Kitten Eagerly Licking Screen Displaying Grilled Food Delights Internet

A video of a cat obsessed with the footage displayed on a tablet screen has gone viral on TikTok.

The clip was posted on September 20 by @pengliang01 and has received more than 675,000 views. It shows a cat licking the screen of the tablet device, which displays footage of what appears to be skewers of meat sizzling on a fire grill.

The pet's reaction towards the food displayed right before its eyes—even if it is behind a digital screen—is unsurprising; domestic cats "prefer freely available food over food that requires effort," according to a recent study.

The July 2021 study published in the Animal Cognition journal found that domestic cats "do not show strong tendencies to contrafreeload in the home environment." Contrafreeloading refers to "the willingness of animals to work for food when equivalent food is freely available," the study said.

The meat skewers may have seemed irresistible also because domestic cats' feeding behavior stems from the "nutritional requirements associated to their strict carnivore physiology, such as high levels of total crude protein linked to the presence of specific amino acids in the diet," noted a June 2019 study in the Animals journal.

The study found that cats typically "show little interest in eating foods that are rich in sugar and some studies have confirmed that they do not perceive the sweet taste."

Eating is an activity in itself, especially for our indoor feline friends, given their lack of environmental stimulation outdoors.

Regular feeding can help alleviate and prevent stress-related health issues, including inactivity, overeating and other obesity-related problems. This is according to a 2018 consensus statement on how to feed a cat released by the American Association of Feline Practitioner, published at the website of the American Veterinary Medical Association (AVMA).

Several TikTok users were left in stitches over the cat's reaction to the food displayed on the tablet screen.

Betty Noire posted: "Bro has been tricked [into thinking the food on the screen is real]."

User @alex_valden noted: "Wait until he finds out... Bros gonna be MAD."

Gute Animal Sharing wrote that the cat must be really hungry.

User paulbswy63a commented that it's a "Greedy Cat," while wwellaaq posted that the feline was a "genius."

Newsweek has contacted the original poster for comment via TikTok. This video has not been independently verified.

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