This Adorable Cat Mascot Thing Can Shred the Goddamn Drums

Yes, it is true. The world is a seemingly bottomless pit of despair. But every now and then, amid all the herculean piles of shit that continue to build, day by day, something good bubbles to the surface. A soothing salve to quell the pain, if just for a moment. And now, thankfully, just such a calming balm has emerged—in the form of a very cute and very fucking metal drumming cat.

Please, just watch his incredible performance in its entirety:

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No, your eyes do not deceive you. That is a weird costumed creature, looking something like a sentient strawberry Runt with a cat face, completely massacring a drum set while some kind of goofy children’s tune plays in the background. Do you feel an overwhelming sense of glee? Is there a sudden and merciless joy welling up inside you? Are the hard caked layers of stress and anxiety melting away, one by one, like a snake shedding its skin? For that, you have noble Twitter user Eric Alper to thank.

Alper tweeted the video of the cat putting Bongo Cat to shame last week and it promptly went viral. But it wasn’t until the Daily Dot started digging into the character’s mysterious origins that the truth emerged: This is not the only video of the glorious feline Runt. There are more. Many, many, many more.

According to the Daily Dot, the cat is Japanese mascot celebrity Nyango Star, it’s supposed to be a mixture of a cat and an apple, and it once shredded the goddamn drum kit with the dude from DragonForce.

But who really is Nyango Star, underneath the plush outfit? Why did this person decide to devote their life to slaying the drums and wearing goofy costumes? And how ventilated is the costume, anyway? How sweaty and disgusting does it smell inside there? Questions abound, but one thing is clear: We need more Nyango Star in our lives. Our modern society may be crumbling under the unending weight of our garbage world, but not all hope is lost because a presumably very sweaty person inside a red costume is here to drum our battered spirits back to life.

Thank you, Nyango Star. You are just the giant, drumming apple-cat thing that we need right now. At the very least, you’re better than that walking clump of hair, Gritty.

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