It's not just a fetish, it's a meme!
A friend posted the oddly charming Russian video of a bear and a cat who clearly view each others as playmates on her blog, and then made the intriguing statement that "There is an entire genre of cat-chases-away-bear videos on YouTube." I watched the video, and then, naturally, had to go look to see if in fact there was just such a genre.
There is; and it appears to be dominated by Russian cat-and-bear videos.