The Battle Cats is a tower defense strategy game from Japanese developer PONOS, first released for mobile in 2012 and later expanded worldwide. Players send out a line of cartoon cats to protect their base while destroying the enemy base, and the defeat jingle marks the opposite result. As gameplay clips, edits and memes from the game spread on YouTube and TikTok, its short win and loss stings became recognizable shorthand outside the game itself, with the defeat cue reused for any gaming fail.