First posted by the Instagram account fatfatmillycat in July 2022, the photograph gained popularity in August 2022 following a viral tweet about homework, and contributed to the spread of the Silly Cats memes. The photograph did not spawn a meme format until August 23rd, 2022, when Twitter user @vampiric_shirin posted a stretched version of the photograph, captioning it with a humorous exchange in which the cat refused to do homework and mocked the teacher by sticking its tongue out. Silly Cats refers to a 2022 trend of referring to cats as silly animals who are prone to mischief and tomfoolery, and usually involves combining cat images with captions containing the word.