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Pakistani politician accidentally wears cat filter during livestream

In an SNL skit come to life, an information minister and two colleagues show up with whiskers and cute pointy ears. Fur real.

Gael Cooper
CNET editor Gael Fashingbauer Cooper, a journalist and pop-culture junkie, is co-author of "Whatever Happened to Pudding Pops? The Lost Toys, Tastes and Trends of the '70s and '80s," as well as "The Totally Sweet '90s." She's been a journalist since 1989, working at Mpls.St.Paul Magazine, Twin Cities Sidewalk, the Minneapolis Star Tribune, and NBC News Digital. She's Gen X in birthdate, word and deed. If Marathon candy bars ever come back, she'll be first in line.
Expertise Breaking news, entertainment, lifestyle, travel, food, shopping and deals, product reviews, money and finance, video games, pets, history, books, technology history, generational studies. Credentials
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Gael Cooper

Here's a tale of a fur-ocious goof. A politician in Pakistan who was streaming live on social media turned into a cute little kitty cat when someone on his social media team accidentally turned on a cartoonish filter. 

Provincial information minister Yousuf Shaukat Zai showed up on the  livestream  with whiskers, cat ears and cat noses. Later, two of his colleagues did. Fur real. 

It wasn't exactly a political cat-astrophe. The furry-faced images were deleted quickly from the party's official page, but screenshots were passed around on social media.

"According to KP government's social media team we now have a cat in the cabinet," wrote journalist Mansoor Ali Khan.

The party later tweeted out a statement that read in part, "Yesterday whilst covering a press briefing held by KP's information minister Shaukat Yousafzai, a 'cat filter' was witnessed by the viewers which was removed within (a) few minutes." 

The goof was dubbed "human error" and the party statement said that "all necessary actions have been taken to avoid such incidents in future."

It's another example of life imitating art. In May, Saturday Night Live created a skit in which a war reporter going live on CNN tried to deliver serious news of a battle while different cartoonish Snapchat filters kept showing up on his face.

Host Adam Sandler at least enjoyed the goofy looks.