Cat

A full-body housecat, usually standing or walking, seen from the side. Most platforms draw a slim, alert cat with the tail up, the pose of a contented pet trotting over to say hello; the fur colour varies by platform (tabby, grey or orange, as of 2026). It depicts the ordinary domestic cat, the animal that has lived alongside people for roughly ten thousand years, since farmers in the Near East started storing grain and cats moved in to hunt the mice.

Unicode has two plain cats, and they are different characters. 🐱 is the cat face, a round head with pointed ears, and it belongs to the same group as the dog face 🐶 and other animal heads. 🐈 is the whole animal, the counterpart of the dog 🐕. Both came into Unicode in 2010 from the emoji sets of Japanese phone carriers, where emoji were born, which is why there has been a face and a body for cats from the very start. A third cat, the black cat 🐈‍⬛, was built on top of this one in 2020.

What does it mean when someone sends 🐈?

Almost always a real cat: theirs, yours, or one they just met. The cat emoji is one of the most literal in the set. Next to a photo it labels the animal; in a message it stands in for a name ("🐈 knocked my coffee over again"); in a bio it announces a cat person or a cat household. Cat lovers, shelters and rescue accounts use it as a tag for anything feline: adoption appeals, lost-and-found posts, vet updates, a stray spotted on the walk home.

Because it is a whole animal rather than a face, 🐈 has no expression of its own, so it does not say happy, sad or sarcastic. If someone wants the cat to carry a feeling, they reach for the cat faces: 😺 grinning cat, 😹 cat with tears of joy, 😻 heart-eyed cat, 🙀 shocked cat. Read a lone 🐈 as a noun, and read the rest of the message for the tone.

It also works as a gentle reaction. Replying 🐈 to someone's cat photo means "cat! noted and appreciated"; several in a row is the classic joke about ending up with a houseful of them. On its own it is warm and harmless, which is why it turns up so often among people who otherwise send few emoji at all.