If you had to sum up the Internet in two words, “cat videos” might not be a bad call. But, how did they become that much of an obsession?

Scientists at Indiana University have finally figured it out.

They had people assess their moods before they watched a few cat videos on YouTube, then assess their moods after.

Once people had watched a few, they felt happier, more energetic, more positive, less anxious, and less annoyed. They also didn’t feel any GUILT over procrastinating for the sake of cat videos.

Those are a lot of the same results we get from actually being with a cat and petting it. So the researchers think that translates over the Internet, and that’s why we love watching cats online.

By the way, cat videos get more average views than any other type of videos on YouTube. There were more than two million cat videos uploaded last year, and they got almost 26 billion views.