The Cat That Is Not My Cat Who Waits In The Hall -The Toast

The Cat That Is Not My Cat Who Waits In The Hall

ByDaniel Mallory Ortberg

on May 9, 2014 in Animals

This is my cat. He is useless and degenerate; he is a decadent and an idle trifler who neither values nor appreciates the lifestyle with which I provide him.

Yes, my bed is also a bookcase. [preens]

Here is the cat I found in the hallway when I opened the door to leave my apartment yesterday afternoon.

He is the twin of my cat in every way, except for this: my cat was within the apartment, while his double stood without. He was waiting. He was staring directly into the spot in the apartment where my cat was sitting. Their eyes did not leave one another.

The door is closed now, which means the double-cat either is or is not sitting directly behind it.

I am afraid to leave, and I am afraid to stay. I am afraid to learn what I do not know.

Mallory is an Editor of The Toast.

Comments (71)

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+105 Vote up Vote down

safvn 121p · 569 weeks ago

This can mean only one thing: Your cat is a time-traveler, and is crossing paths with his younger or older self. (Also, this means you cannot know his sexuality, but that is neither here nor there.)

1 reply · active 569 weeks ago

+136 Vote up Vote down

anninyn 124p · 569 weeks ago

They are twins. Your cat is the evil one, because he has the goatee.

Sorry.

3 replies · active 568 weeks ago

+154 Vote up Vote down

NicoleCliffe 145p · 569 weeks ago

Around his neck is a little card on a string. The card is from Chris Kimball. It says "how useless your remorse would be, child."

1 reply · active 569 weeks ago

+56 Vote up Vote down

EPWordsnatcher 126p · 569 weeks ago

Cat v. Anti-Cat. Do not let them meet.

+35 Vote up Vote down

Es_Petal 120p · 569 weeks ago

I think you may shortly have two cats.

+5 Vote up Vote down

Samk12345 114p · 569 weeks ago

Schrodinger's cat! stupid fox keeps removing the clip from Futurama http://www.funnyjunk.com/funny_pictures/3217613/S...

+74 Vote up Vote down

Linette 125p · 569 weeks ago

Evil Melis got a cat. Now Melis and cat must live with evil Melis and evil cat.

1 reply · active 569 weeks ago

+29 Vote up Vote down

thejcar 126p · 569 weeks ago

My late lamented cat also had a TwinCat! He was bigger than she was and had slightly different markings but it would freak me out when I'd see him in the yard. But do you know what is creepier than a TwinCat? A GHOSTCAT. After the passing of dear Cat, I started seeing another doppelganger, THIS ONE EVEN MORE UNCANNY THAN THE LAST. So... I guess you have that to look forward to?

3 replies · active 569 weeks ago

+39 Vote up Vote down

littlehuntingcreek 135p · 569 weeks ago

Possibilities:
1. New cat is your cat also, but from the future (the black/not black on their noses is PROOF)
2. New cat is a Time Lord
3. Your hallway is a Schrodinger's Hallway experiment
4. If 3# is true, then whatever you do, don't go in the hallway, because you'll be trapped forever in a state of being and non-being

1 reply · active 569 weeks ago

+165 Vote up Vote down

samburgers 117p · 569 weeks ago

I lived in a cabin in the woods once. Woodspeople don't leash their dogs or contain their cats or wash their children, so in the forests there were deer, bear, fox, kids, wolves, dogs, wolf-dogs, and cats, hundreds of thousands of cats. Some were domestic, most feral.

I adopted my cat at the local humane society. They found her in an abandoned apartment and had to trap her like a wild animal. When I met her in the shelter, she yowled and hissed and bit, and then she yowled some more. The people said she should live with a solitary witch in the woods, so I took her home.

The moment she moved in with me, the feral cats started to swarm. I would come home and they would scatter from my front porch and leer at me from the bushes. I would wake up in the night to yowling and scratching at the door, green eyes glowing in my windows. I would leave the house in the morning and there would be tracks in the fresh snow at my door, butt imprints from where they sat, waiting.

After a while, they started to leave gifts at the door. A chipmunk. A vole. The wing of a sparrow, the foot of a pigeon.

Later, kittens. Dozens of them. They sprang up from nowhere and everywhere. I brought them to the humane society by the shovelful.

Meanwhile my cat sat at the door, stiff, listening, commanding the tide of ferals to swell and surge upon our home.

We had to leave the state.

It has begun, Mallory.

6 replies · active 569 weeks ago

+123 Vote up Vote down

tekkah 115p · 569 weeks ago

The cat is not the mystery. Someone has replaced your hallway with a mirror. The real mystery is why you do not also appear in reflection.

4 replies · active 569 weeks ago

+33 Vote up Vote down

miprisci 132p · 569 weeks ago

Have you invoked the favor of any Goblin Kings recently? Perhaps to spare you from a noisome stepbrother you're tasked with babysitting?

+15 Vote up Vote down

Amy · 569 weeks ago

Notes From The Undercat

1 reply · active 569 weeks ago

+10 Vote up Vote down

ArsenioB_Ham 125p · 569 weeks ago

I think this calls for a witch's bottle full of your cat's hairs placed near/above the doorway, PRONTO.

+22 Vote up Vote down

CordeliaFitz 121p · 569 weeks ago

It is a cat's job to be appreciated, not to appreciate.

