What Goes On In My Cat's Head?

I got my cat, Roach, ten years ago. Just before my sixteenth birthday. He was three months old at the time, a small kitten with a furry tabby coat and eyes similar to those of a Persian. According to the lady who owned his mother, the tabby coat is a rarity among the breeds of his parents. His mother was a blue British and his father, a Chinchilla Longhair (an unrecognized breed in many places). Like his mother, Roach is a coward. The moment he saw me coming into the apartment he was born in both him and his mother ran under a couch. Took us a while to get them out, and he took a few days to acclimate to his new home. He was named Roach because he ran away from everyone and everything – hiding somewhere like a cockroach.

Over the next ten years, Roach was a decent enough house cat. Being more “feral” as my relatives described him, he was suspicious of strangers. His long and luscious fur had always been a pain in the ass, but it was worth it. I thought I had lost him about five years ago when he found a way to travel from one bedroom to the kitchen somehow. Cats are a secretive animal, so he must’ve found a way.

Four years ago, I had gotten my dog, Jessica. She immediately fell in love with him, but the bastard being a bastard – he didn’t take to her. At first, he was afraid of her and thus aggressive whenever she attempted starting play. Eventually, he started warming up to her, although he still refuses to outright engage with her in full on play. She’s a giant compared to him. After I had gotten Jess, he started warming up to his human owners too. Actively seeking attention, which he hadn’t up to this point. While he was still a thorny fur shedding monster that acted like a grumpy old man as the years rolled on, his open displays of affection were a nice gesture of gratitude.

A month ago, I moved to a new apartment and obviously, Roach had to freak out and disappear somewhere after being let into the new place. I looked around for him but couldn’t find a trace. Asking Jess to sniff him out yielded no results. At first, she seemed enthusiastic about finding her “mate”, she stopped reacting with excitement to his name when I asked her to sniff him out.

During my third night in the new place, I heard a scraping noise behind the washing machine. I figured it must be Roach hiding behind it, as there was a sizable space into which the machine fit under the kitchen sink. I moved the machine away and looked into the space under the sink. Nothing, not a trace of the bastard feline. Trusting my gut feeling, I grabbed a flashlight and shone into the darkness. Lo-and-behold, Roach sat there, in the distance, compressing his body as tightly as he could sit. His eyes were wide with horror. The stress drove him to hide away from prying human eyes. He didn’t expect his entryway into his little hiding spot to be blocked, though. I tried calling him out, but he refused to get out. Seeing no way to actually get him out, I placed the washing machine back into its place. All I had to do was wait until the hunger or the need to piss would drive him to seek an exit. The next day rolled by without any calls for help from my cat. On his fifth day of isolation, he started scraping against the back of the washing machine. Hearing the noise, I pulled it out again, but he ran back into the depths of his little cave.

This time I kept the washing machine out. I knew he was going to come out sooner or later and all I needed to do was make sure he can't hide under the sink again. That night he came out, completely silent, though. I wouldn’t have noticed if he didn’t scrap in his litter box. Hearing that, I tiptoed my way towards the bathroom where he noticed me. He ran out, hoping to escape into his dark haven once again. I knew it was a race I couldn’t win. I called out to him, and he stopped moving. I started talking to him and he just stared at me. Once, I felt he was distracted enough, I came to him from the side and forced him to run into the guest room.

At this point, I ran towards the kitchen and pushed the washing machine back in place. It was amusing to watch him try in vain to get into a tiny hole back to his hiding spot. As annoying as the whole thing was, I was glad he didn’t run away as I initially had thought.

The next morning, he seemed to be slowly acclimating to the new place. He walked around sniffing everything, examining it with his nose and eyes. Something was off about him, though. He didn’t mind Jess. He always tried to push her away when she was too close. I shrugged it off as a result of being stressed out for almost a week. I thought he must’ve been a little off.

The weirdness continued as he started cozying up to the dog, while she, in turn, started almost ignoring him. She just didn’t pay attention to him, nor get excited about his name being called as she did in the past. Again, she’s super friendly and loves all people and animals she comes across. Roach kept running away from me whenever I tried approaching him. I thought he was just pissed at me for causing him this much anxiety, so I left him to his devices.

