Oh, damn, I forgot to name the theory! Thank you. I now feel the urge to write a serious full paper proposing this theory, and see if anyone agrees to publish it. TWC would probably spot the trolling from a mile away, but I can think of a few other venues... Would you like to be a co-author?

That link reminds me - another reason why the Cute Cat Theory of Transformative Work makes sense is that it works in the case of all fans everywhere. When I go to cons in Japan, right next to the people selling fanwork, there's tons of people selling pictures of their cats and stories put together with pictures of their cats and comics where everyone is a cat and, cat cat cat. Never mind English, "cat" is the universal language of the world.