Was a woman breastfeeding a cat on a plane? Viral TikTok video explained - and is it real?

A series of TikTok videos claiming to show a woman breastfeeding a cat on a plane has gone viral, and has left viewers asking: “Is this real?!”

This is everything you need to know about the latest video to sweep the internet.

What is the video?

The viral video shows a man speaking to flight attendants, claiming that the woman next to him was breastfeeding a cat.

The woman can be seen holding something swaddled in a blanket, and she denies that it is a cat.

One flight attendant asks the woman to simply show them the baby in order to clear the situation up, but she refuses.

The man says: “She’s not showing us because it’s a cat.”

As the flight attendants and the male passenger continue to argue, the woman says: “What I’m doing right now is nobody’s business but mine.”

In the final clip, a flight attendant can be seen removing the blanket from the woman’s lap to reveal a cat.

The woman claims that the cat is her “emergency service animal” before getting up to exit the plane.

At the end of the clip, the woman turns and the camera reveals the cat to simply be a stuffed toy with googly eyes.

The videos have gone viral on TikTok, with the clips collectively being viewed over 60 million times.

Who made the video?

While the video, which was posted over four parts on TikTok, was posted by the account @alessiavaesenn, the original appears to initially come from a Facebook group called “The Gooch” which posts parody and sketch videos online, with other videos including some of the same people from the infamous cat video.

When posted on Facebook, The Gooch captioned the video with a disclaimer: “Please be advised that this page’s videos and live videos are intended for entertainment purposes only.

“The videos on this page include scripted dramas, satires, parodies, magic tricks, pre-recorded videos, and other forms of entertainment.

“Names, characters and incidents are often the product of the director’s imagination, so any resemblance to actual persons or actual events is purely coincidental.”

Where did the idea come from?

While The Gooch claims that “any resemblance to actual persons or actual events is purely coincidental”, the video was posted after a story of a woman who was reportedly caught breastfeeding her hairless cat on a Delta flight in November went viral.

The unidentified woman had been flying from Syracuse, NY, to Atlanta, GA, when she was caught breastfeeding her cat. A flight attendant repeatedly told the woman to stop, but she refused.

A message concerning the incident was then sent through the Aircraft Communications Addressing and Reporting System to inform Delta staff of what was going on.

The message said that a passenger in seat 13A “is breastfeeding a cat and will not put cat back in its carrier when [flight attendant] requested”.

A photo of the message made its way onto Reddit before it then began circulating on Twitter.

Ainsley Elizabeth, a flight attendant who was reportedly on board the flight in question, took to TikTok in a now deleted video to expand on what happened.

While the original video has been deleted, it is still live on other social media accounts after being saved by users.

In the video, Elizabeth says: “This is just so crazy. This woman had like one of those hairless cats swaddled up so it would look like a baby.

“And her shirt was up, and she was trying to get her cat to latch, and she wouldn’t put the cat back in the carrier and the cat was screaming for her life… you know those little butter packets you get when they don’t have any olive oil… she put the butter [on her nipple]... yeah.”

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