Natasha Ryce made the mistake of leaving her car window all the way down while visiting her parents in Hemingway, South Carolina.
Unlike the usual outcome of that particular mistake, however, her car didn't end up full of rain.
When her daughter came out and checked the car, it was full of cats!
Jess, youngest of Natasha's five children, startled the cats when she went to open the door. They all started bouncing around inside the vehicle like popcorn.
Ryce told BuzzFeed News about the shocking and hilarious event.
She blames snacks they had in the car for attracting the wayward felines.
"My daughter went to the car to get her saddle out to ride one of the horses and I guess I had left the window down. We had popcorn, Bugles, and ranch dressing in there and I guess [the cats] smelled it all."
Natasha was enjoying a quiet visit with her parents when her daughter came running up to tell her what she had found in the car.
"I was sitting by the pond with my parents when Jess came running and said, 'Mom, you have to look at this.' I have never laughed so hard in my life. It was one of those random, once-in-a-lifetime things."
When Jess approached the car, the startled cats began a frenzied acrobatic routine which involved all of the cats bouncing off various parts of the car and norrowly avoiding collisions with each other before eventually escaping out the still open window.
One of the cats can be seen escaping with what looks like the ranch dip container, so Ryce's theory about the snacks attracting the cats definitely has some merit.
Jess told BuzzFeed News about how she found and filmed the cats.
"I was like, Is that a cat in the windshield? So I started recording and I snuck up and was like, 'Oh god!' when I saw them all in there and they all stood and looked at me when I got to the door and then they started going crazy."
The video has been liked more than 1.6 million times on TikTok and has gotten a further 18.3 thousand views on Twitter, where Jess also uploaded it.
Some folks on Twitter were concerned for the cats' safety.
But Jess reassured everyone that they are all barn cats on her grandparents' property and are well cared for.
Natasha was surprised at how incredibly popular the video became.
"It's mind-boggling to me. We are just regular old working-class people just living in the country. All these people are liking and commenting and I'm like, 'What in the world is going on?'"
"It's crazy. We all post stuff every day of our lives but you don't think it's going to go viral."
Natasha learned an important lesson from this experience.
She and Jess will be visiting the family farm again this weekend and they will do things a little bit differently.
"Of course, we're going to leave the windows up now."
The book How to Talk to Your Cat About Gun Safety: And Abstinence, Drugs, Satanism, and Other Dangers That Threaten Their Nine Lives is available here.
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