Cat Emojis and Cat Slang Meanings Explained

The Full Cat Emoji Set at a Glance

Unicode groups the expressive faces together under its own cat face heading, and the animal pictures nearby in the animals section. The table below lists every cat emoji most readers will meet, with the current Unicode name and codepoint for each. The names are the short names in the Unicode Consortium full emoji list, read first hand for this guide. Older reference pages sometimes use longer forms of the same names, with the word face spelled out, for the same characters.

Two structural points explain most confusion about this set. First, the nine expressive faces are single characters, each with its own codepoint. Second, the black cat is different: it is a sequence, the ordinary cat joined to a black square with an invisible connector called a zero width joiner, which supporting platforms draw as one black cat and older systems may split back into its parts. The plain cat face and the full body cat are animal pictures, not expressions, even though senders often use the friendly cat face as a light reaction.

The Expressive Cat Faces, One by One

Each face below mirrors a human smiley, and Emojipedia, the emoji reference that documents designs and usage, describes the family the same way: cat variants of the standard faces. Emojipedia also notes that this cat face range has an unusual history, because a group of cat faces showing different emotions appeared on early Japanese emoji keyboards, from the carrier au by KDDI in 2003, before emoji were standardized inside Unicode. That early start is why cats, almost alone among animals, have a full set of emotional faces while most animals have only a face and a body.

Grinning Cat (U+1F63A)

The grinning cat shows a wide, open mouthed grin. It is the cat form of the basic big grin, and it reads as straightforward happiness: good news, a warm greeting, or cheerful agreement. Because the expression is broad and simple, it is the safest cat face to send someone whose habits you do not know. It carries enthusiasm without the romantic charge of the heart eyes face and without the mocking edge the wry smile can carry.

Grinning Cat with Smiling Eyes (U+1F638)

This face pairs the wide grin with closed, smiling eyes, and Emojipedia describes it directly as a cat variant of the grinning face with smiling eyes. The closed eyes soften the grin into delight: the sender is not just pleased but charmed, amused, or quietly thrilled. Platforms draw it as a yellow or orange cat on most systems, sometimes with tabby markings, and older Samsung and LG designs drew a gray cat instead, a reminder that the character is standardized while the artwork is not. Use it for warm reactions, cute photographs, and happy updates where a plain grin would feel a touch flat.

Cat with Tears of Joy (U+1F639)

The tears of joy cat laughs with a tear at each eye, mirroring the famous human face with tears of joy. It means something struck the sender as very funny. In practice it is often used more loosely, as a general marker of amusement or playful exaggeration, which is why it can appear under mildly funny messages too. Read its strength from the conversation: beside a genuinely funny story it means hard laughter, and beside a small joke it usually means no more than a smile of acknowledgment.

Smiling Cat with Heart Eyes (U+1F63B)

Heart eyes turn the cat into a small emblem of love. The face signals adoration for whatever sits just before it in the chat: a kitten photograph, a partner, a favorite food, a new purchase. It is strong affection, roughly the cat form of the smiling face with heart eyes. Because it reads as love rather than approval, it suits pets, family, partners, and fandom, and it can feel too intense in a work thread or with someone you barely know. For the wider pattern of hearts changing meaning by color and company, our guide to the white heart emoji meaning in text messages covers a close cousin of this face.

Cat with Wry Smile (U+1F63C)

The wry smile is the sly one: a sideways, uneven smirk, the cat form of the smirking face. It reads as teasing, smugness, quiet triumph, or a joke the sender is only half sharing. Of all the cat faces, this is the one most likely to be misread, because the same smirk is playful between friends and dismissive from a stranger. After a teasing comment it is almost always a joke marker. After a serious complaint it can look like contempt. The words around it decide, and this face is covered again in the misreading section below.

Kissing Cat (U+1F63D)

The kissing cat puckers its mouth with closed eyes, the cat form of the kissing face. It sends affection at a gentler level than heart eyes: thanks, fondness, a goodnight, a sweet sign off. Some platform designs add a small blush or a floating heart, and some do not, so its warmth varies slightly by device. It is common in family chats and between partners, and uncommon, usually deliberately playful, anywhere formal.

