TikToker Alessia Vaesenn goes viral with breastfeeding cat on a plane

A series of videos by TikTok user 'alessiavaesenn' has gone viral, purporting to show a lady allegedly breastfeeding a cat on an aircraft - but not everything is as it seems. Users on social media are scrambling to figure out what's actually going on behind the viral posts.

The four-part video, which appears to take place on a passenger plane, begins with a man protesting to the flight attendants that the woman next to him is actually breastfeeding a cat, not a baby. The mother denies this, insisting that it is her child, not a cat, but the man insists that he saw the cat with his own eyes.

Staff asks the woman to remove the cover and confirm that it is indeed a newborn, but she refuses, daring the staff to "take that liability" of breaching her privacy if they want to.

As the drama developed, TikTok users were kept on the tip of their seats, and the poster, alessiavaesenn, drip-fed each element of it in separate posts. In the fourth and final segment, one of the flight attendants removes the cover, exposing that it is, in fact, a cat — despite the woman's protestations that it is a 'lynx.' On closer inspection, however, it becomes evident that the animal is a fake, as it is completely motionless and has googly eyes.

This is where the video reveals itself to be a parody rather than a true storey. The entire storey appears to be based on a true storey of a woman who breastfed her hairless cat on a Delta Airlines trip.

"This woman had one of those hairless cats in a blanket so it looked like a baby," a flight attendant told Newsweek. "Just to inform her that she couldn't do that again since it was bizarre and gross," security said.

"Passenger in 13a is breastfeeding a cat and would not put the cat back in its carrier when FA instructed," said an ACARS in-flight transmission from the pilot.

Clearly, alessiavaesenn's series of TikTok videos were inspired by this episode, and they rapidly drew the attention of millions of people on Twitter and Reddit.

THE FINALE LMFAOOOOOO https://t.co/pyrvf5K9Di pic.twitter.com/Oz3YVsKOdY

— ………… (@BoredAtGym) December 20, 2021