The world's first ever software pet, a small white pixel cat that chased your cursor on the text screen, was created by Naoshi Watanabe of Japan on his country's NEC PC-9801 computer range's MS-DOS command line. It was known as NEKO.COM - 'neko' being the Japanese word for 'cat' and COM perhaps in reference to the command line.

Programmer and now manga artist, Kenji 'Juan' Gotoh, create his own version of Watanabe's concept, adapting it for the early Macintosh PCs (made by Apple, Inc.). His version was called NekoDA. Gotoh also crafted a new design for the cat sprites themselves. His design was to become the default look for Neko until this very day, after he sold the program and sprite designs to a visiting executive from IBM Pacific at a local restaurant for JPY 300,000 along with a proviso that the cat would be copyright-free. Gotoh also introduced the concept of the cat chasing the mouse cursor rather than a text cursor like on the PC-9801. He also innovated the yawning, scratching and sleeping motions that came to define Neko and its descendants. The 'DA' in 'NekoDA' stood for 'desktop accessory'.

Masayuki Koba brings Neko to Windows systems with his xneko program for X Windows computers, namely Unix and X11. In that same year, Tatsuya Kato modified xneko into 'oneko' for Unix-like environments including Linux and BSD. The cat could now chase open windows and still exists to this day on Linux PCs, and can be called from the terminal using the command line "oneko" and then hitting the Enter key. Kato is also believed to have begun the tradition of adding other characters, such as the BSD Daemon and dogs. According to a Usenet post from 1992, Kato disliked the idea of the Neko being confined to a simple window, and wanted it to run across the whole screen, as he felt sorry that the cat was 'caged in a jail'. Kato also chose the name of his port due to 'oneko' reminding him of "o'clock", but later decided that it stood for 'Neko runs Over the window'. Kato introduced the "tora neko" design (literally 'tiger-cat', what we call a tabby cat) and his Linux program allowed the user to change the cat's colours, using special commands. Also, for xneko, Koba introduced a variable speed option for the cat's running movements.

Thanks to IBM, Neko crosses the Pacific Ocean to the United States. Dara Khani, a Florida-based programmer, ported the software pet to Windows 3 as "Neko Runs Free". A separate version, WNEKO, was also made for Windows 3 by Michael Bankstahl.

IBM, a former home computer manufacturer, releases its own Neko version, given the English name "Cat and Mouse", for its proprietary OS/2 operating system. They had previously obtained the source code and sprites from Kenji Gotoh a couple of years earlier. IBM's creation helped propel Neko to public stardom, assisted by its huge market share of the home computing industry at that time.

A version of Neko is released for the Commodore Amiga, one of the epic PC systems of the Eighties and early Nineties. Sadly Neko's introduction could not stop Amiga's creator from going bust a year later.

Cat95, also called Cat! or TopCAT, is created as paid shareware by Robert Dannbauer of Wiener Neudorf, Austria, and sold and distributed under his Software CTD brand's Cat! Lovers' Homepage. It was compatible with Windows 3.1x and later versions. The cat came with miaowing sounds, cat size control, colour options and a background image concept for the cat's window - where users could submit their own pictures for a fee. The meows were recorded from an actual cat belonging to Robert's girlfriend - the cat was named Nigel. Robert's decision to monetise the Cat95 software was a controversial one in the Neko software community.

Neko-like sprites were used for a Macintosh shareware game, Kitten Shaver. This peculiar game involved the player using their cursor to shave cats with different lengths of fur as they ran across the screen in timed levels. The game was created by Nick Ruva from Clearwater, Florida.

Neko becomes a popular desktop pet among early PC adopters. People ripped the sprites and turned them into GIFs which were often added to Geocities sites, especially those devoted to programming or actual felines. Onekoshima has a collection of 1990s Geocities and archived Neko GIFs captured via GifCities and the Internet Archive.

British university student and programmer David Harvey creates "Neko for Windows" with two versions, Neko95 and the later Neko98 (released in 1998). Harvey introduced the ability for Neko to break out of windows and run across the whole screen, and also to add more than one Neko to the screen. He made his software available free-of-charge from his Geocities site. Harvey was also the first to add sounds to the software. He also made use of icon libraries, where you could choose from a selection of different cat and other sprites, like Blue Tabby, Clorpoin, TIE fighter from Star Wars and even PacMan.

A second, post-Commodore port of Neko is made for Amiga by Carl Revell. He names it "Ameko" and drew inspiration from Dara Khani's Neko. It relies on self- contained windows and movements identical to earlier Neko programs.

Suzanne Morine publishes the Directory of Neko Image Libraries, a directory of Neko versions available at the time. She sorted the Nekos into helpful categories including cats, dogs, other animals, contemporary things, space characters and cartoon characters. She created the directory as to put it in her own words, she was "frustrated by the often crypic names of the image libraries, and the lack of a directory of any sort for them".You could say Suzanne's directory was the precursor to my very own Onekoshima. Morine also created the very first 'Orange Tabby'.

A port for the PalmOS software for Palm Pilot personal digital assistants is created by Laurent Duveau. Called 'NekoCat', it was included in a suite of freeware applications Deveau made for these devices.

Greg Weston develops Neko 1.0 for Mac OS X as a 'universal binary'. He introduces a stopping mechanism, aptly titled Put the Cat Out, to stop the Neko's movements, and gives the user the ability to drag the cat around the screen with their cursor. Weston also created the first ever Neko screensaver, Neko.saver, and Replicat, a version of Neko for BeOS, a now defunct operating system made by Be Inc.

