Countless others followed, to the point where Reddit has an entire Cucumbers Scaring Cats community.
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The trend, depicted in YouTube videos, involves sneakily placing a cucumber behind a cat, usually while it is eating.
While a few deem the prank harmless and cute, animal experts disagree.
Various suggestions have been put forward for why cats might find cucumbers particularly fearsome, with everything from their (admittedly vague) resemblance to snakes, to their colour being blamed.
McMillan, a director at Best Friends Animal Society, says that scaring cats with any kind of object, even a seemingly benign member of the gourd family, could cause serious physical or psychological injury. Regardless, she agrees: Stop scaring your cats with cucumbers.
Animal behaviorist Jill Goldman agreed and said scaring little Whiskers could make your cat injure itself, break something or lead to prolonged stress. If you make your posse mad, they’re less likely to intentionally urinate in your bed.
John Bradshaw, an animal behaviour expert at the University of Bristol, blasted the videos as “despicable”.
But why the freaky reaction to a mere salad ingredient, anyway?
In the video above you can tell that every cat while looking away had a cucumber placed behind them.
Whatever the reason, most cats clearly aren’t fans of the cruel joke.
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Goldman explained that the cucumbers are triggering the cats’ natural startle responses, since they “would not normally see cucumbers on the floor”. Once the cat turned around it noticed the cucumber and jumped, hit a wall or just loses its mind in fear.
