What was Longcat's real name?

Longcat’s real name was Shiro.

Shiro was a Japanese domestic cat whose unusually long body made her an internet celebrity. Her owner, Miko, reportedly rescued her from the street in 2002, when she was thin and gray-haired; she later grew into the white, fluffy cat shown in the famous photographs.

The image of Shiro being held with her paws stretched outward circulated on the Japanese imageboard Futaba Channel around 2005 or 2006. Users gave her the nicknames Nobīru-tan and Nobiko-san, while English-speaking communities popularized “Longcat.” Reports commonly put her length at about 65 centimeters from head to toe.

The meme inspired edited images, songs, and an invented mythology involving Catnarok and a color-inverted rival called Tacgnol. That fictional lore is not the cat’s biography. Shiro was deaf and died in September 2020 at about 18 years old after a period of ill health. “Hana,” “Tama,” and “Maru” are not her documented real name.