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A video of a cat appearing startled while snoozing on a television unit has gone viral on TikTok, where it received 3.5 million views at the time of writing.
The clip was shared by @acerstan, the TikTok page of a white cat called Macho and a brown cat named Terran in Sofia, the capital of Bulgaria in the southeast of Europe.
The video showed Macho sleeping on his side on the shelf of a television unit, with his paws laid out in front of him. After a few twitches, the feline was seen jolting across the shelf, while appearing to still be half asleep.
Cats sleep 18 hours per day, spread over a series of naps that each last around 78 minutes, veterinarian Sandra C. Mitchell said in a February 2022 article for PetMD, the pet health advice website.
Our feline friends snooze a lot during the day because they are crepuscular, which means they're more active at dawn and dusk. In the wild, these are the "periods when their prey are also active," Dr. Sarah Ellis, head of cat advocacy at International Cat Care, a U.K.-based charity, told Newsweek back in July 2021.
Veterinarian Dr. Kira Ramdas, the board director of the AAFP, previously told Newsweek, that felines will nap when it is "more beneficial for them to rest," meaning when there is no prey or human attention. They are more prone to napping after meals.
Veterinarian Dr. Cathy Lund from the American Association of Feline Practitioners (AAFP) previously told Newsweek: "Carnivores are hard-wired to sleep much more than prey species, and cats are unique in their ability to move from deep sleep to wakefulness without any of that grogginess so familiar to us humans.
"In fact, cats are so adept at falling asleep that they were used as models of REM sleep in early sleep research studies."
The sleepy cat in the latest viral video was shown draped over the edge of the shelf after being jolted across it a moment ago. The feline appeared to still be half asleep, with his head and front paws hanging low over the edge.
After a few more twitches, half of the cat's body was seen falling out of the shelf, with his two front paws placed on a cat bed below it. The cat remained still in this position for a few more seconds before he slowly lowered the rest of his body onto the bed in a sitting position as the clip ended.
The clip was shared with a caption that said "He is okay."
The cat in the latest video has seen TikTok users in stitches.
User taram asked: "Is he ok. Lol [laugh out loud] that looked rough," to which the poster replied: "hi, yes, he is fine."
User mimi said: "Someone was having one Hell of a dream."
In a comment that got 14,700 likes, user Oxy said: "He looks like he's been drinking vodka all night after he woke up."
ChaoticGoodFeminist wrote: "Lol the fact he does this enough that he has a bed waiting on the floor."
User whimsy wolfe said: "he takes getting his 23 hours of sleep per day so damn serious."
User @thatssoalex247 wrote: "When you're on a night out and you can't quite remember where you are."
Newsweek has contacted the original poster for comment via TikTok. This video has not been independently verified.
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About the writer
Soo Kim is a Newsweek reporter based in London, U.K. She covers various lifestyle stories, specializing in Read more