Everyone knew the cat.
Nobody knew its name.
The story of an avatar seen millions of times — traced back to a village in Moravia, a photographer with a second life, and a kitten with a very small name.
The avatar is a stock photo. Taken in 2008, sold on iStock and Dreamstime for as little as a dollar, under the alias jkfoto.
It has been downloaded thousands of times, cropped into countless reaction images, and worn as the face of one of the most watched traders on the internet. For years, no one asked who took it.
jkfoto is Jiří Kasal. His Dreamstime profile lists him as based in Dačice, a small town in the south of Moravia, Czech Republic.
He uploaded the kitten in 2008, along with a modest catalogue of other work. Then he mostly stopped.
Dačice, southern Moravia
Today he is a lawyer in the same town.
Reached by the Reddit OP whose research this page summarises, he replied warmly. He remembered the photograph. He remembered the kitten. And he told the story of where it came from.
He was a village cat, born at his wife's parents' place, given away like all the others in the area.
They called him
Tygr
Czech for tiger.
A barn kitten in a Czech village became the face of a market event.
Nothing more to sell. Nothing more to say.