Weary Cat (U+1F640)

Despite its name, the weary cat is drawn as shock: wide, hollow eyes, an open mouth, and on many platforms paws raised to its cheeks, openly modeled on a screaming pose. Emojipedia and the Unicode name preserve weary from the human weary face it was paired with, but in everyday use readers take it as alarm, stunned surprise, or comic horror: the gas bill, the plot twist, the spider in the bath. Send it for startled reactions, not for tiredness, because almost nobody reads it as sleepy. A genuinely tired message is better served by words or a yawning face.

Crying Cat (U+1F63F)

The crying cat shows a downturned mouth and a single tear rolling down one cheek. It is the cat form of the crying face, and it means sadness at a moderate, sympathetic level: disappointment, a small loss, a gloomy day, or sympathy with someone else’s bad news. Its single tear keeps it gentler than the human loudly crying face, so it often doubles as a softener, roughly please, or I am sad about this, in requests and apologies.

Pouting Cat (U+1F63E)

The pouting cat narrows its eyes under lowered brows with a flat, displeased mouth. It signals annoyance, grumpiness, or disapproval, the cat counterpart of the pouting face. Between friends it is usually performed grumpiness, a joke complaint about a cancelled plan or a stolen snack. From someone upset in earnest it is a genuine rebuke, and the difference is everything around it: the relationship, the thread, and whether a laughing face follows. It is the rudest face in the set when read straight, so it is a poor choice in any message where the reader cannot hear your tone of voice.

The Animal Pictures: Cat Face, Cat, Black Cat, and Paw Prints

Not every cat emoji is a mood. Cat Face (U+1F431) is a plain front facing cat head with ears and whiskers and a mild, neutral expression. Cat (U+1F408) shows the whole animal in side profile. Both belong to the animals section of the emoji list rather than the faces section, and their normal job is reference: my cat, your cat, cats in general. The plain cat face also gets borrowed as a cute reaction, where it means little more than a friendly nod with cat flavor.

The black cat is the family’s one joined sequence: Cat (U+1F408), a zero width joiner (U+200D), and a black large square (U+2B1B), displayed as a single black cat on platforms that support the sequence. It is used for black cats themselves, for Halloween, and for luck talk, where it can point either way depending on local tradition, lucky in some places and unlucky in others. On a system without support for the sequence, a reader may see a cat followed by a black square, which is a rendering gap, not a different message. Paw Prints (U+1F43E) shows a pair of animal tracks and stands in for pets generally, walks, muddy floors, and arrivals. It is not cat specific, since the same prints serve for dogs, but in a cat chat it is read as the cat’s tracks without argument.

Combinations deserve a word here, because cat emoji are frequent building blocks. A woman emoji placed beside a cat emoji, or a cat face added after a camera emoji in a caption, is a combination the sender assembled, not a single character. Our guide to emoji combos meanings explains how readers add those symbols together, and our guide to the camera emoji meaning shows the same pattern from the photography side. Real cat body language is a different subject entirely, covered in our guide to cat tail meanings.

How Cat Emojis Look Across Platforms

Unicode standardizes the character, its name, and its codepoint. It does not draw the picture. Apple, Google, Samsung, Microsoft, and the social platforms each draw their own cat, so the same Grinning Cat with Smiling Eyes arrives as an orange tabby on one phone and a plainer yellow cat on another, and older designs from some vendors used gray fur. Most differences are cosmetic, but expressive faces live on small details, an eyebrow angle, the size of a tear, how smug a smirk looks, and those details can nudge a reading. The wry smile is the repeat offender: mild on one platform, openly smirking on another.

Three habits protect you. Never rest an important message on a tiny facial detail, because your reader may be looking at a different drawing. When a received cat face seems oddly strong or oddly flat, consider the kind explanation, that their platform drew it that way, before assuming the sender meant the extreme version. And remember that screen readers speak the official name aloud, so a listener hears the words weary cat even if the picture looked like shock to you. Names and pictures occasionally disagree, and the weary cat is the standing example.

How to Read a Cat Emoji in a Real Message

A reliable reading takes four quick steps. Name the face literally first: which of the nine is it, and what does the matching human face mean. Then look at what the emoji is attached to, because cat faces usually react to the words, photo, or news immediately before them. A heart eyes cat under a kitten photograph means love for the kitten. A tears of joy cat after a funny story means the story landed. A pouting cat after a cancelled plan means grumpiness about the plan, not about cats. Then weigh who sent it and how they usually write, since a habitual joker’s wry smile and a literal writer’s wry smile are different objects. Finally, if the reading would change what you do next, especially with the wry, weary, or pouting faces, ask a short question instead of acting on a guess.

