In the 1950s, Portland tortie cat Dagwood became a pint-sized ping-pong prodigy after pawing her way into the feline hall of fame: 'She wouldn't leave her owner alone while he played'

Blake Seidel • Managing Editor & Brand Manager

Oct 10, 2026 11:00 AM EDT

Long before Grumpy Cat took the internet by storm, before we became obsessed with Maru fitting in boxes, and before Lil Bub became an icon, there was Dagwood - the ping pong tortie from Portland, Oregon.

In 1951, Dagwood was introduced to the world via an Associated Press Story. She had spent years interrupting her pawrent (Ted Matson) while he played ping pong. He did what any reasonable cat dad would do when their feline refused to respect purrsonal boundaries - he gave her a side of the table. Dagwood learned to volley with him from across the net, and she became surprisingly good at both one-pawed hits and two-paw smashes.

I cannot emphasize enough to you that this happened in the 1950s. There was no TikTok. No reels sent to you on Instagram. There was no such thing as an overnight celebrity, let alone a weirdly talented cat. Dagwood had to go viral the old-fashioned way: news stories and actual film reels. She even appeared on an episode of MASH (even some of you millennials might not get this reference) where she was introduced as the "prodigious prowess at Ping Pong". How do I know this? You can thank my dad, he used to watch MASH religiously when I was a kid.

Of course, Dagwood did not single-pawedly create modern cat culture, but I would be doing her an injustice to say that she wasn't part of the blueprints. She was an ordinary pet with a meowrvelously unique quirk. She was purractically meant for entertaining people she had never met. In today's world, we build whole online communities around cats like Dagwood. Their weird habits become memes (thanks to us) and strangers halfway around the world know their names.

Underneath all of this philosophizing is an even more glaringly apparent truth - it's just downright adorable to watch. I know this isn't some crazy cat rescue story, or a highlight of a ridiculously floofy kitten with too many toe beans, but it is an impurrtant part of cat history. Dagwood might be one of the earliest entries into the feline hall of fame, and people in today's day and age deserve to know about her tortitude, her talents, and her cuteness, too.

Subscribe to our weekly newsletter to start your Caturday with the funniest felines on the internet!

01

via @hifurrend
Decades after Dagwood originally chased those tiny white balls across a table, television audiences were still watching her do it, and that's the part that feels impurrtant. We sometimes talk about internet-famous cats like they are a strange invention of the social media era, but hoomans have always been desperate to watch somebody else's cat do something ridiculous. The technology advanced, but the basic hooman instinct of “Everyone come look at this cat right now!” absolutely did not.
Maybe that's why cats have remained such purrfect media stars. They turn ordinary domestic life into tiny purrformances without even knowing there is an audience! Also, most of them are just fluffy and derpy, and that definitely helps.
02

via @hifurrend
03

via @hifurrend
04

via @hifurrend
05

via @hifurrend
There is something wonderfully ordinary about Dagwood. She did not need Hollywood training, a pedigree, or some grand heroic story. She was famous because she did what cats do best: bugging her owner until he let her do what she wanted. She had content creation built into her DNA before any of us had wifi, but to her, she just called it knocking things across a table.
Call it an educated guess, but I would wager she loved pushing things off tables as well.
06

via @hifurrend
07

via @hifurrend
08

via @hifurrend
09

via @hifurrend
10

via @hifurrend via You Asked For It