A man has shared his shock after his mum accidentally buried the wrong animal in their back garden.
Voiceover artist Eric Schmidt shared the hilarious tale, which took place over text messages, on Twitter.
He captioned the set of text messages: "You guys would not believe the roller coaster of emotions I’ve been through."
The stressful saga went viral with nearly 40,000 retweets and 313,000 likes.
It began with a text message from his dad breaking the sad news.
He wrote: "I've got some bad news. Kitty has been missing since last night.
"When your mom drove the neighborhood just now, she found her in the street near the house.
"Your mom is pretty emotional so please reach out when you can and offer your support."
Eric responded with his condolences, while his sister urged their father to look after her while she was upset."
But the incident took an unexpected turn after the pet was buried.
Just two hours later, Eric's dad messaged: "Well, you are not going to believe this.
"After a beautiful burial service and words of remembrance from yours truly.
"We walked back in the house to begin our post-Kitty life.
"Out of habit I looked at he back window and guess who was staring back at me?
"You guessed it, we buried someone else's cat.
"I guess its true - cats do have nine lives.
"Thanks for your kind words. All is better now."
After Eric's sister asked for proof, their dad sent a photo showing that the kitty was very much alive."
The story took another unexpected twist when Eric shared another text from his mum revealing that she'd actually buried a rabbit.
She wrote: "Oh, and BTW I dug up the carcass and took it to our vet and it didn't have a chip in it.
"Because it is a rabbit. DO NOT tell the world about it."
Internet detectives pointed out the text messages were originally from 2015, leading to Eric confirming that he accidentally lost his original tweet and wanted to share it.
He tweeted: "My account got hacked and the tweet was lost and I just wanted to make it my pinned tweet cuz I feel it’s a good intro.
"Had no idea it would take off again."
People were left in hysterics by the incident, with one fellow cat owner replying: "This 100% happened to my in-laws. Poor kitty out on the road, went to the vet, didn't make it.
"Had her cremated. A few days later, I hear my mother in law screaming "YOU LITTLE B****!" in the garden at the cat, who'd just walked up the path like nothing at all happened."
Another added: "This EXACT thing happened to my fam when I was younger.
"I woke to mom bawling & she sat me down & said our cat was no longer w us bc they found her body in the road. 45 min later w us sobbing, my sis walks in the room w our cat curled in her arms asking for McDonald’s pancakes."
Another praised his mum, tweeting: "Props to your mom for taking the mystery carcass to the vet in case another family was looking for their pet."