Two weeks had gone by, and I noticed nature wasn’t calling him. The litter box was clean. He was eating and drinking, but far less than usual. I rationalized it with his advancing age and the shift towards winter weather. He was acting normal for the most part, walking around. Sniffing stuff, rolling on the beds and couches – he tried playing with the dog who didn’t care for him. One thing that was off was how he wasn’t meowing – At all. Roach used to be a very vocal cat. Needs to take a shit? Yelling in discomfort. Took the shit? Singing opera in pleasure while running around. Wants running tap water? Meowing. Wants attention? Meowing. Look at him in a way he doesn’t like – Meowing angrily.

I dismissed everything as him having a feline midlife crisis or something. That is until I saw him standing on his front legs with his hind half bend over his head yesterday. He caught sight of me staring at him like that and placed his hind legs onto the ground before sitting. I was shocked. Obviously, I’d seen Roach standing on his hind legs before, but never on the front, and not bent in half like that. I came up to him and picked him up. I was surprised he even let me touch him, given his behavior in the previous weeks. I wasn’t thrilled about the fact that he felt lighter than I had remembered. Granted, he was never a heavy cat, but now he was way too light.

Running my hand across his head, I realized what was different about Roach. His head was emptied. It barely hung onto the neck, and it just bobbed back and forth under the pressure of my hand. The skin of his face was stretched like a layer of paper over the empty skull, which I could feel in my fingers. A pit formed in my stomach, and I didn’t even know what to think. The head of my cat was virtually devoid of organs, but he was still functioning. I just held him in my arms and stared at his shriveled head. I guess I pulled on the top of his head a little too hard because his mouth opened seemingly involuntarily. Inside, I saw the bare skull of my cat and an insect not too dissimilar from a praying mantis standing, vibrating its body. My stomach cramped, I felt like throwing up and just let go of the cat's body.

Roach landed on his side, awkwardly, before getting back up to his feet and ran off. My cat was no more, Roach was gone. This wasn’t a cat. It was a sick parody of my pet. A zombified puppet commandeered by some weird insect thing.

I couldn’t bring myself to hurt the thing I wanted to do, but I couldn’t smash it with the baseball bet. I even brought it to the room the creature was lying in, but I wasn’t able to. It just stared at me and didn’t even move. It didn’t care. A chirping sound came out of its body, a poor attempt at purring. I felt sick and sad and…

So, I did the next best thing. Get this thing as far away from me as I could. I grabbed the creature and took it to my car. It didn’t protest, it didn’t move even. It just chirped, or whatever was inside chirped. Jessica seemed to be unconcerned with the whole thing.

I took what remained of my cat and drove it off into a nearby forest, he’s never been outside so he shouldn’t be able to come back. Living, dead, or otherwise.

The drive home was awful, I was confused, sad, and angry all at once. This insect thing, I just hope my dog didn’t catch any of that either. I had never seen such a thing before. I should definitely get an exterminator to make sure I have no more of these things crawling around somewhere.

Last night, I went to bed depressed and worried, mostly about Jessica. She seems fine thus far, I hope she didn’t contract whatever alien bug this was.

This morning I woke up to something on my bed, something not very heavy. As I came to, chirping echoed in my ears and the smell of spoiled eggs, milk and fish hit my nostrils. My eyes shot open, and I saw it walking around my bed. Instinctively, I kicked it as hard as I could off the bed.

It hit the floor with a sickening thud and struggled back to its feet. Something definitely snapped. How the fuck did this thing get back to the house? How did it get inside? My stomach knotted with disgust and anger. Jessica heard me yell and ran towards the room but stopped at the doorstep yelping before running away in defeat. The parody of a cat was clearly broken when I got up. It was trying to walk, but two of its legs and its back were out of place so it stumbled awkwardly. I grabbed my blanket and wrapped it around this abomination before slamming it against the wall. The chirping died down, and I tied the blanket into a makeshift sack.

I ended up tossing the blanket with the remains of Roach wrapped in it outside. The smell of rot is unbearable, and the chirping is back. I just want the god-awful sound to stop. Jessica won’t come anywhere near that mess. I can only assume the smell or the sound hurt her.

I’m pretty sure I saw the blanket move as I looked out of my window. I think I’m going to burn this mess. Just thinking about it makes my eyes well up.

I’m sorry, Roach, I love you, you furry bastard.