People love cats; it’s a fact clear as day. They’re drawn to their unpredictable personalities, cuteness that reminds them of human babies, the gentle companionship they provide, and a lot of other things – to each their own reason. There are enough of those reasons to make cats the second most common pet, as of 2025.
While in households, they might lose to dogs as the most popular pet, on the internet, they definitely take the crown. Since cat content is some of the most viewed on the whole World Wide Web, they are dubbed the “unofficial mascots of the internet.”
Since they are the kings and queens of the internet, naturally, there are a lot of types and niches of cat content out there. They even have their own celebrities, like Maru, one of the most popular cats on YouTube, who sadly passed away on September 6th.
One of the niches of cat content is chubby cats. As the name suggests, it’s about overweight cats that typically look cute and/or funny in a way that entertains people. Today we’re serving you exactly this – a whole list of endearingly chubby cats.
But why do people tend to gravitate towards these kinds of felines? Well, it all comes down to what scientists call the "baby schema" response. Essentially, baby schema is physical features, like a large head, round face, big eyes, and such, that are perceived as cute and elicit caretaking instincts in people. It’s an evolutionary function coming from the need to ensure offspring's survival.
Usually, people have this kind of reaction towards their kids, but it also applies to animals, especially younglings. Basically, this makes us wired to love baby animals. But not only them – we find some adult animals cute too. For example, chubby cats. Their round faces and plump, soft bodies activate the same nurturing instincts.
Granted, such cute content doesn’t come without a dark side, sadly. This might make some people want their cats to look the same, which can lead to overfeeding and keeping a pet unhealthy for the sake of cuteness.
That’s why some people advocate for sharing content with acknowledgement about these cats’ possible unhealthiness, or sharing their weight-loss efforts, which can be a reasonable addition to the content as well.
There are some folks who also bring up a good point about the fact that while people tend to admire chubby pets, they hate on people who have different body proportions than what’s deemed “proper.”
Basically, people are quick to criticize anyone who is even a size bigger than size 0 or so, but then they turn around and have heart eyes for fat pets. Pretty hypocritical, isn’t it? Well, this is definitely some food for thought and maybe even a self-reflection task, something you can start doing while looking through our list.
Hopefully, we didn’t ruin your enjoyment of such content too much with such socially aware contemplations. You don’t have to stop liking chubby cats or other animals, but checking your bias is healthy from time to time.
