Cat Kaomoji — Kitty Text Faces to Copy & Paste
Cat kaomoji fall into two main families: the classic (=^･ω･^=) form from Japanese BBS culture and the newer /ᐠ - ˕ -マ style that took over social media more recently. They share the same basic grammar — ears on the sides, face in the middle — but the newer ones are pointier and feel more contemporary.
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Cat Kaomoji — Copy and Paste
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Classic Cat Faces
The original family — the (=^·ω·^=) construction with ω as the nose and matching outer brackets. These have been around the longest and are the most immediately legible as cats to the widest audience.
Modern Cat Faces
The newer /ᐠ マ style and its relatives. Pointier, more stylised, and currently everywhere on TikTok and Twitter. The ᐠ and マ characters serve as ears; the face inside varies by expression.
Sleepy Cats
Droopy-eyed, half-asleep cats. The - - eyes do a lot of work — closed or nearly closed, they shift the whole expression from alert to drowsy. For non-cat sleeping faces, the sleepy kaomoji page has those.
About cat kaomoji
Cat kaomoji held up better than almost any other category. Cats became an internet subject very early, and the kaomoji form actually works for cat faces because of one detail: the ^ character reads as a pointed ear. That works in both the classic (=^･ω･^=) form and the newer /ᐠ マ style.
The /ᐠ マ family is a more recent development, built from characters in the Unified Canadian Aboriginal Syllabics Unicode block — ᐠ and マ are Japanese katakana — combined in a way that happens to look like stylised cat ears. The ᓚᘏᗢ running cat is a similar case: a character sequence that looks like motion when read horizontally.
All of these are standard Unicode, so they paste correctly into Discord, TikTok, and Instagram without any special fonts or image uploads.
More Kaomoji
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the most popular cat kaomoji?
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(=^･ω･^=) is the classic — symmetric, uses ω as a small nose/mouth, and has been in circulation since Japanese BBS culture in the late 80s. The newer /ᐠ - ˕ -マ style is very popular on modern social media, particularly TikTok and Twitter/X.
What does /ᐠ - ˕ -マ mean?
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It's a cat face. The /ᐠ and マ at the ends are ears; ˕ is the tiny nose; - - are closed or sleepy eyes. The whole thing reads as a drowsy, content cat. The style is sometimes called 'modern cat kaomoji' to distinguish it from the older (^.^) family.
What is ≽^•⩊•^≼?
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It's a cat face with a slightly different framing — ≽ and ≼ act as the outer brackets, ^ gives the ear shape, and •⩊• is the face. It's often used for a cat that looks slightly intense or focused.
How do I use cat kaomoji in TikTok bios?
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Copy any face from this page and paste it into your TikTok bio. Unicode cat faces work across iOS and Android. The 80-character bio limit means shorter faces like ᓚᘏᗢ or (^._.^)ﾉ are better choices than longer compound ones.
What is ᓚᘏᗢ?
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It's a simplified running or walking cat — often used as-is as a standalone character rather than framed as a traditional kaomoji face. It originates from Unified Canadian Aboriginal Syllabics characters that happen to look like a cartoon cat in motion.