“You have to make the photo cheesy, and one night after prayer, our dean asked us if we had any ideas,” Bova said. “I said, ‘Why don’t we do a Faux Pelini-type thing and use my cat?’ And everyone jumped on. Another kid said he had the glasses, and another kid said let’s wear turtlenecks instead of button shirts.”

Bova, who is now a freshman studying chemical engineering at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, said Friskey wasn’t an overly willing participant. On the day of the pictures, the cat got away from his father and ran under the school’s bleachers.

“My dean, my dad and all of the students were trying to get her out,” he said.

Eventually, the feline was coaxed out for her close-ups. Friskey may have looked grumpy, but she did OK in front of the camera.

“She gave me the stink-eye for weeks after that,” Bova said.

Peters said a cat-less, glasses-less version of the class photo hangs in the school’s hallway with the pictures of past graduates.

But the Faux Pelini-inspired photos live on through prints that were given to parents and in the school’s 2016 yearbook. Faux Pelini has even retweeted a picture of the Mount Michael yearbook spread.