Missouri - Ella Conway was sitting on the sofa in her Missouri home last month when her cat Apollo peeked out from the edge of the banister upstairs. The young woman had barely started to panic when the kitten fell.

Because the moment was recorded by a surveillance camera in the house, hundreds of thousands of Instagram users have now watched the video captioned, "POV your new kitten jumps off the railing."

After a few seconds, the clip shows Apollo plunging several meters into the depths.

Horrified, Conway puts her hands to her face, not daring to look at the cat at first.

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Apollo's impact can also be seen in the viral clip in a zoomed-in version, where it is noticeable that the cat lands quite accurately on its four paws.

However, the question remains unanswered – did the cat survive the fall without any injuries?

"We were so worried about him," Ella Conway told Newsweek.

"We got Apollo as an emotional support animal after our dad's passing and we could not handle him maybe being hurt. Especially since we hadn't even had him for a week at this point of the video."

Fortunately, she can now give the all-clear.

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Apollo was unharmed during the daredevil act, as confirmed by a vet.

"[We] took him to the vet and he was walking fine the next day! Now we have foil along the railing and he has not tried to jump since," reports Conway.

Reactions to the clip show that she wasn't the only one who was left breathless at that moment, with some users warning that this kind of thing often results in broken bones in cats and other animals.

"Eight lives left," one commenter wrote cheekily.