These cats do their own stunts, and film them, too.

In one video, the athlete pauses, assesses the height and leaps. In another, he leaps across a roof, his shadow stretching out long in front of him.

This gymnast, though, is a cat. Specifically, he's Gonzo of @gonzoisacat. He has more than 607,000 followers on TikTok and 178,000 on Instagram.

Gonzo is the star — and the director — of his own shorts, which he captures with the help of a tiny camera that attaches to his collar. The result is an extreme sports cinéma vérité-style documentary from a cat's perspective. And it's catching on online.

"The cat goes out there, and it's like, 'What is he doing, out in the world?'" said Derek Boonstra, 40, who cares for Gonzo with his wife, Maria, in Los Angeles.

The couple started filming Gonzo about four years ago. They wondered what he was doing when no one was watching — and wanted to make sure he was safe when he was exploring outside. After experimenting with a DIY camera, Boonstra bought one from the brand Insta360.

The first day they filmed included about "90 minutes of him sleeping in a bush," said Boonstra, a documentary filmmaker who has a tattoo of the cat. But then Gonzo ran into some baby opossums. "That was immediately like, 'This is really fascinating,' " he said.

Cats are among the earliest and most constant staples of the Very Online. Jason Eppink, who curated a 2015 exhibition about cats on the internet at the Museum of the Moving Image, broke down online cats into three main eras.

"There wasn't this cat industrial complex yet," said Eppink, an artist and curator.

Then, as Facebook took hold, the cats became memes; think I Can Has Cheezburger. Celebrity cats, like Lil Bub or Grumpy Cat, rose with Instagram and the early influencer internet.

The rise of wearable camera technology has led to another style of cat content. Like viewers of extreme sports videos, cat video fans regularly note the thrill they feel when their feline stars leap or scamper.

Another catfluencer named Mr. Kitters has 1.5 million followers on TikTok and nearly 1 million on Instagram, where viewers can watch him meow at a bird or chase a squirrel.

"A lot of the comments are, 'I kind of wish I were a cat,'" said Scott Irwin, Mr. Kitters' human. "It's a way for them to escape for 15 seconds at a time."

What explains the real draw of these videos? Cats are enigmas. We humans rely on a slim codex of tail flicks and meows to read their emotions. In part, that is because of the history of domestication, said Mikel Delgado, a cat behavior expert at Feline Minds. Humans have been living alongside dogs for longer than cats, she said, and we often project human mannerisms onto them.

"Cats have fewer facial muscles, so people have a harder time reading cats in general," Delgado said.

Outdoor cats also spur curiosity, said James Serpell, an emeritus professor of animal welfare at the University of Pennsylvania School of Veterinary Medicine. The videos reveal a hidden side of cat behavior, one unmediated by a human presence. "People may get a vicarious thrill from following the adventures of their cat," Serpell said.

Lots of the footage can be boring, however. After all, most cats spend a majority of their days napping or sitting. But "every once in a while, you get that 15 seconds of gold," said Irwin.

Still, there's something strange about the way that Mr. Kitters' fans expect him to be, well, human. Some of Mr. Kitters' fans ask for specific interactions, like seeing him climb a tree, which baffles Irwin.