled “Hello Earth.”

The balloon soars higher and higher, until the cameras strapped to the assembly can only make out a vast clearing of misty clouds just before the horizon line.

Just beyond that line, in the far-off expanse of space, a superimposed image of BUB emerges from over the clouds.

Since the death of Lil BUB, Mike and Stacy have continued the peculiar critter’s legacy.

The duo had already broken records by starting the first national fund for special needs pets, partnering with the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. When BUB died, the ASPCA offered them the opportunity to transform the fund into an independent nonprofit.

Stacy became the executive director of “Lil BUB’s Big Fund,” using her past experience in similar initiatives. Together, she and Mike raised over $2 million for pets that are difficult to adopt, expensive to care for or at risk of euthanasia.

“Sure, she could have been more famous, or we could have pursued opportunities that would have brought in more money,” Stacy said. “But that would have been at the cost of authentic expression. So we just always did things in ways that were meaningful to us.”

On the social media side, Mike recognized without BUB, there simply wouldn’t be any new content. At that point, her core fan base wasn’t expanding the same way it did in the near-decade she was on the internet.

There was temporary success in the form of BUB’s protégé — a snaggletoothed cat named Mr. Marbles — but BUB’s fame couldn’t be replicated.

To Mike and Stacy, that was completely fine.

“It was never about commercial success or whatever,” Mike said. “It was just about having fun and being in the spirit of things.”

Until recently, Mike posted to BUB’s Instagram account almost every day for seven years. Mike and Stacy were content with the idea that things would peter out eventually.

That didn’t stop BUB’s community in the slightest.

“We still get gifts for our kids in the mail from BUB fans,” Mike said.

The fanbase BUB built over the years was still finding ways to remember their favorite kitten-sized-cat.

“I know of at least 150 BUB tattoos,” Mike said.

By building her brand as a one-of-a-kind critter with a powerful message, BUB’s fanbase remains strong long after her viral internet days. Though she’s not gaining new generations of admirers like she did in the past, the people that stuck around for BUB are determined fans for life.

In the Bloomington Animal Shelter, a wall-to-wall mural dedicated to BUB was painted in the shelter’s cat colony. Designed by a family friend of the Bridavsky’s, the mural depicts a menagerie of vibrant foliage and exotic architecture from a far-off planet.

The Bridavskys had been working with the shelter since BUB’s early days on the internet. In the last month alone, they helped raise over $95,000 for one of the shelter’s fundraisers.

"It wasn't just a charitable relationship,” Emily Herr, the shelter’s outreach director and a family friend of the Bridavsky’s, said. “It was really giving a voice to a lot of animals that were previously unheard."

Placed high above the colony, where the adoptable cats are free to roam, is the visage of Lil BUB in a tiny spaceship.

Like what you're reading?
Support independent, award-winning student journalism. Donate.