You've probably seen him. A scruffy kitten on a step, sepia-toned, with handwritten text: "TOUGH, I AM" at the top and "ONE EYE PETE" at the bottom. The internet claims he's from 1890. I painted him. Then we tried to figure out if any of that was true.
Spoiler: it wasn't.
The Original Photo
The Claim
The photo of One Eye Pete circulates everywhere with the same story: it's an authentic photograph from 1890 of a tough little kitten. It's on Pinterest, TikTok, Instagram, Etsy. People sell prints of it. Everyone repeats the date. Nobody questions it.
When I painted my version, I wanted to include some real historical context on the product page. You know, who took the photo, where it came from, maybe something about Victorian-era cat photography. The usual provenance stuff you'd include when your artwork is based on a historical image.
So we started digging.
What We Found (Or Didn't)
First stop: historical archives. If this is really from 1890, it should be somewhere official, right? The Library of Congress has an entire collection of Victorian-era cat photographs. Legitimate 1890s cat photos exist. We found images from pioneering photographer Eadweard Muybridge (1887), "The Black Cat" magazine covers, various studio portraits. All properly dated, all with photographer credits, all with archival documentation.
One Eye Pete? Nowhere.
No museums. No historical societies. No academic photography archives. No photographer credited. No studio location. No original negative. No physical print in any collection anywhere.
For a photograph that supposedly survived 130+ years and is now famous enough to be sold on Etsy and plastered across social media, that's... weird.
My painting taking life!
The Trail Goes Cold at Reddit
Every source we found (and we mean every single one) traces back to the same place: Reddit. Multiple Pinterest pins cite "reddit.com" as their source. People selling prints of it admit they saw it on Reddit. An artist who makes merchandise featuring the image literally wrote on Facebook: "Reddit is telling me he's from the 1890s. I don't know who took the original photograph."
That artist? Me. Yes, we quoted our own Facebook post back to ourselves during this research. It was embarrassing.
The actual Reddit post that started the "1890" claim? Deleted, or lost, or possibly never existed in the first place. We can't find it. Nobody can find it. It's like trying to cite a ghost.
What Actually Exists
The earliest dated appearance we could verify was March 2020 on DeviantArt. A user posted art of a cat character named "One Eye Pete." Even there, someone commented "I know what this is based on." This suggested the photo already existed somewhere before that.
In July 2023, an artist on Twitter posted: "I love one eye Pete!! This is cat art 437." That post got 95,000 views. After that, it exploded. By 2024-2025, it's everywhere. Etsy listings, TeePublic merchandise, print shops, Pinterest boards, TikTok videos. Everyone selling or sharing it. Nobody knowing where it came from.
It's a perfect example of circular sourcing: everyone's copying everyone else, all citing "1890," none of them having any actual source.
What 1890s Photos Actually Look Like
Here's the thing: Victorian-era photography had specific conventions. Professional photographers in the 1890s marked their work with studio imprints on card mounts. Names, locations, sometimes awards. Text appeared on the mounts, not overlaid directly on the image like modern digital text.
The phrasing "TOUGH, I AM" is casual, personality-driven, almost meme-like. Victorian photography emphasized formal documentation, not informal humor. The whole aesthetic feels... off.
Could someone have added the text to an old photo later? Sure. But then where's the original untexted version? Where's any version with provenance?
So What Is It?
We don't know. Nobody knows.
It could be:
A modern photo with a vintage filter and added text
An old photo from the mid-1900s (not 1890s) that someone digitally aged
A real vintage photo with fabricated dating
Someone's actual cat from 2015 that they styled to look old
What we do know:
It first appeared online around 2020
Someone on Reddit claimed it was from 1890
Everyone believed it without checking
The actual photographer is unknown
The actual date is unknown
The actual cat's story is unknown
Why It Matters
This isn't just about One Eye Pete. It's about how easy it is for fake historical narratives to spread online. An image appears, someone adds a date, it goes viral, and suddenly it's "fact." Nobody checks. Everyone copies. The lie becomes the story.
We almost did it too. We almost put "based on an 1890 photograph" on our product page because that's what the internet told us. Then we actually looked.
What We're Doing Instead
My painting of One Eye Pete is still happening. The image is charming regardless of its murky origins. That's why it went viral in the first place. But our product page will tell the truth:
"Based on the viral photograph known as 'One Eye Pete.' Origin unknown, date uncertain, photographer unidentified. The internet claims 1890. We have our doubts. But that scruffy little face? Undeniably tough."
The mystery is more interesting than the lie. And if anyone out there actually knows where this photo came from, if you took it, or your grandmother took it, or you found it in an estate sale with actual documentation. Please, for the love of god, tell us. We'd love to know the real story.
Until then, One Eye Pete remains what he's always been: a mystery wrapped in sepia tone, claiming toughness we can't verify, from a year we can't confirm, captured by a photographer we'll never know.
Tough, he claims. Mysterious, he definitely is.
Want to see my painting of One Eye Pete? Check out the print. Want to help solve the mystery? Let us know if you have any actual information about this photo's origins. We're still looking.