Fishing is an interesting sport; you can never be sure what exactly you’re going to get. And although Jason Frost and Brandon Key are avid fishermen, they never expected to find actual cats during their catfishing adventure.
The friends were out fishing on Warrior River, in Alabama, when they saw something that completely shocked them. Jason urged Brandon to record, and in the resulting video, he tells the audience, “Y’all are not going to believe what is swimming towards our boat…”
In an interview with ABC News, Jason explained, “We turned around and didn’t see anything, but a few minutes later, we saw something swimming above the surface getting closer and closer. Then I heard it meowing, and I could tell it was a cat. I was like, ‘Hey, Brandon, you need to record this.”
The video shows a baby tabby swimming towards the boat and meowing loudly. You hear Jason watching the kitten in disbelief as he mumbles, “Swimming in the river… Never in my life.” Jason can’t believe what he’s seeing as he leans over the boat, and pulls the wet, crying kitten, on board.
“Is this not the craziest thing y’all have ever seen?” Jason asks the camera. He leans over the boat again, this time pulling the second orange tabby on board. “Are you kidding me? They’re twins!”
It’s unclear how the kittens arrived at the river. Jason thinks that someone probably tried to get rid of them by leaving them nearby; there aren’t any houses for miles. He also thinks that they must have been very desperate for help if they had been willing to jump into the lake and swim up to a boatful of strangers.
The men continued fishing for another 3 hours. Brandon told ABC News, “When we got back to shore, there was a family staring at us weird, probably wondering why we had cats on a boat when cats hate being wet. We told them the story and showed them the video. They really seemed interested in the kittens, so we let them take the kittens home.”
The men published their video on YouTube where it’s been viewed over 11 MILLION times. Because the story got so much coverage, the kittens’ new owners created a Facebook page where people could get updates on them, if interested.
The kittens, who were named Warrior and River in honor of where they were found, have been vaccinated and fixed. Two years later, they are beautiful and grown, enjoying the love of a family that they swam so hard to find.
