On Friday 14 June 2019, Shaukat Yousafzai, then a minister in the provincial government of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa in north-west Pakistan, held a press briefing in Peshawar that was streamed live on Facebook. Someone on the social media team had left a face filter switched on, so the minister and two officials beside him appeared with pink cat ears and whiskers for the whole broadcast. Viewers noticed straight away and said so in the comments, but the filter stayed on until the end.
The video was taken down from the Facebook page of Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), the party governing the province, minutes after the briefing ended. By then screenshots were everywhere. AFP picked up the story the next day, and it travelled around the world as one of the gentlest political gaffes of the year. Yousafzai took it in good humour, telling AFP that the filter had been switched on by mistake and that people should not take everything so seriously.
Below are the screenshots and reactions that made the rounds, each with a short note on what it shows, followed by a look at the minister himself and some practical lessons for anyone who livestreams official events.
What viewers saw on the livestream
The filter was one of the standard animal overlays that Facebook offered on its mobile live video at the time. It tracked faces automatically, which is why it jumped between the people at the table.
Two moments from the briefing side by side. Yousafzai, in the blue waistcoat, speaks into a cluster of microphones while the filter draws ears on his head and whiskers on his cheeks; on the right, the official beside him takes notes with the same feline features.
A wider view of the conference room. Here the filter has latched onto a different face, which shows how the software picked whoever was most clearly in view rather than one chosen person.
The live view as Facebook users saw it, with the "LIVE" badge and viewer count in the corner. Comments in Urdu underneath ask the team to remove the filter, saying the minister has been turned into a cat, and ask for guidance for the PTI social media team.
How Twitter reacted
Pakistani journalists were among the first to share the clip, and the joke spread quickly from there.
Journalist Naila Inayat, who often highlights unusual moments in Pakistani public life, posted the clip with the comment that you cannot beat this. Her tweet collected thousands of likes and replies and became the hub for much of the reaction below.
TV journalist Mansoor Ali Khan joked that, according to the provincial government's social media team, the cabinet now included a cat, tagging the post #Filter.
A short reply of three laughing emojis and "Unbelievable". Many reactions were like this: people simply could not believe that a government feed had gone out this way.
One user suggested, tongue in cheek, that every parliament in the world should broadcast with cat filters, starting with the British Parliament, and tagged the House of Commons and House of Lords accounts.
Another viewer described spending the day in a bad mood until this clip appeared, tagging the post #PTI and #KPK, the common abbreviation for Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.
"Who let the cats out" was a popular pun. This user tagged several Pakistani journalists and noted that the provincial media team had forgotten the filter during a live press briefing.
A user summed up the day plainly: the party's social media team forgot to switch off the filter, and the minister, tagged by his official handle, looked rather cute.
The party's official clarification
The PTI's official account posted a formal "Clarification Notification" the morning after. It said a disciplinary committee had looked into the matter, blamed "human error" by a volunteer, and promised stricter procedures for live coverage. The solemn tone of the notice only added to the amusement online.
Replies that kept the joke going
A reply featuring the well-known photo of two cats peering at a laptop, as if they were the ones running the stream.
Some people simply enjoyed the look. This reply says the officials were looking cute, followed by rounds of applause emojis.
"Too good to be true" was a common first response, and plenty of people assumed the screenshots were fake until news agencies confirmed the story.
A dump truck unloading a mountain of laughing emojis, a popular meme for moments that seem to deserve more laughter than a single emoji can express.
A reply using a widely shared office-comedy image of a man laughing helplessly at his desk, here standing in for everyone watching the clip.
A political jab: one user suggested that cats were actually running the provincial government.
An Indian user wrote that the clip hijacked an entire meeting with a Pakistani colleague. Note that the tweet uses a shortened term for Pakistanis that is widely considered offensive, especially in Britain.
A final round of applause emojis, calling it an unbeatable performance. Reactions from India and Pakistan were notably friendly in tone, a rare moment of shared laughter across the border.
Who Shaukat Yousafzai is
Shaukat Ali Yousafzai, born in 1963 in Shangla district, is a journalist turned politician. He edited the Peshawar daily Surkhab, led the Khyber Union of Journalists three times, and joined Imran Khan's PTI in 1996. He sat in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa assembly from 2013 to January 2023, serving at various times as minister for health, industries and information, and in 2019 he was the provincial government's spokesman. His relaxed response to the gaffe probably helped the story stay light-hearted rather than turning into a political row.
How to avoid filter mishaps when you stream
The cat-filter briefing is often filed under "funny", but it is also a small case study in how live video goes wrong. Phone apps remember the last effect you used, and a volunteer who played with a filter the night before can easily start the next stream with it still on. A few simple habits prevent this:
- Use a dedicated device or account for official streams, not someone's personal phone.
- Run a short private test broadcast before going live and look at it on a second screen.
- Have one person watch the public stream and the comments throughout, with the authority to stop it.
- Know how to switch effects off quickly in the app you use, since menus change with updates.
Similar slips have happened elsewhere. In 2021 a Texas lawyer famously appeared in a virtual court hearing as a kitten and told the judge he was not a cat, which shows that the problem is not limited to any one country or platform.
Why it still makes people smile
Most political news is heavy. This was a moment when a serious event briefly turned absurd, everyone involved laughed it off, and nobody was harmed. That, more than the filter itself, is why the screenshots keep resurfacing years later.
Sources: Kuwait Times / AFP, 15 June 2019: Pakistan politician does livestream with cat whiskers, ears; Newsweek Pakistan, 17 June 2019: Purr-fect press conference; Wikipedia: Shaukat Ali Yousafzai. Screenshots: Facebook livestream and public tweets by the users shown, including the official PTI account.
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