Meow State University in Makassar Enrolled 1,073 New Students This Year

There is another significant contender for this year's MPLS Twibbon parody, and this one belongs to a cat community at a state university in Makassar, Indonesia.

Credit: @kucingunm_

The context for anyone who missed it: between July and August, Indonesian students go through an orientation program called MPLS, Masa Pengenalan Lingkungan Sekolah, and the Twibbonize homepage fills with thousands of MPLS Twibbons announcing which school somebody is about to attend. The format is stable enough to parody, which is what a fan did when he took the standard Aku Siap Bersekolah, "I'm ready for school," and sent it out to sea for the West Java surf rock band The Panturas. More than 11,000 people joined that one.

Meowba 2026 does the same tribute for the orientation season, and they made their version for cats. Maba is short for mahasiswa baru, "new student". Meowba is the cat version, and the campaign welcomes them as meowsiswa at Universitas Negeri Meow, which is Makassar State University with the last "M" swapped. The description tells students what to do: upload your version, tag @kucingunm_, the link is in the bio. Takdir Muhammad created it on August 1, and 1,073 cats now fill the gallery.

The account behind it, @kucingunm_, started by posting photos of cats around the campus back in 2021 and built a following of people with the same enthusiasm for the feline species. The community has run this campaign four times, and the first three are a lesson in something other than design. Meowba 2023 drew 221 supporters. Meowba24, captioned "Ready to meong meong!", drew 66. Meowba 2025, captioned Twibbon khusus anabul, a Twibbon just for fur babies, drew 38. Same community, same concept, but the line keeps sloping down. Then in 2026, it received 1,073 supporters.

The difference between each campaign run is subtle but hasn't gone unnoticed. The 2023 campaign came with no personalized description, and the two that followed had very few traces of online shares. The 2026 description is the first one that does distribution work inside the campaign page. It welcomes, it instructs, and it names the account to tag.

Cats filling up tagged section of kucingunm_ Instagram page 

The design for Meowba 26 is also much fitting to feature cats in their lovely poses. The combination of bright orange and two cute cat mascots is a contrast to the previous three that opted for a neutral, almost calming, look. And this seems to be a factor that successfully attracts people. The post announcing it drew almost 28,000 likes, among the most liked in the account's history, on an Instagram with just over 10,000 followers. Nearly three times the account's own following, which means the campaign has helped the community extend their reach.

It helps that Kucing UNM has transformed into an organized movement now. Dari mahasiswa untuk kucing, "from students for cats". Kucing UNM is now a student initiative working alongside volunteers so that no cat on campus goes uncared for. Programs listed include Street Feeding, Treatment, against flu, ringworm, wounds and worms, and the community operates in every faculty on the UNM campus. After all, an organization with clear programs will likely gain more support than those that don't explicitly state what they do.

Kucing UNM is one of volunteer programs that focuses on cats, and it is not alone. Kucing UGM run by the students of Universitas Gadjah Mada, Yogyakarta began as an account in 2017 and became a formal community in 2019, growing past two hundred members. In Makassar itself, the cat community at Universitas Hasanuddin runs street feeding. What Kucing UNM has done differently is seeing an opportunity in the social media trend, and making their own version of it. The community has created a campaign everyone understands and can easily join.

What makes it worth writing home about is the decision to improve a campaign they had already run, a trend they parodied without mocking it, a description that tells anyone who sees it exactly what to do, and most notably, cats stay at the center of attention rather than the community itself.

We found Meowba 26 through the explore page, and with International Cat Day landing on August 8, a week after the campaign went up, the timing felt serendipitous. An Instagram account associated with the campaign, once begun modestly, is now a group that feeds cats, helps get them sterilized, and gives them a chance at a better life.