A JavaScript version for websites, Webneko, is built by Gregory Bell, and made available at webneko.net. Bell collected different sprite designs from previous Neko programs and also new ones made by contributors, making them available on his 'Neko Server'. Neko fans could copy special scripts for free from Bell's website to add a cat to their websites. Webneko took off on Tumblr and Blogger blogs, and is still popular to this day. Bell also teamed up with Trevor D'Arcy-Evans to release a Webneko app for the brand-new iPhone. Bell introduced the 'Cat Herding Game' on his site, where you could have multiple Webnekos chase your cursor.

An American artist, Todd Goldman, is accused of plagiarism after using a suspiciously Neko-like cat character in his Goodbye Kitty book, where a cat finds itself in all kinds of dangerous situations. He was also blamed for lifting other artists' work for use in selling merchandise. He denied the accusations.

neozeed, a programmer, develops a 64-bit version of Neko, where older Windows versions were only 32-bit. neozeed's update of the software meant Neko could now be used for modern-day systems, stopping the desktop cat from becoming obsolete.

A Java version of neko is made by Swiss programmer Werner Randelshofer. On his blog he mentions adapting the cat for a Java applet for desktop with it being displayed on a transparent 'JWIndow' and downloadable as a Neko.jar file.

Aneko, a phone app for Android, is released by developer lllllT. The app allowed you to choose a Neko (cat or other animal) and have them run around your phone screen above other apps. A newer version called ANeko Reborn was released in 2025 by Pass With High Score, also known as Nguyen Quanh Minh.

Neko versions begin to appear across more platforms, including Arduino mini-computers, Vencord (a plugin for Discord), Spotify, Windows Mobile, and even a multi-directional paintbrush option in the Tux Paint program.

The first comprehensive article ever to chart the history and lineage of Neko is written by Eliot Akira, a Japanese-American writer, musician and flaneur for his personal blog. Akira brought to life Neko's development, including never-seen-before screenshots of the 1990s Neko programs. To accompany the article, Eliot opened several repositories on GitHub, containing files and source codes of all Neko variants dating back to the 1988 maiden kitty. Eliot also made available many of the original Neko .ico bitmaps (sprites). Neko was nearly 35 years old by this time.

Canadian programmer Ari creates oneko.js, a new FOSS JavaScript port of Neko, also using the original Gotoh cat sprites, after seeing Neko software on her friend's computer during a screenshare. Oneko.js was named after it's Linux cousin, and allowed customisation of both sprites and source code. Oneko.js took off in a big way, and has now overtaken Webneko as the website cursor cat of choice. The program also gained virality due to its ease of installation, becoming widely used among indie programmers.

Frisian developer Evert Pot creates jneko, based off of the public domain assets of the older 'oneko' port. Like Webneko and Ari's oneko, jneko ("JavaScript neko") can be added to websites with a simple script code element. Pot also published his own blog article covering Neko's history, using the original research from Eliot Akira, while also sharing his own memories of using Neko software pets from freeware Windows diskettes as a child in 1990s Netherlands.

Adafruit announces its CircuitPython Neko Kitty with Displayio. Using the device's touchscreen, the user's finger becomes a 'laser dot' for the kitty to follow. The Neko Kitty was built with the Goodclover neko sprites made by Oliver Simmo for Bomvel's Neko Archive, and was designed to be used with Adafruit's PyPortal smart display range.

Olive (or Oliver) Simmo, formerly also known as Goodclover, creates Bomvel's Neko Archive on indie webhost Neocities, with its design and sprites heavily based on Gregory Bell's Webneko site. Simmo made the site to collect skins for the once frequent Neko software and adapted Webneko cat sprites into their own spritesheets, which were made available for public download. Sadly, the project did not take off and the Archive appears to have been abandoned. Bomvel's site was a big influence on Onekoshima.

catflags, a webtoy made by hazel (meows.zip) debuts. It arranges Nekos running left and right into flags with stripes. There are presets for different Pride flags, so for example, choosing the 'bi' preset had cats coloured in three bands - deep pink, purple and dark blue. The webtoy also allows customisables URLs where you can change the catflag band colours, number of bands and the density and running speed of the cats.

Oneko.js begins to take off on the indie/small web, with developers from LGBTQIA+ backgrounds and from regions such as India and the European Union adopting the pixel cat as their own. The indie web hosting platform Nekoweb adopts Oneko as their unofficial mascot and adds it to their homepage. Chrome and Firefox extensions as well as JavaScript bookmarklets featuring Neko come online, and there is a growing number of new Neko variants being created, such as foxes, skunks, Pokemon and anime characters.

Louis Abraham creates another port of Neko for JavaScript, the first to be created with the assistance of AI tools, namely Claude. Abraham developed their own technique, which they half-jokingly called "Nekomancing", to recreate the original Neko98 behaviour with just the original source code and a few prompts. He named the project "neko.js" and it is the first Neko that will actually run away from the cursor as well as towards it.

Onekoshima, an oneko.js sprite collection put together by British-Mauritian Neko fan Vijay Shah, comes online. Shah collected Oneko sprites from websites across the Web and decided to put them together in a first-of-its-kind collection. To date, Onekoshima is the largest and only sprite collection/directory devoted to oneko.js, with close to 500 different versions recorded. In addition to sprites, the site also contains other resources, such as a vintage Neko animated GIF collection and a categorised page of links about Oneko and Neko software pets/screenmates in general.

Indian web developer Karthickpranav SN brings out O-Nandemo, an AI-built reworking of Ari/adryd's oneko.js under the same MIT licence. O-Nandemo allows users to import their own sprite artwork and send to their friends as shareable links. A controversial function is the recipe tool, which allows you to describe a virtual companion, like for example a grumpy slice of toast with little legs, and generate an AI prompt that can be used with GenAI image software (ChatGPT, Codex etc.). The tool then packs the sprites and generates an onandemo.json file.