The Internet seems overrun by cats. You can find cat pictures, cat articles, and cat videos everywhere you look on the Internet, but for those of us who remember life before the Internet, you might be surprised to find that cats dominated the news even back then.

The New York Times archive shows that cat pictures and articles were popular even as far back as 1879. That’s when the newspaper reported that a cat helped hatch some chicken eggs. That shows that people have been obsessed with cats long before technology arrived to make cat obsession fast and simple.

If you think you or someone you know is a crazy cat person, cut their Internet connection for a week and see if they still manage to find news and pictures about cats anyway.

To read more about how cats dominated newspapers from the past, click here.

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