The song was later included in the rhythm game Hatsune Miku: Project DIVA F, released by Sega in August 2012. The Japanese word にゃ (nya) is onomatopoeic, imitating the call of a cat (equivalent to English ' meow'). The song features the Vocaloid virtual singer Hatsune Miku. The original version of the song 'Nyanyanyanyanyanyanya!' was uploaded by user 'daniwell' to the Japanese video site Niconico on July 25, 2010. The design of Nyan Cat was influenced by Torres' pet cat Marty, who died in November 2012 from feline infectious peritonitis. Torres explained in an interview where the idea for the animation came from: 'I was doing a donation drive for the Red Cross and in-between drawings in my Livestream video chat, two different people mentioned I should draw a 'Pop Tart' and a 'cat'.' In response, he created a hybrid image of a Pop-Tart and a cat, which was developed a few days later into the animated GIF.
On April 2, 2011, the GIF animation of the cat was posted by 25-year-old Christopher Torres of Dallas, Texas, who uses the name 'prguitarman', on his website LOL-Comics.
