‘He was an orange cat only an hour earlier’: Black cat with zero preservation instincts cozies up in a frying pan on active stove

Donald Trump may have claimed they’re eating the cats in Springfield, Ohio, but we didn’t believe him until now. As it happens, it’s not so much that people are cooking their cats as cats are cooking themselves. Or at least that’s what one adorable yet intellectually lacking black-furred feline tried to do until their mom rescued them from their self-destructive impulses.

TikTok user @itssydneychloe shared the alarming yet hilarious moment when, upon hearing her oven beeping out a warning, she entered her kitchen to find her black cat using a frying pan on the stove as a bed. Fortunately, the stove wasn’t hot at the time, but the alarm going off proves that if Syd’s lemming of a kitty had pawed at the wrong button or turned the wrong knob with its tail something awful could’ve happened. Like Syd says in her description, “zero self preservation instincts.”

It’s the kitty’s totally unfazed expression that really brings out the black (cat) comedy here. As one comment reads: “Kitty is like ‘oh thank god you’re hear this chair has been screaming at me.'” And you can bet that many people jumped on the obvious joke just like Syd’s cat leaped on that stove. “He was an orange cat only an hour earlier,” said one, while another quipped, “HE’S BURNT.” Kudos to Syd’s fancy stove, though: “I like how your stove has a ‘surely this can’t be food’ error message.”

The “eating the cats” gags also heated up quickly. “He thinks he’s in Ohio,” some jokester wrote. “That cat is from springfield,” rib-tickled another. Still, others familiar with Syd’s cat’s cousins don’t think there’s anything unusual about this one’s behavior: “As a black cat owner, yes. This is normal.” The good news is that Syd’s cat may have just helped to save a life, even though he tried to endanger his own. “This video made me look up my stove for lock features & it has none,” someone admitted, “but it did have a recall notice for starting house fires.”

Who knows, maybe there is more to this story than meets the eye. Black cats have long been associated with witchcraft, after all, and were once believed to act as familiars to witches and to help them with their spells. Maybe Syd’s cat is smarter than he appears and he was just starting work on her next potion early — I mean, who has room for a cauldron in their kitchen in this economy? A frying pan works just as well, right?

Alternatively, this kitty is really failing at his job description. Generally speaking, black cats are viewed as possessing “an intelligent, laid-back mystique” (via PetMeds)… The only mystique Syd’s four-legged, empty-headed family member has is the smoke that would’ve filled that kitchen if she hadn’t heard the alarm. As perhaps the most eloquent comment on this video so aptly put it, “what the cat doin.” You said it, sir, what is the cat doin? Sadly, only he can tell us what was going on in that pretty, pan-fried head of his.