The idea of this quickly expanded on the Internet by numerous other users, typically under the name "Play Him Off, Keyboard Cat", and became a popular meme on YouTube.

[1] Schmidt had made the VHS video from 1984 of Fatso wearing an infant's blue T-shirt and "playing" an upbeat rhythm on an Ensoniq Mirage sampling keyboard.

Off-screen, Schmidt was manipulating Fatso's paws as to appear to be playing the piano, with the shirt used to cover his hands doing this.

[2] Brad O'Farrell, who was the syndication manager of the video website My Damn Channel, obtained Schmidt's permission to reuse the footage, appending it to the end of a blooper video to "play" that person offstage after the mistake or gaffe in a similar manner as getting the hook in the days of vaudeville.

[6][7][8][9][10] O'Farrell used the footage by appending it to the end of a video of a person in a wheelchair falling awkwardly off an escalator, with the appended Fatso footage appearing to "play" that person offstage in a similar manner as getting the hook in the days of vaudeville.

[12] The meme received boosts from media attention in May 2009 which included coverage in press outlets like the Associated Press,[11] a tweet made by Ashton Kutcher to his one million followers, and by a reference on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart during a "toss" with Stephen Colbert.

[16] During Weezer's 2009 summer tour with Blink-182, Keyboard Cat would play the band off every night at the end of their set.

[21] In April 2020, the original channel where the video was uploaded from was terminated after getting hacked by a cryptocurrency business group.

[25] Online clothing vendor Threadless sells a "Three Keyboard Cat Moon" T-shirt based on the infamous Three Wolf Moon design;[26][27] the shirt design was one of the most popular that the company has had, and they have had difficulties in meeting the demand for the shirt.

On April 1, 2011, YouTube released a video showing the "Top 5 Viral Pictures of 1911",[32] including a parody of Keyboard Cat titled "Flugelhorn Feline".

[34] In one example, Keyboard Cat was appended to the end of a segment of Desperate Lives (1982), a made-for-TV movie starring Helen Hunt showing the effects of drug use (with Keyboard Cat starting after Hunt's character falls out a window and suffers from overdosing); after the video, the submitter then superimposed Keyboard Cat in the music video for Hall & Oates' "You Make My Dreams".

[10] The move has alerted groups concerned about copyrights and the remix culture to warn about potential limitation of creative expression through such actions.

[37] In August 2024, Schmidt officially licensed a cryptocurrency meme coin $KEYCAT referencing Keyboard Cat on the Base blockchain.