There’s a clip making the rounds from the Mike & Juliet Show (a syndicated morning show, seen in NYC on Fox) where, during a segment about binge drinking, a picture of a cat eating spaghetti was inexplicably played. The clip was picked up by E!’s the Soup, and has been making the rounds. I’ll post the clip below, but guess what?

The picture was totally, one hundred percent played on purpose, and I’ll tell you why:

Talking to an anonymous Mike & Juliet staffer, I found out that the spaghetti cat was originally from a segment on their Pet Talent Show. This particular cat ate spaghetti with a fork, but when the cameras were on, it completely froze up. This made the people working there laugh… A lot.

Cut to several months later. The staffers were talking about the Dump Button.

Explanation: The show is on a five second delay in the event something goes wrong; a lawyer sits in the control room, and in the event something does happen, will hit the button, which cuts the audio, and goes to a different camera.

Normally, when they hit the button, it would cut to a shot of Times Square, or the audience. The staffers thought it would be hilarious to cut to the shot of the Cat Eating Spaghetti, and, when the girl in the segment cursed, that’s exactly what happened.

So… This “complete mess-up” is actually an in-joke that was revealed to world. And, if this anonymous staffer is to be believed, there’s a ton more Secret Spaghetti Cat stuff on the horizon, so stay tuned.

In the meantime, so this actually makes sense on this blog, you can buy Spaghetti Cat T-shirts:

[$15, Cafepress]

And, as promised, here’s the clip from The Soup:

And, the some bonus material of Spaghetti Cat clip about a minute and a half into this video.