Is it normal to fear a tweeting mouse?

I have two cats. My mom bought a new cat toy for them. It is a long plastic piece holding a thin rope, which holds a toy mouse with a thing inside it that makes it tweet when it is whirled around in the air or touched on its butt. We tried playing with our cats with it. The big cat likes playing with it. The little kitty liked it at first, but after it started tweeting, the little one became terrified of it. He recognizes it before it tweets too. Today, my stepdad took it out and put it next to the little kitty's face and before it even tweeted, he hissed and ran away.