There Is a Cat In This Picture — We Swear!

Cats are freaks of nature, and any cat owner knows that they have an innate ability to squeeze themselves into any space, no matter how impossible it may seem.

In a picture shared by Kate Hinds, Planning Editor of the WNYC Newsroom, Twitter users were baffled when they had to locate a cat among a shelf packed with plants, books, knickknacks and picture frames.

"Today in find the cat" Hinds wrote on June 7. Fellow Twitter users flocked to the comments section for a game of "I Spy." The Tweet became a viral sensation; it has more than 100K "hearts" on the social media platform since Hinds first posted it.

The super flexible cat hid underneath the television screen and if you look close you can see its paws sticking out from the lower right-hand corner.

The internet was blown away by the creature's hiding abilities and how it managed to wedge itself into such a small space. "Level of difficulty: 9," one Twitter user noted. "It should not be that hard for me to find your cat," another wrote. "Oh man, that was a journey I just went on. I had nearly given up when I finally saw the paw. I feel like I won something," a third chimed in.

The feline's incredible flexibility begs the question how cats can shape-shift like liquid and fit into anything. According to the Cornell Center for Materials Research, cats have the ability to rotate their spines more than other animals and twist them with ease. Cats in the wild must be quick, powerful and flexible in order to be a successful predator, James Richards, director of the Cornell Feline Health Center noted.

"Cats' vertebrae—the spools-on-a-string-like bones in the back—are very flexibly connected and have especially elastic cushioning disks between them. This limber spine allows cats to perform their elegant and graceful acrobatic feats, but it also contributes to their speed as runners," he explained. Additionally, cats' shoulder blades are attached to its body by muscles, not bones.

The muscles, ligaments, and tendons that support the spine are also connected flexibly. This gives their limbs the freedom to contort into shapes and fit into smaller spaces, like Hinds' cat behind the television.

Other users began to share pictures of their cats hiding in hard-to-reach places, along with in plain sight. "My cat and my sci-fi heavy bookshelf are uniting the country," Hinds quipped on Twitter the following morning.

When Newsweek asked Hinds about how her cat's life has changed since everyone was sheltering in place amid the coronavirus pandemic, she said that things have remained "unchanged." "As an indoor cat, she's been quarantining with us for a little over ten years," she noted.

Hinds added that since everyone is home, however (she from work and her kids from school), her nap schedule has been affected. "But as you see she still finds places to go for alone time," she quipped.