#Pet owner accused of ‘animal cruelty’ for giving his cat ice cream in viral video

A pet owner filmed giving his cat ice cream for the first time is getting some backlash on Twitter, where the video was posted earlier this week.

The 11-second clip has received nearly 400,000 views since Monday when it was posted.

“I think we should all watch this cat try ice cream for the first time,” the post reads.

In the video, a man is holding a spoon with a small dollop of ice cream on the back end. He is holding the treat up to his cat, which takes a lick and immediately falls back, seemingly wanting to get the ice cream out of its mouth, or off its fur where some of it appears to have landed.

The man tries to remove the ice cream, but the cat keeps moving its face.

Though some found the video amusing and wrote that they wanted to try it with their own cat, most took issue with it, claiming the short video was a form of “animal cruelty.”

Many of the Twitter users accused the owner of intentionally giving the cat a brain freeze, which might not be too far off.

Amy Cousino, veterinarian and owner of the Cat’s Meow Cat Clinic in Sebastian, Fla., told the Washington Post in 2016 — when brain freeze cat videos were reportedly trending — that intentionally giving your cat ice cream to cause a brain freeze is “pretty unhealthy for the cat.”

“Cats have very similar nervous pathways [to humans],” she said.

While Eric Doughtery, veterinarian and medical director for The Cat Practice in New York, did not immediately ban the practice, claiming at the time “there hasn’t been much research on feline brain freeze,” he did caution that ice cream can cause gastrointestinal issues in cats, as they are mostly lactose intolerant.