Grinning Cat Emoji

A smiling cat face with open mouth and eyes. 😺 is the feline mirror of 😀: same broad grin, same energy, cat packaging. It's the default happy cat, the anchor of Unicode's 9-emoji cat face set, and the quiet reminder that the internet was built on cats.

That's not an exaggeration. The set of cat face emoji (😺😸😹😻😼😽🙀😿😾) exists because a Japanese phone carrier, au by KDDI, added cat faces to their proprietary emoji set in 2003. When the Unicode Consortium standardized emoji in Unicode 6.0 (2010), they kept the cat faces for backwards compatibility. No other animal got 9 face variants. Dogs got one (🐶). Japan's deep cultural relationship with cats, from the maneki-neko (beckoning cat) to cat islands where felines outnumber humans 36:1, shaped the emoji keyboard for everyone.

Added in Unicode 6.0 (2010) as U+1F63AU+1F63A SMILING CAT FACE WITH OPEN MOUTH. Dictionary.com notes that cat emoji are used across digital communication by 'cat lovers and cat owners' as well as anyone who wants to 'add a cat-like, feline quality to their messages.' Android 11.0 redesigned 😺 to have more pointed ears and 'a curled mouth reminiscent of the :3 cat face emoticon,' consciously linking the emoji back to its kaomoji ancestor.

😺 shows up wherever the internet loves cats, which is everywhere. Cat owner posts ('Look what she did 😺'), pet content appreciation, and feline solidarity ('Cat people understand 😺'). The grinning cat is the default entry point to the cat emoji family: if you like cats but don't need to express a specific emotion (love, sadness, anger), 😺 is the one you reach for.

There's also a generational dimension. BuzzFeed News noted that cat internet is making a comeback on TikTok, but Gen Z treats cats differently than millennials did during the LOLcats era. Millennials captioned cat photos in 'lolspeak' ('I Can Has Cheezburger?'). Gen Z writes their cats into content as fleshed-out characters with personalities and narrative arcs. 😺 works for both approaches.

In Japanese digital culture, 😺 carries more weight because of neko's (猫) deep cultural significance. Japan has cat cafes (the first opened in Osaka in 2004), cat islands, cat shrines (neko-jinja, where a cat spirit is worshipped as guardian deity), and a 1602 imperial decree that freed all pet cats to combat rats threatening the silkworm industry. The emoji set that gave us 😺 was born from centuries of feline reverence.

The story of 😺 is the story of Japan's relationship with cats, compressed into a single emoji.

Japan's reverence for cats goes back centuries. The maneki-neko (beckoning cat), dating to the Edo period (1603-1868), is one of the most recognizable Japanese cultural symbols worldwide. Legend says a cat at Gōtoku-ji temple in Tokyo beckoned a feudal lord named Ii Naotaka inside during a thunderstorm, saving him from a lightning bolt. The cat became the temple's patron, and the beckoning cat figurine spread across Japan as a luck charm.

In 1602, the Japanese government issued a decree freeing all pet cats to combat rats that were destroying the silk industry's silkworm population. The freed cats thrived. On islands like Tashirojima and Aoshima, cats eventually outnumbered humans. Aoshima's ratio reached 36:1 by 2024, with only 4 human residents and 80 cats. Tashirojima has a cat shrine (neko-jinja) where a cat spirit is worshipped as the guardian deity for abundant fish catches.

This cultural context is what led au by KDDI, a Japanese mobile carrier, to include a full set of cat face emoji in their proprietary emoji set in 2003. When Unicode standardized emoji in Unicode 6.0 (2010), these cat faces were retained for backwards compatibility, encoded as U+1F63AU+1F63A through U+1F63EU+1F63E plus U+1F640U+1F640. Nine cat faces mirroring nine human faces: 😺=😀, 😸=😁, 😹=😂, 😻=😍, 😼=😏, 😽=😚, 🙀=😱, 😿=😢, 😾=😡.

Meanwhile, cat culture had already conquered the early internet. LOLcats emerged on 4chan in 2005. I Can Has Cheezburger launched on January 11, 2007, peaked at 1.5 million daily hits, and sold for $2 million in September 2007. The :3 cat face emoticon had been spreading through anime communities since the early 2000s. By the time 😺 arrived in Unicode, cats had already colonized the internet. The emoji was catching up to a reality that Japanese carriers had understood years earlier.

Approved in Unicode 6.0 (2010) as U+1F63AU+1F63A SMILING CAT FACE WITH OPEN MOUTH. CLDR short name: 'grinning cat.' Added to Emoji 1.0 in 2015. First of the 9-emoji cat face set (U+1F63AU+1F63A-U+1F63EU+1F63E plus U+1F640U+1F640), all retained from au by KDDI's 2003 carrier emoji set for backwards compatibility. Android 11.0 redesigned the glyph with pointed ears and a :3-style curled mouth.

