95 thoughts on “The cat that’s confusing the Internet”

      1. All but certainly: the photo only makes sense with the parts read as the nosing on the leading edge of the stair, the tile being on the riser and the kick plate in the wall oriented vertically. If this is a view looking down a stair, the builders were being ironic or had their plans upside-down.

        If it weren’t for the caption I doubt I’d think twice. Maybe I should be more observant and skeptical! I miss a LOT … !

        1. Right, plus it’s easy to slop mortsr onto the walls in horizontal stripes, but vertical slopping would take careful aim.

    2. Am I mistaken in thinking that the shadow also supports that position, since it is almost completely below the cat.

      1. Also the shadows in the cracks where the treads meet the walls seem consistent with illumination from behind the cat, i.e. from above.

        1. The top of the photo also looks like it spreads out- an opening at the top of the stairs rather than a floor.

    3. Unless they are the most dangerous stairs in the world, designed to trip people and send them into the endless gray void of the basement. In which case, this is basement cat luring us with his evil ways.

      Otherwise, it’s Ceiling Cat.

      Or just a normal cat going down the stairs.

    4. Down: it’s the treads, as John says. Otherwise, those risers sticking up would be a major tripping hazard. Speaking of which, this stairway could really use a hand railing for safety.

    5. Yep. We also typically lay bricks “down” (i.e. with the long side horizontal). If you take a look at the mortaring on the sides of the staircase, you can see the outlines of the bricks, and they also support the cat going down a staircase.

    1. But the cat could be a Madame Tussaud wax figure that was put on the staircase and not moving at all…

      1. Now that I look more carefully, I think the cat is on the *underside* of the staircase and going up. Cats have been known to defy gravity.

  3. The cat is surely going down, based on the stairs. Besides, the cat would be taking the elevator up.

    1. They have been known to domesticate anthropoid apes to act as mules.

    1. But when Antares is invisible because it’s in the daytime sky, cat’s tails would be pointing near the center of the Earth at these times. Thus the Antares pointing principle is useless unless we know the date of the picture and the latitude and longitude of the cat.

      And are you really sure a cat’s tail would point at a star in Scorpio? Seems Regulus would be a better choice.

  6. I’d say down. Wait a minute though: was this taken in the Northern or Southern Hemisphere? Knowing that could be dispositive; if it were between the Tropics then I’d say neither. Sideways.

  7. I’ll be one of the downers, or downites, or whatever we’re calling ourselves.

  8. The cat’s posture says up. Get your favourite cat and watch them go up and down stairs, and it’s quite different (placement of shoulders vs. hips for example).

    1. That was my first thought. Then I looked at the stairs. Posture says up, stairs say down, I say Photoshop.

  9. Down.

    In addition to the other remarks about tread overhang and cat tails…

    Look at the walls alongside the steps. There’s a clear ‘brick-like’ rectangle adjacent to each stair.

    If the cat is going up, those bricks are vertical and are on the face side of each riser.

    If the cat is going down, those bricks are horizontal and on the stair/tread side of the steps.

    Unless the cat is from an area with bizarre construction requirements, it seems far more likely that those are the tread insertion points of each stair…and the cat is going down.

    1. But if the cat is going down, then at the top of the stairway we see .. a carpeted ceiling?

      If the cat is going up, then at the bottom of the stairway we see … a carpeted floor.

      It is ambiguous …

      2. What carpet? All I see at the far end of those stairs is JPEG artifacts.

    1. Review the stats on the percentage of people who are unsure of how long it takes us to orbit the sun. That should answer your question.

  11. Being as this is no doubt Schrödinger’s cat, no determination can be made.

  13. The edges of the walls appear to be the bottom of the stairs…the cats head is up not looking at the steps…going Up!

    1. Actually I think this is not the first stairway to be built in that spot, and what we’re seeing on the walls are plaster repairs from where the old treads were removed. Which means the cat is going down.

  18. The area the cat is coming from is quite obviously a floor, meaning the cat is ascending.

    And the stairs the cat are standing on are quite clearly oriented in such a way that the cat is descending.

    Therefore, either this is Schrödinger’s — or perhaps Escher’s — cat in the fur or else what the cat is actually doing is Photoshopping….

    b&

    1. Not so obviously.
      The area the cat is coming from is clearly a vertical wall a little way back from the stair.
      The flattened perspective makes it hard to see but the angles of the textures helps.

