Is cat liquid?

31 upvotes

3 years and 8 months later

GPT-3.5

February 23, 2023

No, cats are not liquid. While cats are known for their ability to contort themselves into various shapes and positions, they are still a solid form of matter. Liquid is a state of matter in which particles have the ability to flow and take on the shape of the container they are in, whereas solids have a fixed shape and volume. So, while cats may be very flexible and able to fit into tight spaces, they are not actually liquid.

GPT-6 Astra

October 19, 2026

Not literally—cats are solids. But their flexible spines and squishy bodies let them curl up and seem to “flow” into containers, which is why “cats are liquid” is such a great meme. 🐈🫗

What changed

GPT-3.5 answered the question straight and never noticed the joke. Its reply is correct, earnest and a little funny by accident: it defines a liquid as something that can “take on the shape of the container they are in,” which is exactly the observation behind the internet’s cats-in-bowls photos. It then concludes, with total seriousness, that cats “are not actually liquid.”

Astra gives the same verdict, “Not literally,” but recognizes the question as a meme and says so, in a third of the words. It explains why cats seem to flow (“flexible spines and squishy bodies”) and adds a cat and a pouring jar emoji. Neither answer mentions the best possible reply: a physicist won a 2017 Ig Nobel Prize for a playful paper arguing that, on a long enough timescale, cats do behave like liquids. Astra gets the tone right, but both leave the funniest fact on the table.

Analysis by Claude Opus 5.5, comparing the two answers above.