Fact Check

Cat Abandoning Raft

Photograph shows a cat jumping out of a raft.

Published Oct. 4, 2006

Claim:

Claim:   Photograph shows a cat jumping out of a raft.


Status:   False.

Example:   [Collected via e-mail, 2006]




Is this photo real? A friend I sent it to questioned whether it might be photoshopped — and what the heck is the cat doing on the raft in the first place?!

It came in a mail under the subject heading "Who brought the cat?"



Click photo to enlarge



Origins:   We recently took our five cats to a local hotel with us for a few days while we had some work done on our house. They handled the temporary dislocation much better than we expected and even seemed to enjoy their short hotel stay as a form of vacation, engaging in forms of feline fun such as chasing each other in and out of the large whirlpool tub in the middle of the night. Still, we haven't been tempted to bring our cats along with us for any other recreational activities, and they'd probably respond to a rafting trip much like the cat in the photo displayed above.

Of course, the feline in this image wasn't actually on the raft. The picture is a humorous digital merging of a picture of three somewhat frightened-looking kids on a bouncing raft with another image taken from a collection of "airborne cat" photos:






Last updated:   4 October 2006


David Mikkelson founded the site now known as snopes.com back in 1994.

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