It happens. I'm glad you said something, because I was coming in with another PSA about trying to discourage this behavior. What's cute now can easily turn into an unfortunate accident in the future.

Of course! Curiosity kills the cat, after all.

It happened to my aunt. She was so traunatised that she got up in the middle of the night to check the cat was really dead.

I used to foster cats and once had a kitten then got into the washing machine without me realising it. Machine was running for a bit over 5 mins before I realised what had happened. He was ok, just really wet and shaken up, and took ages to calm down. Little idiot still tried to climb in again the week after. But after that, I did kitten counts whenever I did ran a load. As in, filled the machine, closed it , then counted all the kittens. Did this until I stopped fostering. And even with that, I’d have moments of panicking hearing the washing machine and have to go count again. Even had times when the house was cat free that I’d get that feeling.

I had a cat die in the dryer. He matched the color of the shirts in there and my mom started it. We thought the thumping was shoes...