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A lawyer appearing before a judge at a virtual court case appeared on screen as a cat - after not realising a filter was switched on.

Rod Ponton was 'feline' fine as he entered the zoom call held in Texas, but should've 'paws-ed' before switching his camera on.

Rod's child had used the computer before him and left a cat filter on. Fur-real!

Trying to avoid a 'cat-astrophe', Judge Roy Ferguson quickly gave Mr Ponton a heads-up that he had appeared on the chat as a white fluffy kitten.

Rod recruited his assistant to try to help remove the filter - but 'un-fur-tunately' they couldn't turn it off.

The other person in the meeting sat patiently, but started to laugh, finding the whole situation 'hiss-terical' as Mr Ponton said: "Can you hear me? I'm here live. I'm not a cat."

On twitter, Judge Ferguson offered an important warning to anyone else appearing in virtual court.

"If a child used your computer, before you join a virtual hearing check the Zoom Video Options to be sure filters are off. This kitten just made a formal announcement on a case."

A post of the video to Twitter has had more than six million views. Judge Ferguson explained why he wanted to tell the 'tail'.

"Texas judges have now held over a million virtual hearings, so you can imagine that we've seen it all.

"Obviously it was amusing but if you watch carefully you'll see that everyone was extremely professional."