Karl Lagerfeld’s kitten Choupette celebrated her first birthday today and boy, what a year it has been. That diary must be 1,000 pages by now.

The white, fluffy Birman beauty has catapulted to fame more quickly, we’re pretty sure, than any other cat in history (and even many humans for that matter) and we feel that her meteoric rise to stardom is worth a closer look.

What makes Choupette’s success different from that of other felines is that it did not involve any viral videos, photos with big misspelled captions or a blog of her wearing cat outfits (Lagerfeld finds that “circuslike”). To which we say LOLZ. So what exactly, besides being owned by Karl Lagerfeld, made her a superstar?

Choupette’s birthday coincides with a piece in W‘s September issue, in which Le Figaro‘s deputy editor Virginie Mouzat more or less psychoanalyzes Lagerfeld’s attachment to his muses, from Ines de la Fressange to a famous kitten, and connects it to a need to be loved. Is Choupette the latest of what she calls Karl’s “fiercly devoted female companions?” And what consequences does that role come with? Is she just a modern day cat version of Edie Sedgwick?

Click through for our timeline of Choupette’s rise to fame and what it all means for the future.