Have you ever wondered about that rainbow car in the parking lot? What is it? Pop-Tart? Cat? The result of Skittles that weren’t properly digested? No! In fact, it is the Nyan-Car! The eight-bit half pastry, half feline trailing rainbows, more popularly known as Nyan-Cat, is the image stretched across both sides of the little light blue car. Nyan-Cat is an animated gif that went viral on the Internet back in 2011.

“The Pop-Tart Cat animation was posted on the daily comics site LOL-COMICS run by illustrator Chris Torres, also known as prguitarman, on April 2nd, 2011,” reports the website knowyourmeme.com. “The original drawing was based on his own Russian Blue cat, Marty, and was drawn after receiving two separate suggestions for a cat and a Pop-Tart during a Red Cross charity drawing event on Livestream.”

Now, why in the world would someone have something so flashy on their car? Well, the owner, AnaMarie Warner, will gladly tell you why, as I just so happen to be her! After all the doom and gloom following the Joplin tornado on May 22, 2011, I wanted to do something that would make people smile, something that could possibly brighten someone’s whole day. At the time, I was working at a vinyl and graphics shop called Sik Design. While working there, I had full access to some of the scrap pieces of sticker vinyl. Thusly, before I had Nyan-Cat on my car, I actually had Rainbow Dash’s “cutie marks,” the little symbol on the rump of the My Little Pony character.

After a few months, I decided it wasn’t big enough — not happy enough. It needed to be something that would almost wrap around the car. Mind you, I’d come up with a plethora of ideas before finally picking one. An ocean of calligraphy-styled magikarp, a Pokemon from the popular TV show Pokemon, swimming across the sides? A gigantic heartless symbol from the video game Kingdom Hearts? Not flashy enough! Finally, I decided to stick with the initial idea of rainbows from the previous decal and go with Nyan-Cat. After all, after the storm comes the rainbow.