Belgian citizens hijacked a hashtag about the Brussels lockdown and made it all about cats

People Are Using Cats to Confuse Terrorists in Belgium

Belgian authorities have gained one very important ally in their fight against the militants responsible for the attacks in Paris earlier this week: The country’s cat population.

After the country’s federal police requested that citizens avoid posting about the whereabouts of police or military officials on social media accounts, locals responded by diverting the use of the #BrusselsLockdown hashtag to be about their cats.

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That’s… uh, that’s it.

People got creative with the meme pretty quickly, using everything from famous Belgian singer Jacques Brel …

… to elaborate puns based on brands of popular dish soap detergents (Le Chat vs. Dash – itself a pun on an Arabic acronym for ISIS, Daesh).

The Belgian police, not above laughing about the situation themselves, posted the following image Monday morning as a response.