Mitsi is a cat. And that helped her become a viral internet and television star.

It started with one video by an Israeli named Dan. On January 30, he posted a video to Facebook of Mitsi, the stray cat, who sits on the turnstiles and watches commuters come and go at the Petah Tikva train station.

The equation of cats plus internet did its thing. The video of Mitsi, looking utterly relaxed among the hubbub of the train station, has scored over six million views and tens of thousands of shares.

Mitsi has been on the news in the US, Canada, and Europe. ABC, CBS, APTN affiliates and others have aired snippets of the original video or done full reports on the cool cat with a calm charm.

Anyone who works in the media knows that wishing for a viral story and actually scoring one is never a given.

But the internet world loves cats and Mitsi has done the near impossible: She has unintentionally put Petah Tikva, a city 10 kilometers east of Tel Aviv, in the world’s limelight.

Petah Tikva, although home to a Santiago Calatrava bridge amongst other things, is usually the butt of jokes in Israel as a place “not on the map.”

Mitsi has not only purrfectly trained the world’s lens on this average Israeli city but she’s also secured her own social media star status.

#PRandjournalism #journalism #cat