1. 1603Maneki-neko (beckoning cat) legend originates at Gōtoku-ji temple, Edo period↗
2. 2003au by KDDI adds cat face emoji to their Japanese carrier emoji set↗
3. 2007I Can Has Cheezburger launches, peaks at 1.5M daily hits, sells for $2M↗
4. 2010Added to Unicode 6.0 as U+1F63A SMILING CAT FACE WITH OPEN MOUTH↗
5. 2015Added to Emoji 1.0↗
6. 2020Android 11.0 redesigns 😺 with pointed ears and :3-style curled mouth↗

In Japan, cat emoji carry cultural weight that Western users might not perceive. Japan has cat cafes (the first opened in Osaka in 2004, with 79 opening nationwide by 2010), cat islands where felines outnumber humans, and a neko-jinja (cat shrine) where cats are worshipped as deities. Using 😺 in Japan connects to this heritage. Using it in the US connects to internet cat culture.

In Chinese and broader East Asian cultures, the maneki-neko is ubiquitous in businesses as a good-luck symbol, though it's frequently mistaken as Chinese in origin rather than Japanese. 😺 can evoke this lucky cat association in Asian contexts.

In Western texting, 😺 is simply 'happy cat.' Most Western users don't connect it to Japanese cultural traditions. They use it because they like cats or want a cuter alternative to 😀. The cultural depth is there for those who know it, but it doesn't gate the emoji's casual use.

• •Cats got 9 face emoji (😺😸😹😻😼😽🙀😿😾) because au by KDDI added them to their Japanese carrier emoji set in 2003. Dogs got one (🐶). The cat set survived because Unicode maintains backwards compatibility with existing carrier sets.
• •The 1602 Japanese decree that freed all pet cats to fight rats created Japan's famous cat islands. On Aoshima, only 4 humans remain alongside 80 cats, a ratio of 36:1.
• •I Can Has Cheezburger peaked at 1.5 million daily hits in May 2007 and sold for $2 million four months later. A smiling cat photo with intentionally broken grammar became one of the internet's first profitable memes.
• •Android 11.0 redesigned 😺 to resemble the :3 emoticon, a kaomoji that had been spreading through Japanese anime communities since the early 2000s. The emoji was redesigned to look like a text face.
• •Sanrio clarified in 2014 that Hello Kitty is 'not a cat' but a 'little English girl named Kitty White.' The internet disagreed. She has whiskers. The $80 billion franchise continues to thrive regardless of species classification.
• •Japan has a cat shrine (neko-jinja) on Tashirojima island where a cat spirit is worshipped as guardian deity. Dogs are not kept on the island and dog-shaped toys are discouraged.

• •Some people confuse 😺 with 🐱, using them interchangeably. They're different: 🐱 is a neutral cat face (just 'cat'), 😺 is a happy cat face (specific emotion). In practice, the distinction rarely matters, but technically 😺 is grinning.
• •Using 😺 instead of 😀 can confuse people who don't understand the cat emoji family. 'Great meeting today 😺' might prompt 'why the cat?' from colleagues who use emoji literally.

• •I Can Has Cheezburger launched on January 11, 2007, when Eric Nakagawa posted a photo of Happy Cat (a smiling British Shorthair) with the caption 'I can has cheezburger?' The site peaked at 1.5 million daily hits and sold for $2 million in September 2007. LOLcats and lolspeak entered mainstream culture. 😺 is, in many ways, the emoji descendant of Happy Cat.
• •The :3 emoticon emerged from Japanese internet culture in the early 2000s via anime communities and 2channel. It represents a cat-like face, with the '3' forming puffy cheeks or a cat nose. Android 11.0 deliberately redesigned 😺 with a 'curled mouth reminiscent of the :3 cat face emoticon,' connecting the emoji back to its kaomoji ancestor.
• •Hello Kitty, Sanrio's $80 billion franchise, is technically 'not a cat' according to a 2014 clarification (she's a 'little English girl named Kitty White'). The internet responded with: 'She has whiskers and a cat nose. Girls don't look like that.' Whether cat or girl, Hello Kitty primed global audiences to anthropomorphize cat faces long before cat emoji existed.
• •Japan's Gōtoku-ji temple in Tokyo is filled with hundreds of maneki-neko (beckoning cat) figurines. The legend says a cat saved feudal lord Ii Naotaka from a lightning bolt by beckoning him inside. The beckoning cat became the most internationally recognized Japanese good-luck symbol, placed in businesses worldwide.

• •😺 is U+1F63AU+1F63A. Unicode name: SMILING CAT FACE WITH OPEN MOUTH. CLDR: 'grinning cat'. Common shortcodes: :smiley_cat::smiley_cat: (Slack, Discord, GitHub).
• •Does not support skin tone modifiers (it's a cat). No ZWJ sequences apply.
• •First character in the cat face emoji subgroup: U+1F63AU+1F63A through U+1F63EU+1F63E plus U+1F640U+1F640. All 9 share the same base cat face with different expressions.
• •On Twitter/X, 🐱 (cat face, U+1F431U+1F431) is used ~15M times while 😺 sees lower usage. 🐱 serves as the generic cat; 😺 is the emotionally specific 'happy cat.'

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