I only started to see this snowclone on twitter a month or so ago – that’s not to say I’m not late to the party – and I had to go looking for its exact origin. It sounded like something out of an instruction manual for pets – “Dogs can have a little table food, as a treat” – or something along those lines, and that wasn’t far off. Doing the usual rounds of research – knowyourmeme, cheezburger, etc – led me to “Cats can have a little salami, as a treat”

One thing that’s interesting about this particular snowclone is that the required text – X can have a little Y, as a treat – is taken from the beginning and end of a much longer paragraph of text.

Paragraphs aren’t pithy and they don’t perform well as phrasal templates. Some internet renegade saw the true meat (heh) of the cats-and-salami advice, made a well-executed cut, and here we are. The snowclone wasn’t a snowclone at first – it really was just a meme when it started to gain traction in November of 2019. The first iterations were all still about cats and salami; they hadn’t been slotted out in favor of other nouns.

While reading about the origins, I discovered the term “Wholesome memes,” which is new to me. At first I got excited because it sounded like an alternate way of talking about snowclones – like…memes…with holes in them…it was probably a niche response.

What interests me about the evolution of this snowclone in particular is not just that I saw it almost from its origins, but the way it forces its subjects to bend to its grammatical rules: it turns every noun into a collective noun. You can’t say “Squirrels can have a few nuts in the winter, as a treat.” “A few” applies to countable nouns, and countable nouns have no place in this format. Most of the iterations stick with nouns that are typically uncountable – e.g. someone or multiple someones’ (pretty brilliant) “Americans can have a little impeachment, as a treat.” Those that really, really have their hearts set on countable nouns can add a countable modifier (in the same way that “water” isn’t countable but “glasses of water” are): “my ears can have a little bit of sad songs, as a treat,” (though that person could have said “a little sad music”), but trying to make a monolith out of a countable item, like “Claires can have a little Nintendo games, as a treat,” doesn’t work.

That is: Snowclones can have a little variation, as a treat, but can’t be completely upended.

Basically the best one I saw was “Lou Bega can have a little Monica in his life, as a treat.” What was it that made that one so instantly gratifying? It’s that not only was the structure familiar (I’d seen a number of “can have a little…as a treat” tweets at that point), but the lyrics quoted (from Mambo #5) were also familiar, so there was a zing of double recognition.

One thing I haven’t seen is tweets that turn “little” into a size modifier, rather than a quantity modifier. For example: Twinkle twinkle can have a little star, as a treat (I wrote that just now and tweeted it in real time, although that “real time” was now a week ago.)

In the course of looking for example tweets (should I post @ attributions for them? I would if more than 12 people a month were reading this), I came across a tweet pointing out that the original paragraph – in the picture I posted above – actually says, “Cats can have little a salami,” not “Cats can have a little salami,” and now I’ll never be the same.

Now to think of sentences that would work with “…can have little a…” as a format. Cats can have little a SaLaMI? I’ll see myself out of the browser.

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