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Easy Origami Cat Face: A Two-Minute Fold for Little Kids

Eight creases, no hard moves, and a face at the end of it. The cat face is the best first origami for small hands, drawn here fold by fold.

  • DifficultyVery easy
  • Time2 minutes
  • PaperOne 15 cm square
  • ModelTraditional, flat

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A finished origami cat folded from orange paper, with drawn eyes and whiskers, standing on a pale washi surface.Save
fig. 01Easy Origami Cat Face: A Two-Minute Fold for Little Kids

The cat face is the fold I hand to every child who asks what origami is. Eight creases, no tricky moves, and at the end there is a face looking back at you. A four-year-old can manage it with a little help on step seven; a six-year-old can run a whole production line of them.

It is also a forgiving model. Creases that land a few millimeters off just give the cat crooked ears, which honestly makes it better.

The folding

Work on a hard table and make every crease with a fingernail or a bone folder. A sharp crease now saves a fight three steps later. Dashed lines are valley folds, dash-dot lines are mountain folds.

How to read the diagrams standard notation
Valley fold 谷折り — fold toward you, so the crease sits at the bottom of a V.
Mountain fold 山折り — fold away from you, so the crease becomes a ridge.
Fold arrow — move the paper in the direction the arrow travels.
Turn over — flip the whole model face down before the next step.

01Fold the head

The first four folds build the basic head shape. Work on a table, not in the air, and flatten each crease with a fingernail.

step 01Start with the white side up and a corner pointing at you. Fold the top corner down to the bottom corner.

step 02Fold the triangle in half from left to right, then unfold. This crease marks the middle.

step 03Fold the left corner down so it meets the bottom point.

step 04Do the same with the right corner. You now have a diamond.

If your diamond looks lopsided, the middle crease from step two was off. Unfold to the triangle and redo it — it takes ten seconds and fixes everything after.

02Make the ears

The ears are the only folds here with any freedom in them. A steeper angle gives an alert cat; a wider angle gives a sleepy one. Fold the first ear, then match the second to it by eye.

step 05Fold the bottom tip of the left flap up and out at an angle. This is the first ear.

step 06Fold the right flap the same way to make the second ear.

03Shape the face

Two small folds turn the diamond into a face: one behind to flatten the skull, one in front to make the nose. The mountain fold in step seven goes away from you — it is the one place kids reliably fold the wrong direction, so watch for it.

step 07Fold the top corner behind along the line. The top of the head is now flat.

step 08Fold the bottom tip up a little to make the nose.

04Draw the face

step 09Draw on eyes and whiskers. The cat is done.

Eyes, whiskers, and a tiny triangle nose on the folded-up tip. A soft pencil works better than a marker on thin kami, which can bleed through to the back.

Fold a few in different sizes and you have a family. From here, the fortune teller is the natural next model — it teaches the blintz fold the same gentle way this one teaches corners-to-a-point.

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