Christopher Torres knows a few things about cats, Internet memes and comics.

Torres has been drawing his web comic “LOL Comics” since 2005, before reaction images were even a thing. Featuring adventures from previous employment, his family and lots of cat stories – his comics resonated with fans. In 2008, after an early comic was featured on G4’s Attack of the Show, the comics routinely started going viral. As a way of connecting with fans, Torres would occasionally do live drawing sessions online, taking fan suggestions for what to draw. During a charity drawing drive in 2011 (in support of disaster relief efforts for the American Red Cross), Torres drew a simple 8-bit animation of a cat with a toaster pastry body flying through space with a rainbow trail. That night, Nyan Cat was born and exploded in popularity on the web, becoming one of the world’s most famous memes. Hundreds of thousands of parodies keep the addicting musical intergalactic kitty going every day. The original video has almost 100 million views to date. Nyan Cat became the 5th most watched video on Youtube in 2011 and won the first ever rainbow Webby Award for meme of the year. Nyan Cat continues to be an inspiration of love and joy in animated cat GIF form to this day.

Nyan Cat has also teamed up with the biggest Internet felines – Grumpy Cat and Keyboard Cat. More recently, Torres has his own toy line and opened a shop in New York. Nyan Cat has won an MTV O Music Award. Nyan Cat has been spotted in many successful marketing campaigns for Nike, Coca Cola, Back to the Future, Google, and Sprint. Torres has attended conventions such as San Japan, ROFLCON, Polymanga in Switzerland, and SXSW.

Since the meme launched, Torres has donated over $50,000 to various charities like Red Cross, Doctors Without Borders, Child’s Play. During his free time, Chris likes to tweet as many photos of his cats as he can at @PRguitarman and just loves talking about cats in general. He has two cats.