On January 1st, 2011, Something Awful forum user Apple Jax posted a picture of her boyfriend Daniel Vecchitto’s cat Emilio in a thread titled «PYF Cat Pictures (it rises again). When the photo was taken, Emilio the cat was wearing a tie he had received for Christmas from Etsy shop Whisker Kisses.

Three days later, the photo was reposted to Reddit with the title «Business Cat.» Several hours later, the image was put on MemeGenerator and a second Reddit thread entitled «Business Cat ain’t no joke» marked the first appearance of the image macro, captioned «No LOL here, Get your ass in my office.»