Blobcats

Blobcats are a mystery. Despite being the subject of intense scientific research for many years, no one is really sure how and where they’ve first appeared. However, a likely theory on their origins does exist.

In the year of our Lord 2013, the ill-willed company Google has released an emoji pack consisting of so-called ‘blobs’; jelly-like drops with facial expressions. Although they were not universally loved, they possessed very strong individuality, which has won many people over. Unfortunately, their time in the spotlight has only lasted four years; in 2017, they were replaced by the more ordinary round emoji.

By some stroke of genius, someone thought to create a genetic mixture of a blob and a cat, thereby creating the very first blobcats. The exact time and place are not known, but at some point, the internet started seeing emoji in that same form, but with remarkable feline features.

In the years that followed, various people have created more and more blobcats, by editing the original blobs as well as other blobcats. They are known to have become quite popular on the non-free platform Discord, but muchmore importantly, they have later become popular in the Fediverse (where I have come to know them).

However you want to! I made these blobcat as vector images, using a program called Inkscape. You can acquire the vector SVG files using the appropriate link above, and edit them using said program, in order to create your own derivative blobcats.

If you’d rather not work with vector graphics, preferring raster graphics in their stead, I recommend that you first download the vector images and export them into a raster format at a sufficient resolution (512 pixels of width and height should suffice), before editing the resulting picture. (You can always downscale the raster image later, but upscaling it is not as easy, so it’s better if you start out big.)

Having created your blobcat, you may use it however you wish to. I only ask that you follow the terms of the licence under which you’ve received the original blobcats. You can read about those at the bottom of this page.

Yes! I’m happy to accept new blobcats, if they look well enough, seem appropriate for this general emoji pack, share the same style, and are legally in the clear. I do not make a promise to accept your blobcat, but you can send it to me, and I’ll be happy to take a look.

In order to be accepted, the blobcat has to be a vector image in the SVG format. The file should contain the year of creation, name of the author, and specification of the licence, which should be the Free Art Licence (see bottom of the page). If you are unsure how to properly add these metadata, I’ll be happy to do that for you.

Please note that any text (whether a part of the metadata or the image itself) should be written in the international language Esperanto. If you don’t speak it (and don’t want to spend a fraction of the time it would take one to learn English at an acceptable level learning), that’s fine; if it’s written in a language I can understand, I can translate it myself.

Tech-savvy contributors who have correctly prepared the file can also make a patch for the VCS repository and send it to me. But this is certainly not necessary.

There are other blobcat emoji packs, but all of them have grave flaws:

• DuckOfDisorder has assembled a collection of traditional blobcats, expressing concern about the lack of copyright information. However, it is unclear to me, whether her collections addresses this in any way or not.
• garfieldairlines has made a vast collection of traditional blobcats, but doesn’t seem to have given either consistency or copyright information much care.
• volpeon has made a new pack of blobcats, which they dub ‘neocats’. Unfortunately, they have chosen a non-free licence, and I think the style lacks a certain charm the traditional blobcats have (which I strive to better preserve in mine).

Aside of such collections, you can find blobcats in their natural habitat: Fediverse servers and other platforms. If you’re feeling adventurous, you can search for them there! (For example, the blob.cat server is very fond of blobcats.)

They are simply called ‘blobcats’. Some artists and administrators like to call different blobcat packs different names (e.g. ‘blobcat’, ‘neocat’, ‘meow’) to keep them distinct and prevent them from clashing. I call mine ‘blobcats’, since they are not meant to be something different, but to liberate the pre-existing idea of blobcats. In their Fediverse server of origin, they have replaced the traditional blobcats, so we had no need to come up with different names.

Whenever possible, I encourage you to simply call them ‘blobcats’. However, if you want to add them to your server under a different name, since the ‘blobcat’ prefix is already taken up by traditional blobcats (that you’d like to keep around), you can use one of these alterantive names as a prefix:

• blobkitty
• blobpussy
• dropcat
• freecat
• jellycat

Or you can come up with your own! Use whatever identifier you think is best. But officially they are just one kind of the many blobcats floating around.

From what I know, they are not; if their author did not give an explicit permission concerning their use, your rights are by default limited by law. The authors of most blobcats also seem unknown.

Of course, some people don’t care about copyright at all, and for some uses (e.g. memes or personal use), it is practically irrelevant. But some people do care about copyright, and for some uses it’s very important; it is for this reason that having a free, clearly applied licence is good and useful.

No. People have different ideas about ethics. If you have special needs in this regard, you might not like some of the blobcats. In that case, you can very easily remove them. I can not know for sure what is or isn’t acceptable for you in particular, but I recommend that you look at these blobcats…

If you’re an Italian:

• gutkato_manĝas_picon (blobcat_eats_pizza)

If you’re a vegan or a vegetarian:

• gutkato_datreveno (blobcat_birthday)
• gutkato_dronfeiĉo (blobcat_water_goblin)
• gutkato_manĝas_* (blobcat_eats_*)
• gutkato_policano (blobcat_policecat)
• gutkato_trinkas_kafon_vienan (blobcat_drinks_coffee_viennese)
• gutkato_trinkas_kakaon (blobcat_drinks_hot_cocoa)
• gutkato_trinkas_lakton (blobcat_drinks_milk)

If you have a strong opinion on drugs:

• gutkato_trinkas_bieron (blobcat_drinks_beer)
• gutkato_trinkas_kafon (blobcat_drinks_coffee)
• kronkato (crowncat)

If you have a strong opinion on religion:

• gutkato_anĝelo (blobcat_angel)
• gutkato_diablo (blobcat_devil)

If you feel a need to avoid depictions of danger or violence:

• gutkato_brulas (blobcat_on_fire)
• gutkato_fantomo (blobcat_ghost)
• gutkato_heroo (blobcat_hero)
• gutkato_manĝas_gutkaton (blobcat_eats_blobcat)
• gutkato_morta (blobcat_dead)

I have never seen a different kind of flags (e.g. country flags) used with the traditional blobcats, and adding all of them would require a lot of effort. But I do not dislike the idea.