Tone flips are the main hazard. Cat faces are inherently cute, and cuteness softens everything they touch, which is why senders choose them to take the edge off teasing, complaints, and bad news. The softening can misfire both ways. A crying cat on a serious message can make real sadness look decorative, and a wry smile meant as a wink can read as a sneer. When the stakes are real, condolences, apologies, money, deadlines, write the sentence in words and let the cat face follow as tone, never carry the news itself.

Cat as Slang for a Person

Long before emoji, English speakers used cat for people. Merriam Webster, in its history of animal names applied to humans, records that cat had been used as a term of contempt for a person as early as the 13th century, and that catty, meaning slyly spiteful or malicious, dates to the late 1800s. The friendlier line of the word grew in the 20th century. In jazz slang, cat and hepcat referred to a player or a knowledgeable fan of the music, and Merriam Webster notes that this use broadened until cat was essentially a synonym of guy. That is the root of the cool cat: a person who is fashionable, easygoing, and calm under pressure, praised for composure and style.

Today the bare use of cat for a person is dated and mostly playful or retro. It survives in song lyrics, period films, affectionate teasing, and deliberate throwback writing, and a modern reader meeting it should check the age and style of the text. In an ordinary new text message, cat almost always means the animal unless a set phrase signals otherwise. Readers puzzling over other short, ambiguous strings in chats may find our guide to hmmm meaning in text useful, since hmm and cat create the same kind of puzzle: a tiny item whose meaning is mostly context.

The Set Phrases: Cool Cat, Fat Cat, Scaredy Cat, and Copycat

Most living cat slang hides inside four set phrases. Each is recorded in standard dictionaries, and each is described here as the informal usage it is, not as a claim about real cats.

Cool Cat

A cool cat is a calm, stylish, impressive person, someone unruffled who handles a situation with ease. The phrase carries its jazz roots with it, so it sounds admiring and a little retro at once. Saying he is a cool cat praises the person’s composure, not anything feline. Because the phrase is warm, it is safe in speech and writing, though its dated flavor means younger speakers often use it with a wink.

Fat Cat

Fat cat is political and business slang for a wealthy and privileged person. Merriam Webster defines it first as a wealthy contributor to a political campaign fund and more broadly as a wealthy and privileged person, with a first known use in 1928, and its examples show the critical edge the phrase usually carries: in one, the best seats in the theater were reserved for the fat cats, and in another, set during a recession, the fat cats barely noticed a dip in their bank accounts. Unlike cool cat, fat cat is an accusation, aimed at wealth with power and comfort. Use it knowing it criticizes, and expect it in commentary and campaigning rather than in neutral reporting.

Scaredy Cat

A scaredy cat is an unduly fearful person, in Merriam Webster’s wording, with a first known use in 1904. It is teasing language, most at home with children or among friends, for someone who backs away from a small risk: a dark room, a harmless spider, a mild roller coaster. Because it mocks fear, even gently, it can sting when the fear is real, so it belongs in low stakes moments. Its milder twin, fraidy cat, means the same thing.

Copycat

A copycat is a person who imitates or adopts the behavior or practices of another, as Merriam Webster puts it, with a first known use as a noun in 1896. It is the everyday word for unoriginal copying, from a child repeating a friend’s drawing to a business copying a rival’s product, and copycat also works as an adjective, as in a copycat crime. The word is mildly critical rather than abusive: it calls the copying obvious, not the person worthless.

Catty, and a Note on Tone

One relative deserves a caution. Catty describes a remark that is slyly spiteful or malicious, a meaning Merriam Webster traces to the late 1800s. It is often applied unfairly along gendered lines, so careful writers use it sparingly, or choose a plainer word such as spiteful. None of these phrases describes actual cats. They are fossils of how English speakers once mapped animal stereotypes onto people.

A joke definition travels with this topic, and the original package included one of its own: a cat is a small boss who owns the house, ignores the rules, and still expects dinner on time. That is humor about pet cats, not a dictionary meaning. If you share a funny definition, label it as a joke, exactly as you would want a slang claim labeled as usage rather than fact.

