KitKat Is Dead. Waymo Lied.
On October 27, 2025, shortly before midnight, a Waymo autonomous vehicle killed KitKat, a bodega cat known as the "mayor of 16th Street" in San Francisco's Mission District. KitKat had lived outside Randa's Market for six years. The neighborhood loved him.
Waymo's initial statement: "A cat darted under our vehicle as it was pulling away."
Surveillance video told a different story.
What the Camera Showed
Footage from Randa's Market cameras, first published by the New York Times and later obtained by Mission Local, showed:
A woman crouching near the vehicle's front right tire, attempting to move KitKat away from the car. KitKat was positioned under the vehicle for approximately 25 seconds before the car pulled away. The Waymo drove off and struck KitKat as the cat moved back toward the sidewalk.
KitKat did not "dart" anywhere. KitKat was stationary. The car drove over him anyway.
Mission Local: Surveillance Video Contradicts Waymo's Account of Cat Death
Three Witnesses Confirmed It
Benjamin Wallo and Elisa Massenzio, exiting a nearby bar, reported the cat sat in front of the vehicle for 5 to 8 seconds before going underneath. Jeff Klein, a passing motorist, observed the Waymo "swerve" in front of him while traveling faster than typical.
When asked why its initial statement omitted the woman trying to help, Waymo said it "did not want this pedestrian to feel badly" or suggest she bore responsibility.
That is not an explanation. That is a cover story.
The Technical Failure
Professor Missy Cummings from George Mason University's Autonomy and Robotics Center explained the issue: autonomous vehicles lack "object permanence." Once an object goes beneath the car, the system forgets it exists. "Anything that falls underneath the car cannot be seen... forgotten about immediately."
A $100,000 self-driving vehicle equipped with lidar, radar, cameras, and machine learning cannot remember that a cat is under its wheels. The technology is impressive until you realize it has the spatial memory of a goldfish.
KQED: Death, Robotaxis, and a Cat Named KitKat
The Bigger Picture
KitKat is a cat. This article is about cats. But the Waymo incident matters for a reason beyond one animal: if the car cannot detect and remember a cat under its wheels, what happens with a child? A person in a wheelchair? Someone who falls?
Waymo's response was not "we have a technical limitation that needs to be addressed." Their response was to lie about what happened until video evidence forced a correction. That is a corporate accountability problem layered on top of a technology problem.
KitKat survived six years on 16th Street. He did not survive Waymo's first encounter. And Waymo's first instinct was to blame the cat.
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