A Canadian athlete who felt on top of the world after winning bronze at the Paris 2024 Paralympics has gone viral after revealing how she was humbled by her devious cat when the pet stole her wheelchair.

After representing her country in the para-triathlon this summer, Leanne Taylor, 32, came crashing back to reality when her rescue cat, Zola, left her stranded without her wheelchair. While Taylor, who is paraplegic [paralyzed from the waist down], was working at her desk, Zola decided to keep her wheelchair warm. Unfortunately for Taylor, she had forgotten to put the brakes on, and the wheelchair rolled away with Zola, placing it too far out of reach.

Taylor, of Winnipeg, Manitoba, was left stranded until her husband came to help, as she told Newsweek that it was "humbling to have such recent success in sport, to then be one-upped by a cat."

When Zola, 9, first jumped into the wheelchair and rolled away, Taylor started recording rather than trying to reach it. Shortly after, when Zola leaped out of the seat, the wheelchair was pushed even further away, leaving Taylor regretting her decision to record rather than "grabbing it right away."

Taylor said: "While I was working, Zola jumped into my wheelchair, and I saw it rolling away. I thought it was funny, so I started recording. All of sudden, Zola jumped off my chair, and it rolled even further away.

"I thought it served me right for trying to make a funny video. I probably could have reached my wheelchair before she jumped off, but, after that, I had no chance," Taylor continued.

She posted the hilarious clip of her cat trolling her on TikTok (@leanne.taylor0) and it went viral with more than 2.4 million views and almost 400,000 likes at the time of writing.

Thankfully for the para-athlete, her husband was also at home, so she called him "to show him what Zola had done." After laughing at her misfortune, he returned the wheelchair to her.

"If he wasn't home, I would have had to boot-scoot and boogy over to my wheelchair. Based on the comments from the video, a lot of people were curious about it, so I posted another clip showing what I would have done if he wasn't there," Taylor said.

Zola spends a great deal of time sitting in the wheelchair; Taylor told Newsweek that she will spend hours in it at a time. The brakes are usually on, which saves Taylor from this nightmare, as she said that she has learned her lesson about the importance of ensuring they are on in the future.

Taylor has been a full-time wheelchair user since 2018, when she sustained a spinal cord injury after a mountain-bike accident. She decided that she wanted to be a para-athlete when she was still in the hospital following the incident, and just eight months later, she completed her first para-triathlon.

The Social Media Reaction

She may have bested her rivals on land and water, but Taylor left millions of social media users in hysterics with this unexpected encounter. She certainly won't let Zola conquer her again, that's for sure.

After posting the video on TikTok on November 19, it instantly went viral and has amassed almost 2,000 comments so far. Plenty of TikTok users lauded Zola's mischievous behavior and highlighted her lack of remorse.

One comment reads: "Zola sensed the sarcasm in your thanks and taught you a lesson."

Another person joked: "Her pushing the chair even farther away, just devious work."

A third TikTok user added: "What's the opposite of a service animal?"

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