Cat Bounce: The Website of Bouncing Cats That Won a Webby

Cat Bounce is a single-purpose website where you fling cartoon cats around the screen and watch simulated gravity drag them back down. That is the whole site. It has run at cat-bounce.com since 2012, and it once won a Webby Award for being the weirdest thing on the web.

In brief

• Drag or throw the cats and a small physics engine bounces them with friction, gravity, and velocity: more force means more bounce.
• It was made in 2012 by artist Tara Sinn and rebuilt for modern browsers in 2017 by Nick Hulea.
• It sits in the same one-joke tradition as the sites gathered at The Useless Web.

What Cat Bounce actually does

The idea is complete the moment the page loads. A pile of cat cutouts sits at the bottom of the window, and grabbing one and flinging it sends it tumbling and rebounding off the floor. A "Make It Rain" button drops a fresh shower of cats from the top. There is no score, no level, and no goal, only the small satisfaction of watching things fall and bounce.

The site even offers a gentle warning in its own voice: some cats are bouncier than others, so a lighter touch keeps them from flying off screen. It is a toy that explains its one rule and then gets out of the way.

A physics engine in a cat costume

Underneath the silliness is a real piece of browser code. According to the site's own about page, the cats move with JavaScript that simulates two-dimensional physics, calculating friction, gravity, and velocity from how hard the visitor throws them. It is the same kind of math a game engine uses, pointed at nothing more serious than falling cats. The restraint is the joke: all that motion, in service of a pile of kittens.

Because the whole thing runs in the browser, there is no account to make and no app to install. A visitor can bounce cats for ten seconds or ten minutes and then close the tab with nothing left behind.

Who made it

Cat Bounce was created in 2012 by Tara Sinn, a New York artist who, in the site's words, dabbles in code. The web culture blog Laughing Squid covered it within days of launch, and it went on to be written up by Buzzfeed, Mashable, and Mental Floss, among others. In 2017 the developer Nick Hulea updated it to keep working in modern browsers, and in 2019 it won a Webby Award in the Weirdest Website category.

That mix of a working award and a completely pointless premise is exactly the tension that makes these sites worth keeping. Someone took the craft seriously enough to win, aimed entirely at bouncing cats.

Why a pile of cats keeps working

Cat Bounce endures because it responds to the visitor instead of just playing something back. Every throw produces a slightly different tumble, so the toy never repeats itself in quite the same way, and that small unpredictability is the entire product. It also travels well, since a screenshot of scattered cats explains nothing and the only way to get the joke is to throw one.

That places it alongside other minimal curiosities in the wider boring and unusual web, the same territory catalogued at the Boring Websites hub. Doing one small thing well, and refusing to bolt anything else on, turns out to be a durable way to stay online for over a decade.

The year the internet went cat mad

To understand why a page of bouncing cats felt inevitable in 2012, it helps to remember what the web looked like then. The cat had already become the internet's unofficial mascot. I Can Has Cheezburger had been minting captioned "lolcats" since 2007, Keyboard Cat and Nyan Cat were racking up millions of views, and Grumpy Cat arrived that same year to become the era's defining meme. The joke was everywhere, and it was affectionate rather than clever, which suited the medium perfectly.

Cat Bounce landed in the middle of that wave and did something most cat content did not: it made the visitor the author. Instead of watching a cat, the visitor threw one. That small shift, from spectator to participant, is why the site outlived the meme cycle that produced it. The captioned images of 2012 now read as period pieces, while a pile of cats waiting to be flung still works the instant the page loads.

It also arrived at the tail end of the Flash era, when interactive toys were migrating from plug-ins to plain JavaScript. Building the same idea in the open web, with no plug-in to install and nothing to update, is a large part of why it still runs today when countless Flash curiosities of the same vintage have gone dark.

Getting the most out of a pile of cats

There is not much to learn, which is the point, but a few things reward a curious visitor. On a desktop, the cats respond to speed as well as direction, so a slow drag sets one down gently while a fast flick sends it ricocheting off the walls and floor. The site's own note that some cats are bouncier than others is worth taking at face value: throw the same way twice and two different cats will answer differently.

The "Make It Rain" button is the closest thing to a feature. Pressing it repeatedly stacks the window with more cats than the physics can tidily resolve, which produces a pleasing avalanche as they settle. On a phone or tablet the same gestures work by touch, so flinging a cat with a thumb feels, if anything, more direct than with a mouse.

None of this is scored or saved. There is no high score to chase and no state to lose, so the correct amount of time to spend is exactly as long as it stays amusing. That refusal to hook the visitor is unusual enough now to feel like a small act of generosity.

The single-serving website, explained

Cat Bounce belongs to a genre the blogger Jason Kottke named in 2008: the single-serving site, a web page that does exactly one thing and nothing else. The form predates the phrase, but the phrase gave a scattered habit a name, and a small canon grew up around it. These are sites with one domain, one idea, and no menu, and their whole appeal is that they never ask for a second visit for a second reason.

What separates the good ones from throwaways is craft. A single-serving site cannot hide a weak idea behind extra features, because there are no extra features. The idea either lands in the first two seconds or it does not. Cat Bounce lands because the mechanic is legible at a glance and the response is physical: throw, watch, repeat. The best way to see the genre in bulk is The Useless Web, which fires the visitor at a random example with each press of its button.

The same instinct runs through the wider boring and unusual web catalogued at the Boring Websites hub, and through sister pages in this blog such as Eel Slap, another one-joke site that has quietly outlasted the trend that spawned it. Seen together, they make a case that doing one thing well is a more durable strategy online than doing many things adequately.

Craft hiding inside a joke

The detail that keeps Cat Bounce from being disposable is that the silliness sits on top of real engineering. According to the site's own about page, the motion is genuine two-dimensional physics written in JavaScript, computing friction, gravity, and velocity from the force of each throw. That is the same class of math a game engine uses for a character or a projectile, aimed here at nothing more consequential than falling kittens.

That restraint is the reason a pointless page could win an official award. Someone cared enough about the execution to make the bounce feel right, then spent all of that care on a joke. The Laughing Squid write-up from launch week caught the tone early, and the Webby that followed in 2019 simply confirmed it.

Because everything runs in the browser, the craft comes with no strings. There is no account to create, no cookie banner to dismiss for the toy itself, and nothing stored once the tab is closed. A visitor arrives, throws a few cats, and leaves exactly as they came, which is a surprisingly rare experience on the modern web.

FAQ

How do you use Cat Bounce?

Open the page, then drag and throw the cats to bounce them, or press "Make It Rain" to drop a fresh batch. Throw harder for a bigger bounce; there are no other controls to learn.

Who created Cat Bounce and when?

It was made in 2012 by the artist Tara Sinn and updated for modern browsers in 2017 by Nick Hulea, according to the site's about page.

Did Cat Bounce really win an award?

Yes. In 2019 it won a Webby Award in the Weirdest Website category, a rare official trophy for a deliberately pointless page.