People are going crazy debating which direction this cat is walking

FIRST it was the dress and people were either black and blue or white and gold. But now no one can decide which direction this cat it walking. Can you?

Is a cat the new dress?

SCHOOLS and offices around the world went crazy when a picture of a dress circulated the internet and no one could decide what colour it was.

That picture firmly divided Australia into two camps — those who saw blue and black and their mortal enemies who saw white and gold.

Now we have the next viral sensation that is causing heated debate online. As innocuous as the picture above looks, can you tell if the cat is walking up or down the stairs?

The picture was posted to 9 Gag and has quickly received nearly 4,000 comments in a short time as people debate the burning question.

Forget that stupid dress. Is this cat walking up the stairs or down the stairs pic.twitter.com/evPx8KIDVn

— Sasha Greaves (@Sasha_Greaves) April 10, 2015

As 9 Gag users state their case, there is a mix of ideas as to why people have chosen one direction over the other.

One user focused on the design of the stairs. “Down because generally the wood would be flat on the horizontal portion of the stairs and the stone is on the back/vertical portion of the stairs,” they wrote.

Another commenter preferred to focus on the body position of the cat in order to argue the feline is walking upstairs. “The cat is going up, the tail is used to balance the body of the cat and in this case the tail is elevated upwards so that when the cat uses its rear legs to push up, it pushes parallel to the line on which gravity is working on the tail to stabilise itself,” they wrote.

Others looked at the light in the white background to make their case while some thought the key was the framing of the picture.

“It’s clearly up, you just have to imagine the camera in a different angle,” wrote one user.

What do you think?