The ALF Cat meme is a reference to the old 1980s sitcom character Alf and his odd interest in eating the Tanner family cat, with whom he lives in the series. The reference was widely cited after the presidential debate on September 10th, 2024, between Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump, where he claimed that Haitian immigrants were eating family pets.
Origins of the ALF Cat meme
The TV show ALF ran on NBC from September 22, 1986, to March 24, 1990. ALF is an acronym for ‘Alien Life Form’ and is the name of the titular character, although his real name is Gordon Shumway.
ALF is an extra-terrestrial who crash-landed in the Tanner family home and made himself comfortable while they hid from the FBI. However, he has one strange hunger that is common on his home planet, which is to eat cats. In ALF’s case, he wants to eat the Tanner family cat.
ALF cat memes have been around since the early 2000s, the most common involving a screencap of ALF holding two pieces of bread around the cat to make it into a “cat sandwich.”
This scene originally occurs in season 4, episode 9, where ALF concludes that the cat is too cute to eat. After the scene was uploaded to YouTube on June 17th, 2016, it has been viewed over 502K times and has over 3K likes.
While it is unclear what the first ALF Cat meme was, one of the earliest known examples was posted on the GBAtemp forums on July 23rd, 2010 by user Logan 5. In the image, Logan 5 had photoshopped a kitten onto a plate sitting in front of ALF, a fork and knife in his hands. Below the image, Logan 5 wrote, “Welcome to the club, you can have half of this cat.”
Resurgence of the ALF Cat meme
The meme saw a resurgence following the presidential debate on September 10th, 2024 between Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump. During the debate, Donald Trump claimed of Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, “They’re eating the dogs. The people that came in, they’re eating the cats. They’re eating, they’re eating the pets of the people that live there.”
This reminded many folks online of the original ALF memes and his obsession with eating cats, and the new meme was born.
The remarks from former President Donald Trump occurred a little over 30 minutes into the debate while the pair were discussing immigration policies.
He was immediately fact-checked and told there were no credible sources of information to back up that claim. He responded that he had seen the story on TV, although he didn’t specify where.
Meme examples
Memes surrounding the idea of immigrants eating cats blew up online, with folks across multiple social media platforms referencing ALF’s illegal alien status and the fact that he has the insatiable desire to eat cats.
The night of the debate, Redditor u/mccarthybergeron posted on r/pics with an image of Alf with the cat sandwich to /r/pics and titled the post, “Illegal alien eating a cat on TV.” The post has gained over 84K upvotes since being posted.
On X, formerly known as Twitter, @hausofdecline posted an image of ALF and wrote, “Not entirely unconvinced that the GOP’s new ‘Cat-Eating Alien’ bit comes directly from a Republican comms guy watching Alf.”
Another person on X, @CBoTheEggman, posted the ALF Cat meme and said, “The Trump campaign has refused to clarify if ALF was the TV show where Trump saw illegal aliens eating people’s pets.”