Is There a Woman with Cats Emoji?

No, not as a single standard character. Searches for a woman with cats emoji are common, but the Unicode emoji list contains no such character, and this guide claims no name or codepoint for one, because there is none to claim. What people usually mean is one of three things. The first is a combination the sender built: a woman emoji, Woman (U+1F469), placed beside one or more cat emojis, which readers understand at once as a woman who loves cats. The second is a sticker or a photograph shared as an image, which can show any scene at all but is not an emoji character. The third is the joking label cat lady for a devoted cat owner, a phrase that can sound mocking, so it is best used only about yourself or with people who claim it happily.

If you want the idea in a message, build the combination: woman plus cat face for the person and the pet, or woman plus two or three cat faces for a household. For real cats rather than symbols, the practical side of living with them is covered by our guides to indoor cat enrichment that keeps them busy and a safe cat window perch setup, and the health side by our guide to cat health warning signs.

Cat in a Modern Text Message

In current everyday messaging, the odds are simple. The word cat most often means the animal: my cat slept all day is about a pet, and look at this cat, attached to a photo, is about a pet. A cat emoji most often means a reaction, read through the face as set out above. Slang for a person appears mainly inside the set phrases, in lyrics and quotations, and in deliberate retro play. If a message leaves you genuinely unsure, ask a short clarifying question: is that about your pet, or is that slang. Asking costs a second and avoids a confidently wrong reply.

Frequently Asked Questions

What do the cat emojis mean?

They mirror human face moods in cat form. The grinning cat and the grinning cat with smiling eyes are happy, the cat with tears of joy is laughing, the smiling cat with heart eyes is in love, the cat with wry smile is sly or teasing, the kissing cat sends affection, the weary cat shows shock, the crying cat is sad, and the pouting cat is annoyed. The plain cat face and the full body cat usually just refer to a cat.

How many cat emojis are there?

The core set most readers meet has thirteen entries: nine expressive cat faces, the plain cat face, the full body cat, the black cat sequence, and paw prints. The nine faces are single characters, each with its own codepoint. The black cat is the exception, built from the cat character joined to a black square, so it displays as one picture only on platforms that support the sequence.

What does cat mean in slang?

As informal usage, cat has been used for a person, especially a man, with roots in jazz language where it meant a musician or knowledgeable fan before broadening toward guy. Its most familiar survival is the cool cat, a calm and stylish person. In a modern message the slang reading is uncommon outside set phrases, lyrics, and retro jokes, and the animal reading is the safe default.

What does a fat cat mean, and is it rude?

A fat cat is a wealthy and privileged person, originally and still often a wealthy political donor, in Merriam Webster’s definition. The phrase is critical: it accuses its target of comfort and power at a distance from everyone else. It is standard in political commentary, and rude aimed at an individual to their face, because criticism is the point of it.

What is the difference between a scaredy cat and a copycat?

A scaredy cat is a timid, easily frightened person, a teasing label recorded since 1904. A copycat is a person who imitates someone else’s behavior or work, recorded since 1896. One is about fear and the other is about imitation, and both are informal. Scaredy cat is usually playful and aimed at a small, momentary fear, while copycat criticizes a lack of originality.

Is there a woman with cats emoji?

Not as a single standard emoji character. No such character appears in the Unicode emoji list, so there is no official name or codepoint for it. People show the idea by combining a woman emoji with one or more cat emojis, or by sending a sticker or a photograph. The combination reads clearly as a cat lover, and it avoids pretending a standard character exists.

Why does the weary cat look shocked instead of tired?

Because of how it was drawn and paired. The weary cat takes its name from the human weary face, but its artwork shows wide eyes, an open mouth, and often paws at its cheeks, which readers take as shock or alarm. Almost everyone uses and reads it as a startled reaction. Send words when you actually mean tired.

Why does the same cat emoji look different on another phone?

Unicode standardizes each emoji’s name and codepoint, not its artwork. Every platform draws its own version, so fur color, markings, and small facial details vary between Apple, Google, Samsung, Microsoft, and social apps. A smirk or a tear can look stronger on one design than another, which is why important messages should not depend on a tiny detail.