+64 Vote up Vote down

deleted7410012 111p · 569 weeks ago

It's Ronbledore's animagus, adrift in time, obviously.

+12 Vote up Vote down

Prawns 99p · 569 weeks ago

There was a giant extra-toed cat that very intensely tried to get into my apartment 2 days ago.

They are waiting. They are watching. They KNOW.

+5 Vote up Vote down

talitha3k 0p · 569 weeks ago

I love this story. And I love your bookcase bed. I am also in search of an awesome bookcase bed. Where did you get it? It kinda looks like the one I'm considering at Target but I'm not sure.

4 replies · active 569 weeks ago

+21 Vote up Vote down

embryoconcepts 104p · 569 weeks ago

The writing + comments are somehow one of the creepiest things The Toast has produced. I have feral cats in my yard. I will not leave my house today.

1 reply · active 569 weeks ago

+32 Vote up Vote down

Frumiosa 141p · 569 weeks ago

LOOK-ALIKES YOU SAY??

5 replies · active 569 weeks ago

+7 Vote up Vote down

britomartian 138p · 569 weeks ago

Awww look at their little faces!!

+8 Vote up Vote down

romastrega 82p · 569 weeks ago

And so the Ghosting of Mallory has begun...

3 replies · active 569 weeks ago

+6 Vote up Vote down

moxycrimefighter · 569 weeks ago

Mallory's cat has an East Coast twin - I'm imagining them meeting somewhere in the Midwest and floating above the cornfields, like Harry Potter and Voldemort.

+21 Vote up Vote down

MilesofMountain 121p · 569 weeks ago

My cat also has a twin. My cat is an indoor cat, but I sometimes get a call from my neighbours that my cat has escaped and is by the fence at the edge of the woods down the block. My cat is always with me when I get these calls. I've never gone to go see the other cat. I don't want to see it.

+6 Vote up Vote down

deleted6707794 121p · 569 weeks ago

Your cat's soul has been torn in twain all these eons. Finally they may merge and become again what they once were.

+34 Vote up Vote down

Goatse Fanfiction · 569 weeks ago

That other cat is your true cat, spirited away one night by the fae to serve them, forever removed from the world of mortals and doomed to helplessly watch the revels of the wicked changeling that's taken its rightful place in your home. Joke's on the fairies, though, cats are useless.

+14 Vote up Vote down

momo_sully · 569 weeks ago

He's there to tell your cat that Tim Toldrum has died and he is now the King of the Cats.

+2 Vote up Vote down

Winterneverendsjess · 569 weeks ago

This feels very I Heart Huckabees.

+20 Vote up Vote down

robot_dinosaur 115p · 569 weeks ago

One of my friends has a giant black and white cat named Sulu. A stray who looks very similar wandered into their house one day and has just kept coming back. They have named him Chekhov.

1 reply · active 569 weeks ago

+6 Vote up Vote down

imsleepingin 56p · 569 weeks ago

This happened to my brother at his house ... And now he has three cats. In addition to the two cats he had previously. He's like, it's a lot of cats. But seriously the twin cat just started walking into his house like ... Sup guys what you eating over there tuna? It was a very chill stray possibly a left behind? Anyway watch out Mallory this might be a cat plot to take over your life etc.

+6 Vote up Vote down

thezlot 120p · 569 weeks ago

Aww it's your cat's flesh anchor! It is a very pretty flesh anchor.

+13 Vote up Vote down

sednarea51 128p · 569 weeks ago

Not-Cat has claws. Not-Cat possesses thumbs. Not-Cat has an expensive HD tablet. Not-Cat has a loft apartment in Manhattan. Not-Cat passes his time by ghostwriting accusatory columns about feline guardianship. Not-Cat has a personal chef who sets out a meal of the finest raw organic meats on fine china three times a day, then crosses himself as he locks and bolts the door behind him. Not-Cat has a room piled with ancient golden coins worn featureless with age. Not-Cat is not restricted to the mundane dimensions. Not-Cat has been waiting for many, many years. Not-Cat knows that his nemesis is here. Not-Cat has discovered where his nemesis lives. Not-Cat knows her name, burned eons ago in the depth of his soul. Not-Cat knows he need not wait much longer.

+7 Vote up Vote down

Standard Tuber · 569 weeks ago

A quick read: Jenny and The Cat Club, by Esther Averill. You'll learn why that cat was looking at you like that, and then you'll realize what a Prize Asshole* your cat is for leaving his brother out there all this time.

*I think your cat is cute and also I am blindly loving of all cats to the point where i naively petted a strange cat, on a strange street, on its belly and DUH got shredded. laughs were had at my expense. IDGAF

+14 Vote up Vote down

vacantmuse 70p · 569 weeks ago

StrexCorp saw you enjoyed your current cat, but thought you might prefer this double of your cat from another universe better; he is, after all, synergized with StrexCorp's entire range of devices to make your daily life more enjoyable, and is a gift, Mallory. Don't you like our Gift, Mallory? StrexCorp cares for our community.

Believe in a smiling god.

+2 Vote up Vote down

heyk · 569 weeks ago

Your cat is really the twin of our cat, Casey. Except my dad ran over Casey about 30 years ago (I was so traumatized I believed his story that Casey ran off even though I was IN THE CAR when it happened). So, yeah, Ghostcat.

+1 Vote up Vote down

Luca · 569 weeks ago

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z_KmNZNT5xw

it's a glitch in the matrix........RUN

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