Some people jokingly maintain that the experiment will produce an anti-gravity effect. They propose that as the cat falls towards the ground, it will slow down and start to rotate, eventually reaching a steady state of hovering a short distance from the ground while rotating at high speed as both the buttered side of the toast and the cat’s feet attempt to land on the ground.⁽⁴⁾ In June 2003, Kimberly Miner won a Student Academy Award for her film Perpetual Motion.⁽⁵⁾⁽⁶⁾ Miner based her film on a paper written by a high-school friend that explored the potential implications of the cat and buttered toast idea.⁽⁷⁾⁽⁸⁾

The buttered cat paradox, submitted by artist John Frazee of Kingston, New York, won a 1993 OMNI magazine competition about paradoxes.⁽¹⁾⁽²⁾ The idea may not have originated from Frazee since it had appeared on USENET by May 1992, if not before.⁽³⁾