Have you ever gone about your day, only to eventually come across someone that makes you think “Man, I really need to punch this person.” You can never quite place it; maybe it’s their gait, maybe its their resting smirk, maybe it’s the way they’re treating someone, but all you know is that you have a hankering to give this person a fat lip.
Well, cats feel this way pretty much all the time, but the thing with cats is that they’re allowed to punch each other without any legal ramifications. They enjoy this freedom so much, in fact, that they won’t even consider if they’re physically capable of punching another cat before trying to do it.
Distributed by TikTok‘s @hoest, the 9-second video above is exemplary of the feline appetite for reckless violence. No sooner does our protagonist cat spot another in need of a good mollywhopping does he charge towards the second cat with feral gumption. The only problem? He seems to have forgotten that he’s inside a tent, which hampers his swinging ability pretty severely, in a manner of speaking. Nevertheless, the ground he covers in spite of this limitation is utterly magnificent and twice as hysterical.
This boneheaded bloodthirst, however, is far from indicative of reality. According to PetMD, aggression in cats is actually quite nuanced; it’s often used as a form of play for under-socialized cats, and can also occur as a result of fear or territorial instinct. A cat that can’t quite place the source of their discomfort (such as a nearby, unfamiliar cat that they sense without directly engaging with) may also redirect their aggression towards cats that they’re comfortable with.
All that to say, there is absolutely no telling what the relationship between these two cats is based on the incident above. We can perhaps assume that the non-tented cat said something unforgivable about the tented cat’s mother, because how else could one be so impossibly indignant towards another, that they inadvertently bring an entire tent with them to the proverbial octagon? Indeed, this furry fighter has brought a whole new meaning to the phrase “roughing it.”
Unless, of course, this is some classified evolution of feline-centric organized warfare that we don’t know about. Maybe he’s testing out some prototype battle armor that the cat empire plans on using when they march on the capital of dog territory. First, the dog house; tomorrow, the world.