Spacecats have a strange power over other species. If you see a Spacecat appear, you will never be able to forget the encounter. After the mysterious cat disappears, you will be consumed by an overwhelming sadness. The encounter with the cat will replace any memory that you find precious, and make your time with the cat your new most precious memory. Some people call it “nostalgia sickness”. No one knows why the cats have this power over others, but they are not dangerous or malicious in nature.
One of the most well known stories that involved a Spacecat was a young new mother in a rural area of Oregon. She had a new baby with her husband, and everything was going well until the child became sick and had to be hospitalized. The couple was in distress, like any parents would be. One night, she went for a walk to the edge of a lake that lit up in moonlight, not able to sleep from anxiety. As she stared out over the water, with the yellow-white moonlight glittering on the black surface with silent tears dripping down her face, terrified for the fate of her child. As she was about to stand up and leave, another light caught her eye. It was a soft but saturated yellow light. Was someone out here with a flashlight? She would have guessed so and shrugged it off, except the light was very low to the ground and shuffling among the reeds and tall grass around the small body of water. The lady called out, assuming that it was a small child with a flashlight. It was common for a group or couple of children down the road to explore the lake area after dark. But why so late? It was almost 2 am. In a haste she half ran down the slope towards the grass, but before she could help walk the small child back home, a “nyeea!” made her jump back with a squeak. It was a cat, every bit a normal house cat except for a strange, long curved antenna sprouting from the middle of its head! The end of the antenna was the source of the strange yellow light. It was so bright that she could see the cat perfectly, but the hue was so soft it almost made her feel like she wasn’t on earth anymore. The lady looked at the cat, staring at it unmoving as it meowed at her again. The bulb on its head was glowing ever so faintly from bright to dim, and she noticed that it’s fur wasn’t a natural color either. It had the patterns of a regular cat as well, but it’s fur was gray with a strange neon pink accent. Did someone dye it? The more seconds passed the more entranced the became.
“Eeaaooww!” Said the cat, it’s cute mouth opened wide. The inside of its mouth wasn’t the average pink like her own fat cat at home, it was darker neon pink with an orange tongue. It’s tongue was slightly phosphorescent.
The lady took out her phone and snapped a photo. It was a clear photo, not at all blurry like most people who witness an anomaly and want to capture it on film. She wanted to speak but couldn’t. The feeling in her heart was unexplainable, it was nice but also painful.
After the encounter, the woman wasn’t the same. She told her husband about the cat, and showed him the picture but to him it looked like just an artist’s representation of an alien cat. “It’s obviously fake! You found that online” he kept staying, and this would start a fight. She was so obsessed with the cat, she would sit on the couch or in her bed all day just staring at her phone at the picture. For hours, staring at the photo, dinner time, would eat and stare at the photo. The man was not happy, and every hour became increasingly worried for his wife. He called the doctors to tell him what was wrong, and the doctor gave him some explanation about how his wife is using the cat to cope with the stress of their situation. The husband was angry the doctor gave him a brush off answer. Whenever he would try and talk to his wife about the cat, she would get excitement in her eyes, tell him every detail, cry about how sad she was when he padded away. This was getting sick...she had a baby in the hospital possibly dying and she was so focused on this fake cat! She would sleep well at night, but started to make meowing sounds in her sleep, and would awake and look at the photo instead of calling the doctor for an update. The man became increasingly impatient, and one night he went down to the lake at 2 am to look for the cat. He bought treats and humane traps to try and see if he would catch a normal gray cat with maybe some pink paint splattered on it from crude children. The man was unsuccessful and never caught or saw one cat, only squirrels and rats appeared in his traps.
One night they got a call from the doctor. It was really bad, and their baby needed an operation. He told her to wake up and get ready, since they might need to take blood from the both of them. She tiredly said that she was having the best dream about the cat, and didn’t want to go so she could continue to sleep and return to the dream. The man, normally patient and kind, snapped and yelled at her, even cursed. He screamed that he was sick and tired of hearing about the cat, and asked if she even cared about him or their baby at all. She began to cry frantically, and explained to him with a face full of emotion that encountering the cat was the best moment of her life, and made her feel even better than the day they got married or had their baby. The man was hurt, a sharp pain hit his heart so hard he thought he would throw up. How could this be happening? This was madness! His wife was always very rational, why this sudden change? It’s like she had no heart left for her sick baby or even him at all. Just this stupid cat! He felt tears fill his eyes as he looked up to see her smiling at the photo on her phone again. The man had never been violent before and would ever hurt his spouse, but without even thinking he lunged across the room. She didn’t even flinch at his sudden movement, but her face lit up in horror as his strong hand grasped the phone. He used all his strength to yank it from her hands, but strangely she held onto the very end of the device. How could she be so strong in this moment? He yelled at her to let go, but she screamed “no” at the top of her lungs as if she were being skinned alive. One last tug and the phone was free from her grip. The husband had paid for it, and it was a nice phone, but before he could think he raised an arm and smashed the phone on the floor as hard as he could. There was one last “No!” from his wife before he landed a heavy booted foot on the screen, killing the device. The room went deathly silent after the final crack of the phone screen. She didn’t cry or make a sound, just stared blankly at him for a full minute until she gasped and jumped out of bed, throwing on clothes. “Let’s go then!” She said. The man made a very confused expression. People who have frantic episodes like that don’t just completely stop in a second, but she did.
“Where?” He asked.
“The hospital?” She snapped, and left the room to run downstairs and out the door. He looked at the phone on the floor. Now is when he regretted smashing it. It was 2006 and iPhones weren’t cheap.
The couple reached the hospital and their baby was taken care of, and after a few more weeks their little boy was back home. Everything went back to normal, as if the ordeal never happened. After they got back home from the hospital, she recalled breaking the phone herself out of fear their child was going to die. It didn’t make sense to either of them, but his usually logical wife brushed it off as if that is what actually happened. The man walked into the kitchen after work to see his son in the high chair and his lovely spouse spoon feeding him. He scratched his head, with curiosity eating at him. He asked her a simple question, and that was if she had seen the cat with the bulb lately. She wiped her baby’s messy face and replied: “What cat?”