In September 2025, a video went viral on the RuNet in which a pet allegedly helps its owner with cooking by adding the carcass of a dead rodent to the dish. We have verified the accuracy of this video.
In most publications what is happening described like this: “The chef’s cat was found on social networks - the fluffy one took care of his owner and put meat in her soup. This is a compliment from your boss." Authors of some posts clarifiedthat the animal lives with the chef, and called his most caring and intelligent cat.
According to the TGStat service, in less than a week more than 400 similar Russian-language posts appeared on Telegram, which in total received almost 5 million views. A video with similar captions was posted by the channels “Ax+"(2.3 million views at the time of writing this analysis, taking into account reposts in the channel "Ax Live"), TikTok Updates (488,000), "Dvach"(316,000), "Rhymes and punches"(181,000), "Media Russia is not Moscow"(155,000), "Mousetrap"(104,000), Uzbek-MDK (84,000), "Notepad Russia 18+"(62,000), etc. Similar posts can be found on Instagram* (examples here And here), Facebook* (here And here), "VKontakte" (here, here And here), on YouTube and some news websites.
Cats sometimes bring home of dead mice, birds and other small animals. Even well-fed animals do this, and researchers think, that this is a manifestation of the instinctive hunting nature, which is influenced by various factors: the character of the pet, the environment and the care of the owner. Also exists the hypothesis is that by bringing carcasses home, cats exhibit maternal instinct. Another theory is that animals do this because they can eat their prey safely at home.
If you carefully examine the eight-second video being circulated, allegedly filmed with a hidden wide-angle camera, you will notice a number of signs pointing to the artificial origin of this video. For example, the carcass of a rodent (presumably a mouse or rat) appears to have two tails, one of which grows from the head area. Even if we assume that the cat brought two dead animals at once, the strangeness does not end there: the tails of these rodents change size and pass through the walls of the pan. Moreover, the stove on which the soup was supposedly being prepared had to be at a very low height from the floor, so that an ordinary cat could reach the top of the pan without jumping. However, at some point it still seems that the pet’s hind legs are hanging in the air.
In addition, in the upper left corner of the video, apparently, there is a time indicator, which remains zero (0:00:00) for most of the video. However, at the end of the record, the last zero begins to turn into arbitrary characters. Previously "Verified" wrotethat when neural networks try to reproduce the date and time of shooting, they often make mistakes with the counter readings.
In the Russian-language segment of the Internet, the viral video appeared no later than September 10. The earliest publication with this video that “Verified” was able to track was posted in the Telegram channel “Neuropracticum | Everything about neural networks"(4300 views). In this version, at the top of the video there was an inscription with an untranslatable pun: the name of the dish crossed out “ratatouille"(English rat - "rat"), and under it - catatouy (English cat - "cat"). Later, the video was distributed without this humorous inscription, but in the middle the word Andy was preserved (its origin “Verified” could not be explained).
Apparently, a large Telegram channel made a significant contribution to the distribution of this version of the video MDK (650,000 subscribers). September 11 at 15:09 Moscow time video published there with the following description: “There is a hype on the Internet about a cat chef who helps prepare soup for the hostess and adds meat to it. What kind of cooks cats are.” After almost an hour and a half, the last sentence was replaced with “It will turn out to be the perfect soup,” but by that time the post had already received about 30,000 views.
Previously "Verified" told about the global trend of the summer of 2025, when TikTok users, using neural networks, created videos with bears and other animals jumping on trampolines and published them on the Internet. In September, a similar flash mob took place on this platform: using keywords we found there are many similar videos of cats throwing dead rodents into pots of boiling water.
Many of these videos were very similar to the one that went viral on the RuNet; in rare cases, completely identical recordings were found that had a different musical accompaniment and were missing the superimposed word Andy. Due to the fact that TikTok has a function for viewing videos with the same song, “Verified” has identified the most likely original source of the video that went viral on Telegram channels. It turned out to be a Vietnamese user with the username @vandiigqup5, which has previously posted dozens of AI-generated videos. The entry we are interested in is published back on September 7, and by the time of writing this text it had received more than 7 million views. Subsequently, @vandiigqup5 posted other similar videos, two of which also became popular on TikTok, typing 5.6 million And 1.1 million views.
In August, another flash mob was popular on TikTok: users shared generated videos of cats putting mice and rats in the mouths of sleeping people. Moreover, such videos simulated night shooting. These records were also distributed on the RuNet. For example, on VKontakte one of them was published with the caption “When the owner is a vegetarian, and the cat is worried and tries to feed him.” Video gained 351,000 views and 17,000 reposts. On TikTok him 3 million views and, unlike VKontakte, there is a note about the use of AI.
Thus, the viral video of a cat throwing a dead rodent into a pot of soup was created using a neural network. Initially, it was posted on TikTok as part of a flash mob, whose participants shared similar videos.
*Russian authorities think Meta Platforms Inc., which owns the social networks Instagram and Facebook, is an extremist organization; its activities and symbols are prohibited in Russia.
Cover photo: @vandiigqup5 / TikTok
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