People Are Now Giving Cats Fragile Eggs to See If They’ll Keep Them From Cracking

Cats tend to be in the news when they are evil, cunning escape artists, or vying for the title of “the world’s worst cat.”

A new TikTok challenge where cats are given eggs to protect may be changing that narrative by showing that cats can be gentle protectors when given the opportunity. Of course, not all cats are living up to the task.

The feline fun appears to have been started by TikTok user @annao, who shared one of the earliest iterations of the trend to TikTok. In that video, the user’s voice intones that, “Apparently if you give a cat an egg, they protect it, because it’s fragile.” Those words have gone on to be the soundtrack to hundreds of other cat-meet-egg videos on the site. The challenge may have been inspired by either the toddler versus egg gag or, according to Buzzfeed who first reported the hot new trend, the dog version where a Golden Retriever is given an egg to hold in its mouth.

While cats are not particularly known for their kindness, empathy, or benevolence, after being given an egg, many of the cats in the videos seem to take their newfound responsibilities seriously. They cuddle up on the egg like a hen or wrap their paws around it in a gentle caress:

One cat took its new job as Egg Protector in Chief so seriously that when its owner came to retrieve the egg, the cat wouldn’t let it go, biting the very hand that feeds it to keep the egg safe.

Naturally there were some cats who did not want the responsibility of keeping watch over a delicate, fragile egg. Some simply, ignored the egg’s existence (something that might be familiar to owners):

Some cats thought the egg was a new toy:

Another cat seemingly had no interest in managing the logistics of keeping something breakable in one piece and decided to skip to the inevitable end. With a swift paw, the cat sends the egg flying to the ground, where it irreparably shattered, as if Humpty Dumpty had been pushed off his wall by a cantankerous feline. As the cat’s owner wrote in the post, “I expected nothing less.”