For years, cats have dominated the internet, but more recently terrorism has been a popular topic.  Everyone has heard of the recent attack on Paris and ISIS’s worldwide hit list of cities they claim they will demolish.  One of the cities on their hit list, Brussels, Belgium, received a high terror threat this past weekend.

If a high terror threat was put into place in the United States, fear would be a very implemented factor.  All borders would be closed off, all planes would be grounded, curfews would be set, and social media would definitely explode with posts of how we are all going to die.

While Brussels did take a few precautionary measures, such as closing down the subway system and closing all of their schools and universities.  With the thought of another possibly Paris-like attack lingering in their minds, one would think that fear would command every tweet, status, and post.  Nevertheless, the country’s federal police prevented such ideas by tweeting, “For safety, please observe radio silence on social media about ongoing police operations #Bruxelles. Thank you”.  The public chose a rather unique way of approaching this subject; instead of tweeting things like, “We are all going to die”, they chose to post millions of cat pictures and videos all over social media followed by the hashtag #BrusselsLockdown. 

Numerous cat owners chose to have a little bit of fun with these pictures.  Some posts included cats dressed up as if they were at a spa, Darth Vader cats, cats with weapons, and cats trapped in things.  There were also a plethora of edits made with cats such as storm troopers riding hovercats and a cat riding a unicorn.

On Monday, November 23, 2015, the Belgian federal police tweeted a picture of a bowl of cat food with the caption, “For the cats who helped us yesterday”.  Brussels is still currently in a lock down and the possibility of this attack and future attacks actually happening is still a possibility, but Belgium is ready to fight back, with their cats.