      1. …are capable of telepathetically broadcasting their thoughts. You posted first. (Though I was just reprising my first post yesterday, but was just now struck now by the persistence in trust.)

        b&

  21. What bothers me with the cat coming down the stairs, is the lack of a visible railing on either side of the top of the stairwell.

    1. Unless you think that “yes” = “true” for truthvalue(“The can is going up or down”) and that failure of extension (or reference) produces a truth value gap, in which case …

  24. It appears to me that the cat is coming down the stairs.

    If the camera was at the top, and you were climbing down the stairs, the lip on the stairs would be a tripping hazard where you could catch a heel. But maybe the citizenry there isn’t very litigious, as evidenced by the lack of a railing.

    Also, the edge of the stairs seems thinner near the center (as best that I can measure from a photo) which happens along the top edge of stairs over time.

  26. When my son was in grade school, he needed stitches after falling UP stairs at school. Ever since, any enigma involving stairs is in quantum territory for me.

  28. up.

    the light upper middle section is floor, due to the general illumination and lack of perspective. if it was ceiling, there would most likely be more variance in tone and suggestion of perspective, given it’s distance from the opening.

  32. Imagine a pavement artist drawing one of those pretend 3-D pictures (in this case a flight of stairs). Then let a cat walk over the drawing. Result: cat is walking neither up nor down.

    1. If that were the case, the cat’s left front paw would be visible. But it isn’t.

  36. I’m not sure whether it’s going up or down, but it’s definitely white and gold.

  37. It’s a magic cat walking backwards up the stairs. 🙂

    Is this a photo or a trompe l’oeil or what?
    At first I thought the cat was walking down the stairs (for all the reasons mentioned – the lip of the treads, the knobbly texture of the risers), but then why is the cat’s head positioned in that direction? It looks like it’s looking in the direction it’s headed…. UP.

    1. I don’t see a problem. The cat’s looking at the camera, which (as Jeff Lewis points out below) is located near the floor at the bottom of the stairs. Any postural oddities are the photographer’s, not the cat’s.

      1. I don’t recall my cats ever holding their heads up that way, whenever they were going downstairs. IIRC, they seem to pay attention to the floor, as if they’re not certain of its ‘depth’. Maybe it’s the age of my elderly cats and they might be having more problems with depth perception.

  38. From all the architectural clues people have already noted, I agree that the cat’s going down. But that wasn’t my first impression. My initial perception was that the cat was walking up the steps, and I think the reason is perspective. This is taken from a viewpoint that most people just aren’t used to – down low and close to the stairs. For most of us, our viewpoint would be about 5′ or 6′ higher, and our perspective of the whole scene would be entirely different. We might still only see the risers of the stairs if we were looking up, but it wouldn’t be at such a steep angle. But from the tops of stairs looking down, we would definitely see only the treads, and it would be from a steep angle.

    Here’s a crude attempt at ASCII art to make that more clear.

    *
    |
    |
    |
    –
    –
    –
    –
    * –
    | –
    | –
    |–

    To get the perspective in the photo from the bottom of the stairs, we’d have to be near the feet of that person, and that’s something we’re just not used to. From the perspective at the top of the stairs, the angles are closer to what you’d expect to see.

    1. That didn’t work. Let me try again (hopefully WordPress let’s me use ampersand codes.

                      *
                      |
                      |
                      |
                     â€“ 
                   â€“   
                 â€“     
               â€“       
      *      â€“         
      |    â€“           
      |  â€“             
      |–               

    2. I agree with your analysis (thought I don’t get the ASCII art part). When I first glanced at it, I thought the cat was going up, but immediately after it’s easy to see that he’s going down. You’re right about the perspective being one we’re not used to seeing – looking up a staircase with the POV down low near the stairs.

      I haven’t looked around the Internet to see why it’s confused, but I can’t imagine anyone but a few oddballs thinking the cat was going up.

      1. Look at the cat’s front left leg. If the cat was going up, we would be able to see it’s paw resting on the edge of the step. We can’t.

        In fact, it looks to me like the leg is straight with the paw resting out of sight on the step but an attempt has been made to photoshop the leg out of the picture because it would be a dead giveaway.

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