Melissa Joan Hart is facing backlash online after she posted a video of herself seemingly kicking a cat. The actor is best known for her starring role as Sabrina on Sabrina the Teenage Witch, which ran for seven seasons in the mid-nineties to early-noughties.
Sabrina the Teenage Witch starred Melissa Joan Hart for many years
Taking to Instagram, Melissa shared a video of herself appearing to kick her Sabrina the Teenage Witch co-star, Salem the Cat.
“When people ask me if I’m a cat person,” reads a text overlay on the video, which shows Melissa throwing a black cat into the air before kicking it off-screen. The cat is then replaced by a dog, which Melissa pets happily.
“No Salems were harmed in the filming of this silly video,” she wrote in the caption. “PS I like cats, but I love dogs!”
But, despite Melissa’s caveat in the caption, her video was not well recieved by everyone on social media. “Not going to lie, this was a bit heartbreaking, poor Salem,” one person commented on the video.
“This isn’t your best work,” someone else wrote, describing the video as a “hard watch.” Another person echoed this, writing: “I’m ok with you not loving cats, but saying it like that was just not funny for me.”
“This broke my heart. I loved Melissa,” added another person, who announced their plans to unfollow the actor.
A fourth person chimed in: “Girl, do you not know your fan base???? You still have time to take this down!”
Elsewhere, some fans saw the lighter side. “Sorry, cat people!” one person commented. “That was just the right kind of wrong.”
Later taking to her Story to respond to the critics, Melissa said the cat in the clip was a “fake” Salem from Amazon and not the real deal. “We’re all good over here,” she said.
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