A breed of crazy cat pictures accompanied by babyish captions has exploded virally on the Internet, popping up in www.MySpace.com comments, e-mail forwards and every corner of cyberspace.

In a cute-obsessed Internet world, lolcats are in the same vein as www.cuteoverload.com and www.stuffonmycat.com, but much weirder.

In computer speak, they're an example of a meme, or a unit of cultural information that multiplies until it becomes a phenomenon.

These modern, bizarro counterparts to those "Hang in There" motivational pet posters of the 1970s have been slinking around the Internet for years under various labels, but they didn't become a sensation until early this year with the advent of www.icanhascheezburger.com, which tags each kitty pic with identifying words like "muneez"(money) or "halp" (help) and makes them easier to find. Some trace the lolcats back to the site www.4chan.org, which features bizarre cat pics on Saturdays, or "Caturdays."

Lolcats (named for the acronym for "laugh out loud") mostly speak in a vernacular of inappropriately conjugated verbs and misspelled words that resemble Borat's broken English or a toddler's incoherent mumblings.

The phrasing does have a formula, however. Some of the more famous quotes: "I'm in yer computer, readin' yer e-mails," "You has a flavor" and "Who eated my cookie?" A common lolcat greeting is "oh, hai." One fan has written "Kitteh-101," a guide to lolcat as a second language, which is posted on www.icanhascheezburger.com. The site's creators are developing a program that randomly generates lolcat language.

The site, which launched in January, is arguably the premier place for lolcats. Its creators wish to keep their identities a secret and asked to be referred to by their cyber handles, Cheezburger and Tofuburger. The Burgers are partly responsible for the cats' demented quotes.

"It's basically me trying to talk through the cats," Cheezburger says.

One day, Tofuburger received an e-mail containing the meme featuring a rotund gray cat and his plea, "I can has cheezburger?" He had no idea of who originally created it and sent it to Cheezburger, who immediately fell under the fat feline's spell.

He was so fascinated by "Happy Cat" that he immediately bought the domain www.icanhascheezburger.com and posted the Happy Cat meme. Within weeks, his site garnered hundreds of hits, and soon viewers started submitting cat pics for the two to caption. Eventually, the workload became so heavy, they insisted submissions arrive already captioned. Cheezburger says the site receives 200 to 500 submissions a day, and he has developed some standards to help select the best memes.

"The picture has to be good quality, and the text supplied has to jibe (with the picture). If it says something like, 'I'm on ur broom goin 2 Hogwarts' and there's no broom, it's not funny," he says. "I see so many of these, I know immediately whether or not it will work. It's become more of an art rather than a science."